Head Coach: Mario Cristobal is entering his 4th season with the Hurricanes with a 22-16 record. His first two seasons were struggles but he finally had his breakthrough with a 10 win season last year. Last season felt both like a success and failure, this 10 win season was only their 2nd one in the last 2 decades but they also had a playoff spot in front of them entering the last week of the season and lost in agonizing fashion. Has he already hit his ceiling? Or is it just the beginning?
Program Outlook: The Hurricanes have been in an interesting position for some time now. It felt like they went through a period where they didn’t prioritize athletics as much for academics and now in the NIL era they are throwing money everywhere. The money gives them unlimited potential, but can they capitalize on that?
How does the 2025 Roster look?: Miami FL is another team that utilizes the portal a lot so most metrics are split on where their returning production ranks but they are 52nd in the country returning 58.5% of their production per Punt and Rally’s returning production rankings and there’s a lot of big departures. Cam Ward went on to be the 1st overall pick in the NFL draft and the Canes also lost their top 2 RBs and top 4 receivers. It’s a full reset. Key player & positions for the Canes include Georgia transfer Carson Beck, a strong talented Oline and a deep athletic linebacker core. Beck will be critical for the Canes but how far can he take them? His transfer received a lot of big media hype but honestly he appears to be a significant downgrade from Ward. There’s a lot of variability here because it’s a full on youth movement at other positions, but that’s not always bad especially because of how talented these young players are and the secondary in particular struggled so badly last year that a youth movement is likely addition by subtraction.
Screenshot from FBSchedules.com
2025 Schedule Thoughts: This is a challenging schedule but it’s also definitely not the worst. Opening with Notre Dame will be tough, and Florida will be looking for revenge after the beat down the Hurricanes put on them last year. South Florida is another decent challenge, the Bulls hung with the Canes for a half last year before their QB got hurt. I’m glad to see such an in-state presence with the schedule as they will face Bethune-Cookman as well, BCU is really struggling to put things together so that one won’t be competitive on the field unfortunately. The Hurricanes get one easy ACC opponent in Stanford and it’s really up in the air to see how good the other teams on their schedule will be I expect some challenges and facing SMU on the road will be tough. The part I like the most is that the Hurricanes avoid Clemson, but that late season stretch of two road games in potentially cold environments is a danger spot for me. Overall if the young players step up this isn’t a schedule that will stop the Hurricanes from reaching the playoff but it’s just tough enough that any regression at key positions will see some additional losses.
Final Thoughts: Miami FL will be an intriguing team to monitor once again, they absolutely have the upside to reach the College Football Playoff but what concerns me is they had an older talented group last season and needed a lot of close wins to reach 10 wins. Now what happens when they saw a downgrade at QB, a youth movement around him but a defense that almost certainly will be better? My early prediction is for the Hurricanes to fall short of playoff contention and finish with 3-4 losses.
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