CaneSport Staff Roundtable: How much has the failure of Josh Gattis set back the Miami Hurricanes?

Miami Hurricanes Offensive Coordinator Hot Board

The CaneSport staff will be answering several key questions in the weeks leading up to Miami’s spring practice, which kicks off March 4. Today’s question:

CANESPORT STAFF QUESTION: “How big of a setback for Miami is the Josh Gattis failure?”

GARY FERMAN: The Josh Gattis failure is a big setback. How big remains to be seen by what happens in the next 12 months. But in year one of Cristobal, the blueprint was to establish an offensive system that would live on for many years regardless of what happened with the coordinator. Now the Hurricanes are back to square one going into year two and everyone will need to learn and adjust to a new system. Because of that there is a lot of pressure on Cristobal with this hire. This one has to count. If Miami has a good coordinator and a 2023 offense that is entertaining and successful and gives the team a chance to win games, then the failure of Gattis will eventually be forgotten. And an exclamation point was put on the failure in the past 12 months by Miami’s difficulty in recruiting receivers. Losing Brandon Innis and Hykeem Williams was a big deal and Miami is already playing 2024 catch-up with elite WR Jeremiah Smith from Hollywood Chaminade-Madonna, who has committed to Ohio State.

MATT SHODELL: This is a bit of a loaded question. Some of it will obviously depend on the next coordinator. Because if the new hire by Mario Cristobal also doesn’t succeed, that would be a massive issue since that would make it very difficult to recruit top offensive talent and perhaps also make it hard to land yet another coordinator who Miami would need to be a top tier guy. So massive pressure is on for the next coordinator to succeed as a result of the Josh Gattis failure. While that’s not technically a setback due to Gattis yet, it could be in the future. The immediate setback? His failure to get an offense going that resulted in a 5-7 season. And his failure to then go out and get top recruits to come to Miami. Remember when the Canes were hopeful about getting a QB like Dante Moore or Jaden Rashada? Or landing WRs like Jurrion Dickey, Hykeem Williams and Brandon Inniss? There was no way those guys wanted to come here based on what they saw from Gattis. Was it nice that UM still got QB Emory Williams, RBs Mark Fletcher and Christopher Johnson and WRs Ray Ray Joseph and Robby Washington? Of course. But it could have been so much more. So yeah, that’s a setback for a team on which Cristobal is trying desperately to stack talent and make it a championship-worthy roster. Now it’s ultra-important for several reasons that the new coordinator and new WR coach come in and undo the harm that was, indeed, a Gattis setback on the field and in the 2023 recruiting class.

IZUBEE CHARLES: I do not believe Josh Gattis’ failure was a major setback for one reason. Mario Cristobal recognized the issue and addressed it by removing Gattis from the position after the team averaged 23.6 points per game, ranking them 97th out of 131 FBS programs. Almost every major offensive recruit has stated that they want to see change and production in the Miami Hurricanes offense. Miami has addressed one need through change, and hopefully, Cristobal’s next hire will produce so that last year’s lack of production can be forgotten.

STEPHEN WAGNER: I’m not really sure if such a thing as a “setback” exists in the recruiting realm unless a school is slammed with NCAA penalties or there’s a scandal that decimates a school’s reputation, like Penn State or Baylor. Because recruiting is such a year-to-year process, there should be no reason a new coordinator can’t come in and immediately start landing high-level recruits. Some would say the offense is set back a year with having to hire a new coordinator, but all of Cristobal’s teams since 2018 have more or less been different versions of the same identity — just some executed better than others. In this instance, I’d say the identity of the offense lies more with Cristobal himself than with the specific coordinator’s philosophies. So more generally, I’d say there’s little to no setback here.