CaneSport Publisher Gary Ferman joins the On3 Roundtable to discuss Miami's rout of Florida: "This is a product you can believe in"
CaneSport publisher Gary Ferman put things into perspective off Miami’s rout of Florida in Week 1 of this college football season, saying on the On3 Roundtable show that “it means everything.”
“Miami has been not real great for 20 years now,” Ferman said. “You have a fan base starving to believe in its football team. The biggest takeaways from week 1 is this is a product you can believe in, you can see the potential this team has if it keeps its lunchpail there next to it.”
Miami dominated the game, of course, and Ferman pointed to both sides of the ball getting the job done.
On offense?
“(Coordinator) Shannon Dawson came out with a phenomenal game plan, had Florida on its heels from the first possession,” Ferman said. “To me that was the key to the game. Miami had the better players, when they were able to speed the game up, get Florida defenders thinking a lot on their feet Miami had Florida right where they wanted and Miami could have scored 50 in this game. It really was that dominant of a performance in the game.”
Cam Ward, of course, led the way.
“Wow, you take a kid that was a .500 quarterback at Washington State who obviously had the ability to do what he did on Saturday, you put him on a better team with a better plan and Cam Ward from day 1 is getting everything out of what he wanted by coming to Miami,” Ferman said. “He was unlike anything we’ve ever seen at Miami. We’ve had great quarterbacks at this program – you could go on and on and on.
“But we’ve never seen anything like what we saw Saturday. Just the way he did it, the confidence, swagger, variety of ways he delivers the ball to his receiver, way he just stands there so calm cool and collected.”
Ferman said the mental and physical game of Ward was “phenomenal,” and that “if Miami can sustain this level of play and hopefully even improve it Cam Ward is going to be a Heisman Trophy candidate this year.”
Ferman pointed to an area to improve on offense as the run game, which averaged 3.7 yards per carry when you take Ward’s scrambles out of the equation.
“Their running game and blocking at the line of scrimmage has a huge area for improvement, will get better,” he said.
On the other side of the ball?
Ferman said that the defense made strides in fall camp and was back and forth with Miami’s explosive offense in drills. He pointed to portal additions at all levels of the defense as helping as well.
“This is a better Miami defense than they were getting credit for heading into the season,” he said. “I think they’ll start to get a little of that credit now.”
As for an area to improve on defense, Ferman pointed to the DB play and stressed the low Pro Football Focus grades in the secondary.
“They were clearly seeing a lot of receivers running free when they were watching plays over and over again, grading individual players,” Ferman said. “So there are things for Miami to work on as dominating as that performance was in The Swamp.”
A final takeaway off this game?
“This is a long season, this was one game,” Ferman said. “They were playing a clearly overmatched opponent on Saturday, did a phenomenal job. But you watch USC and LSU play that was two very talented teams. There are other teams in college football that can play well also. For Miami to accomplish things this season they have to win the ACC and get into the playoffs and represent themselves well, to do that they have to keep getting better.”
