Of all the concerns Miami fans had going into Saturday, the biggest concern was the secondary against the Gator passing game. The Canes won that battle. Coach Lance Guidry spoke to the media about the defense’s performance:
On the defense’s performance against Florida: I thought they were really focused. They knew the types of things they had to defend. Going in, we were really worried about crossing routes, the deep overs. That was [Mertz’s] favorite throw, so we spent a lot of time for about three weeks working on that. The free safety coming out of the post and really jumping the crosser and the corner climbing, and it probably happened twice in the game. Meesh picked one of them right by the goal line, and the other time it was a sack. So I thought they played well.
On the defensive backs: OJ competed really hard. I was laughing. OJ, on that first motion that went across the field, he completed a bootleg, and he knew what he had to do. He said his legs wouldn't move. So we laughed, but we settled him down. But I thought Porter played well. Everybody on the back end, they challenged us early. Brown broke up a ball deep. And then Richard broke one up deep, and I think it kind of broke their confidence of going down field a lot and start trying to run the ball and do other things, kind of played into our hands.
On the depth of the defensive line: We just kept rolling different guys in there. We played different guys at the tackle position. We were able to play five defensive ends, which was good. We rolled Mesidor inside as well, so we stayed fresh.
I thought it helped us in the second half. I do think that's the strength of our defense. And if we can continue to play a lot of people, I think we'll be able to play a little bit more as we go and get more guys experience. That'd be good, because it really helps on the back end with us being a little slight.
On Meesh Powell: He's got a demeanor a lot like Cam has. He calms the storm back there. He's vocal. He knows a lot of football. Of course, it's the first year in this scheme, but it’s also Cam's. Just a guy back there that's played a lot of football, played in a lot of big games. He's helping lead that secondary and just a solid performance by him. I wish he could have goten in the end zone on theinterception, but really solid play by him.
On Jaden Harris: He played really, really fast. He played the way we thought he could with his skill set. He's a confident guy, and he had a lot of confidence going into the game. He got a partial sack, I guess I'd call it, but he missed the interception. He could've ended up with two, but just played really fast back there.
Even on that long run, it wasn't really his fault. It was a busted blitz by the linebacker, and he couldn't make him right. He was supposed to cover the tight end, so everybody thinks it was his fault, but it really wasn't. It was a structure of a blitz pattern that didn't get done, so he played great.
On the 71-yard TD: They didn't really earn it. We gave it to them because we didn't run a defense right. We were supposed to be blitzing off the edge of that tight end, and we didn't get it done. We didn't have the edge to the defense.
The kids really weren’t that shook up because they felt like they didn't earn it. We gave it to them. We settled them down at halftime. At halftime, always coming out, our goal is to get a third quarter shutout. We feel like if we get a third quarter shutout, if we're out of the game, we can get back in. Or if we're ahead of the game, we feel like we'll increase the lead, and that's exactly what happened. We came out of the locker room, had a third quarter shutout, and set the tone for the rest of the way.
On the post-game video where he says he’s used to killing gators: (Laughs) That wasn’t even me, that was an imposter. I never killed a gator in my life. I watch a lot of small people just like y’all.
On PFF’s poor grades for the defensive backs: They have no idea what we're doing on defense. None. They might have given Jaden a minus on that long run, when he was covering a guy, man to man. We should have blitzed off the outside. They don't know what the scheme is. They're just trying to guess if they played it right.
I thought we played exceptional. How many yards did they have passing the football? A hundred and what? Low hundreds. If you keep somebody at low hundreds, in modern-day football, [that’s good.]. They had 263 total offense, and 70-something came off of one play. I think we played pretty good. There's room for improvement, sure, we're gonna have to improve throughout the year, but I was really happy with the first game.
On what it means to have your offense performing at a high level: They don't panic, because they know what our offense can do. They know who's behind that center. It also takes a lot off of my plate.
Sometimes when you play across an offense that's sputtering a little bit, you feel like you can't make a mistake on defense. We don't feel like that. Not to say that we don't want to be perfect, but we have a lot of faith in our offensive personnel and our play caller. We've got good backs, we've got a good offensive line, we've got good wideouts, tight ends, quarterback’s exceptional, and Coach Dawson's called a lot of football games. So we feel really good on defense that we have a good offense on the other side.
On the value of having season film vs. preparing for Game 1: It's give and take, because you really don't know what the other side's thinking. A lot of people try to copy what other people do. A lot of guys change up and they hold things back for certain offenses, certain defenses. You really don't know from week to week. The worst thing you can do is have a lot of film on somebody and practice on everything and you don't get good at anything.
Last week going against Florida, we took their five to top seven plays that showed up in every game, a reverse, the crossing routes, tailback screen and just certain things. Within the first 10 plays, probably four or five of them showed up. That was good.
But it's hard sometimes. You’ve just got to train your guys to play with clean eyes. What we did the best defensively is play good situational football. We were really good on third down and when we got certain areas of the field. We sniffed out a lot of stuff that they were doing, a lot of trick stuff, so I thought that was good. I thought we played clean football.
On improving the tackling: Each year is a new year. We've got new guys trying to make tackles in space. I thought we played extremely hard. Even when somebody missed a guy, it seemed like it was 2-3 more there.
It's the way you practice. It's how fast you go at practice, how quick you rep plays, and get a lot in, because you cannot practice live tackling unless you live tackle. We only tackled against our offense two scrimmages. The first one, we were god-awful. The second one, we were okay. We tackled our best in the game the other day, and we hadn't tackled probably two weeks out.
But our scout team gave us a really good look, and we just ran a bunch of plays as fast as we could, and our kids played with a lot of confidence. I didn't make a lot of calls on defense, so it wasn't like an extreme big game plan, so that they could just play fast and free. We tried to recognize plays that they were running that we'd seen before.
On FAMU: Game two, you just want to get better than you were before. The opponent doesn't matter. I'm an FCS guy, and I've been on the other side of the coin where I've gone into venues that were a lot bigger, and our kids played their butts off. We've beaten some big teams before when I was at FCS. Being at a Power Five school now, to me, it's just all the same. Everybody’s got 11 players on the field. They got 11 players, and you're gonna need to go out and try and play the best that you can. Just get better every week.
On the new communications system: It kind of went out a little bit at times. D-Nick couldn't talk to the linebackers when we had to signal it in. So I called it through the headset. A lot of times, Coach Nicholson, he's the one talking to the linebackers, giving them a call, just some reminders. But there were times in the game, probably about 15 to 20% of the time, they couldn't hear for whatever reason. So we had to signal it in. But for the most part, it's a lot better than signaling the whole thing. I thought it was pretty clean on our end. It's a lot worse at practice. It's a lot louder at practice, what we did in the indoor facility. So for the most part, I thought it was good.
On FAMU’s quarterback: A lot of the plays they’ll run this week are like the ones last week, just looking at them. [QB Daniel Richardson] is a competitive son of a gun. He makes their offense go. He’s got good tight ends. And he’s got a couple wide receivers that are going to cause a bit of a problem. We're going to have to do what we did last week and try to beat him at the line scrimmage and just play with great eyes, because I'm sure they have a lot of different things, different tricks they'll try to do on us.
On defensive depth with Bain and Brown out: It’s always been a mentality. It's just 11 guys out there playing as one. Try to mix as many people up at practice as you can, playing with each other. As a coach, you hate to lose your good ones like that in the game. But the next guy got up there and played, and you just kind of get over it.
It's kind of like being a high school football coach, and all those seniors walk out the door, and you're left with the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. They’ve got to step up, and you don't know how you're going to do it. But somehow, some way, somebody steps up. That's how it happened the other day.
We know we have a lot of depth at defensive line, but secondary, it was kind of scary. When Brown went down, because then you say, “OK, well, what if Porter goes down? Who's going to play Nickel?” We’re running out of corners. So it's just that whole deal.
On Akheem Mesidor: He played hard. He played good. I'm sure he thinks he could play better. But I mean, it's been a long time since he's played football. He played some inside, played some outside. But I think you'll see him get better through the next probably two, three games to where he'll be back in stride. He looked a little tired at there at times, but he's been limited at practice. He hasn't practiced whole practices, so he's really not in total game shape yet.
On Tyler Baron: He made a bunch of good plays. He made a good play on the quarterback. Of course, when he tried to pull it, he hit the quarterback like three times, had a big hit on the interception that Meesh got. Real instinctive player, but probably the most impressive play was him trying to run down the running back. He was chasing, couldn't catch him, but he made a swipe at him.
And that's what winning football is about. Because if he makes that stop right there, we hold them to a field goal. You never know how that goes. So I was really proud of how hard he played. He's going to have a good year.
On Chase Smith: Chase is getting a lot better, man. Chase has played some good, meaningful snaps. He's going to get better through the course of the year. It seems like he's getting further and further away from that knee injury. So he’s playing with a lot of confidence. Happy for him. He's had a long road and it's time for that pay off.
On the defense’s performance against Florida: I thought they were really focused. They knew the types of things they had to defend. Going in, we were really worried about crossing routes, the deep overs. That was [Mertz’s] favorite throw, so we spent a lot of time for about three weeks working on that. The free safety coming out of the post and really jumping the crosser and the corner climbing, and it probably happened twice in the game. Meesh picked one of them right by the goal line, and the other time it was a sack. So I thought they played well.
On the defensive backs: OJ competed really hard. I was laughing. OJ, on that first motion that went across the field, he completed a bootleg, and he knew what he had to do. He said his legs wouldn't move. So we laughed, but we settled him down. But I thought Porter played well. Everybody on the back end, they challenged us early. Brown broke up a ball deep. And then Richard broke one up deep, and I think it kind of broke their confidence of going down field a lot and start trying to run the ball and do other things, kind of played into our hands.
On the depth of the defensive line: We just kept rolling different guys in there. We played different guys at the tackle position. We were able to play five defensive ends, which was good. We rolled Mesidor inside as well, so we stayed fresh.
I thought it helped us in the second half. I do think that's the strength of our defense. And if we can continue to play a lot of people, I think we'll be able to play a little bit more as we go and get more guys experience. That'd be good, because it really helps on the back end with us being a little slight.
On Meesh Powell: He's got a demeanor a lot like Cam has. He calms the storm back there. He's vocal. He knows a lot of football. Of course, it's the first year in this scheme, but it’s also Cam's. Just a guy back there that's played a lot of football, played in a lot of big games. He's helping lead that secondary and just a solid performance by him. I wish he could have goten in the end zone on theinterception, but really solid play by him.
On Jaden Harris: He played really, really fast. He played the way we thought he could with his skill set. He's a confident guy, and he had a lot of confidence going into the game. He got a partial sack, I guess I'd call it, but he missed the interception. He could've ended up with two, but just played really fast back there.
Even on that long run, it wasn't really his fault. It was a busted blitz by the linebacker, and he couldn't make him right. He was supposed to cover the tight end, so everybody thinks it was his fault, but it really wasn't. It was a structure of a blitz pattern that didn't get done, so he played great.
On the 71-yard TD: They didn't really earn it. We gave it to them because we didn't run a defense right. We were supposed to be blitzing off the edge of that tight end, and we didn't get it done. We didn't have the edge to the defense.
The kids really weren’t that shook up because they felt like they didn't earn it. We gave it to them. We settled them down at halftime. At halftime, always coming out, our goal is to get a third quarter shutout. We feel like if we get a third quarter shutout, if we're out of the game, we can get back in. Or if we're ahead of the game, we feel like we'll increase the lead, and that's exactly what happened. We came out of the locker room, had a third quarter shutout, and set the tone for the rest of the way.
On the post-game video where he says he’s used to killing gators: (Laughs) That wasn’t even me, that was an imposter. I never killed a gator in my life. I watch a lot of small people just like y’all.
On PFF’s poor grades for the defensive backs: They have no idea what we're doing on defense. None. They might have given Jaden a minus on that long run, when he was covering a guy, man to man. We should have blitzed off the outside. They don't know what the scheme is. They're just trying to guess if they played it right.
I thought we played exceptional. How many yards did they have passing the football? A hundred and what? Low hundreds. If you keep somebody at low hundreds, in modern-day football, [that’s good.]. They had 263 total offense, and 70-something came off of one play. I think we played pretty good. There's room for improvement, sure, we're gonna have to improve throughout the year, but I was really happy with the first game.
On what it means to have your offense performing at a high level: They don't panic, because they know what our offense can do. They know who's behind that center. It also takes a lot off of my plate.
Sometimes when you play across an offense that's sputtering a little bit, you feel like you can't make a mistake on defense. We don't feel like that. Not to say that we don't want to be perfect, but we have a lot of faith in our offensive personnel and our play caller. We've got good backs, we've got a good offensive line, we've got good wideouts, tight ends, quarterback’s exceptional, and Coach Dawson's called a lot of football games. So we feel really good on defense that we have a good offense on the other side.
On the value of having season film vs. preparing for Game 1: It's give and take, because you really don't know what the other side's thinking. A lot of people try to copy what other people do. A lot of guys change up and they hold things back for certain offenses, certain defenses. You really don't know from week to week. The worst thing you can do is have a lot of film on somebody and practice on everything and you don't get good at anything.
Last week going against Florida, we took their five to top seven plays that showed up in every game, a reverse, the crossing routes, tailback screen and just certain things. Within the first 10 plays, probably four or five of them showed up. That was good.
But it's hard sometimes. You’ve just got to train your guys to play with clean eyes. What we did the best defensively is play good situational football. We were really good on third down and when we got certain areas of the field. We sniffed out a lot of stuff that they were doing, a lot of trick stuff, so I thought that was good. I thought we played clean football.
On improving the tackling: Each year is a new year. We've got new guys trying to make tackles in space. I thought we played extremely hard. Even when somebody missed a guy, it seemed like it was 2-3 more there.
It's the way you practice. It's how fast you go at practice, how quick you rep plays, and get a lot in, because you cannot practice live tackling unless you live tackle. We only tackled against our offense two scrimmages. The first one, we were god-awful. The second one, we were okay. We tackled our best in the game the other day, and we hadn't tackled probably two weeks out.
But our scout team gave us a really good look, and we just ran a bunch of plays as fast as we could, and our kids played with a lot of confidence. I didn't make a lot of calls on defense, so it wasn't like an extreme big game plan, so that they could just play fast and free. We tried to recognize plays that they were running that we'd seen before.
On FAMU: Game two, you just want to get better than you were before. The opponent doesn't matter. I'm an FCS guy, and I've been on the other side of the coin where I've gone into venues that were a lot bigger, and our kids played their butts off. We've beaten some big teams before when I was at FCS. Being at a Power Five school now, to me, it's just all the same. Everybody’s got 11 players on the field. They got 11 players, and you're gonna need to go out and try and play the best that you can. Just get better every week.
On the new communications system: It kind of went out a little bit at times. D-Nick couldn't talk to the linebackers when we had to signal it in. So I called it through the headset. A lot of times, Coach Nicholson, he's the one talking to the linebackers, giving them a call, just some reminders. But there were times in the game, probably about 15 to 20% of the time, they couldn't hear for whatever reason. So we had to signal it in. But for the most part, it's a lot better than signaling the whole thing. I thought it was pretty clean on our end. It's a lot worse at practice. It's a lot louder at practice, what we did in the indoor facility. So for the most part, I thought it was good.
On FAMU’s quarterback: A lot of the plays they’ll run this week are like the ones last week, just looking at them. [QB Daniel Richardson] is a competitive son of a gun. He makes their offense go. He’s got good tight ends. And he’s got a couple wide receivers that are going to cause a bit of a problem. We're going to have to do what we did last week and try to beat him at the line scrimmage and just play with great eyes, because I'm sure they have a lot of different things, different tricks they'll try to do on us.
On defensive depth with Bain and Brown out: It’s always been a mentality. It's just 11 guys out there playing as one. Try to mix as many people up at practice as you can, playing with each other. As a coach, you hate to lose your good ones like that in the game. But the next guy got up there and played, and you just kind of get over it.
It's kind of like being a high school football coach, and all those seniors walk out the door, and you're left with the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen. They’ve got to step up, and you don't know how you're going to do it. But somehow, some way, somebody steps up. That's how it happened the other day.
We know we have a lot of depth at defensive line, but secondary, it was kind of scary. When Brown went down, because then you say, “OK, well, what if Porter goes down? Who's going to play Nickel?” We’re running out of corners. So it's just that whole deal.
On Akheem Mesidor: He played hard. He played good. I'm sure he thinks he could play better. But I mean, it's been a long time since he's played football. He played some inside, played some outside. But I think you'll see him get better through the next probably two, three games to where he'll be back in stride. He looked a little tired at there at times, but he's been limited at practice. He hasn't practiced whole practices, so he's really not in total game shape yet.
On Tyler Baron: He made a bunch of good plays. He made a good play on the quarterback. Of course, when he tried to pull it, he hit the quarterback like three times, had a big hit on the interception that Meesh got. Real instinctive player, but probably the most impressive play was him trying to run down the running back. He was chasing, couldn't catch him, but he made a swipe at him.
And that's what winning football is about. Because if he makes that stop right there, we hold them to a field goal. You never know how that goes. So I was really proud of how hard he played. He's going to have a good year.
On Chase Smith: Chase is getting a lot better, man. Chase has played some good, meaningful snaps. He's going to get better through the course of the year. It seems like he's getting further and further away from that knee injury. So he’s playing with a lot of confidence. Happy for him. He's had a long road and it's time for that pay off.
