Mario Cristobal evaluates where Miami has impressed on special teams in camp

Special teams is one of the most underrated components of football, but new Miami head coach Mario Cristobal knows and understands it’s importance to his team’s success. Following the teams first scrimmage of fall camp, Cristobal discussed what he saw from his special teams units, starting with his punt team.

“We can cover, we do have some guys that are athletic, that are explosive, that could cover a lot of ground. Also are really good a punt protection, we’ve got big, jumbo bodies that can protect and also get out there and also help us in coverage, which is rare. You usually have big, thick guys that can eat up and gobble up a lot of space but they provide nothing in coverage, we’ve got guys that can do both, and our long snapper he can get down there and cover too,” Cristobal said.

Many coaches regard the punt team as the most important of all phases of the kicking game, and it’s surely a good sign that Cristobal has a group of versatile athletes to help protect and cover punts for the Hurricanes this upcoming season. Cristobal also talked about his kickoff coverage and return units.

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“We also ran our kickoff team, our kickoff return team. We feel we have a couple good returners that could help us change the game, change the field. All in all the only one we didn’t get into much today was punt return, we did a little bit but not the level we wanted to. We just started running a bunch of plays, I got caught up in the red zone stuff, so it’s my fault I’m sure I’ll hear about it tomorrow. All in all we got a lot of the right type of work in today,” Cristobal said.

The Hurricanes bring back their top two kickoff returners from last season in Brashard Smith and Xavier Restrepo, who were both fairly productive.

Cristobal has been instilling high effort and finishing plays as premium priorities for the Hurricanes during camp, which are both crucial in building elite special teams units, especially in kick coverage. Miami has no shortage of athletes on their roster, and if Cristobal can establish a high effort culture on special teams along with his offense and defense, the Hurricanes can surely make some noise in the ACC this upcoming season and give opponents problems in all three phases of the game.