Mark D’Onofrio finally opens up

He was hired weeks ago, but out of respect to the then-current coaches, new defensive coordinator Mark D’Onofrio played background, sizing up the current talent and biding his time. On Monday the time was finally now.

Coach D’Onofrio is cut from the same cloth as head coach Al Golden, both captains and Penn State teammates two decades ago, who have since worked together in the coaching ranks. D’Onofrio was Golden’s defensive coordinator at Temple and turned down the vacant head coaching opp to follow his brother-from-another-mother to Coral Gables.

“I’ve always gone against the grain a little bit,” said D’Onofrio. “I went from Rutgers to Virginia; was a New Jersey native. I came to Temple instead of staying at Virtginia, and now I came to Miami instead of staying at Temple. I go with my heart, thought this was a great opportunity. I love working with Al, think he’s tremendous.”

Like Golden, D’Onofrio also has a vast knowledge of Hurricanes football, the program’s history and past greats.

“I know the history here, the players. I was talking with (Micheal) Barrow about a recruit, he said `He reminds me of Bill Hawkins.’ I said `No. 54?’ He looked at me, said `Yeah.’ I don’t know how many guys from Penn State know Hawkins’ number. I do.”

They may be Jersey boys and Nittany Lions, but this new Miami coaching duo seems to get ‘it’ on just about every level. Some other news and notes regarding coaches, recruiting and the current State of Miami:

Regarding the defensive scheme and the rumored 3-4 that this duo would supposedly run: “We’ve been a 4-3 base team that’s been able to get in and out of odd fronts,” said D’Onofrio.

“In college football today you’ll play spread teams, two-back teams, in our conference we play Georgia Tech and the triple option. You have to be able to move out of different fronts to defend that stuff. We have to make a system and find guys that can fill those roles. Al talked about players and not plays, and that’s really who we are. We’re evaluating personnel, recruiting to fill our needs.”

On the recruiting front, the new Miami staff has already made their presence felt in a few short weeks. Be it handwritten notes at the recent UnderArmour game, a ‘war room’ like set up regarding prospects nationwide, chasing down kids already committed (and having an impact), filling voids and impressing local coaches, Golden and crew mean business.

Many were up in arms about the decommitments of Teddy Bridgewater and Albert Jean-Louis, but those losses seem like they’ll be absorbed when it’s all said and done. Miami is turning up the heat on Dwyer’s Jacoby Brissett (head coach Jack Daniels says UM has a ‘good chance’) and is looking to sway Mainland’s Cortez Davis, a current Clemson commit who is thinking Miami, along with teammate running back Marlin Lane. (Both are four-star prospects back on the market due to coaching changes with the Tigers).

In the end if it’s a Teddy or a Jacoby … an Albert or a Cortez … fact remains that it’s still way too early in the recruiting process to start sweating commits, decommits and the fickle nature of high school athletes. Worry about the job said coaching staff is doing to scour the nation for the best talent. Worry about their ability to identify talent. Worry about their ability to develop talent.

Golden and staff aren’t leaving any stone unturned and more visits are lined up. In the end, many kids will stick with their respective verbals – but UM only needs a few defectors to round out what is expected to be smaller class. Let it play out.

For those overly concerned with the star game as part of the recruiting process, some comments from D’Onofrio regarding the talent recruited at Temple: “At Temple we had to find more diamonds in the rough. I was proud – I thought our staff did a great job evaluating players and developing players. From 2008-09 at Temple there are six players in the NFL. There will soon be another three from the 2010 team drafted. I don’t pay a lot of attention to stars, but none were higher than 2 stars and nine or 10 will be in the NFL. That’s finding guys that want to learn, work and teach them fundamentals, how to prepare, learn fundamental football.

I’m confident now being able to recruit at a higher level will pay off for us. We went from 120 at temple and got in the top 20 in 12 categories (on defense) this year. I am anxious to wear the U in some schools tomorrow and this week.”

On the fundamentals front, another D’Onofrio quote that shows there’s a new sheriff in town running the D: “Transitions are hard. I think the things that stood out to me are at the core of who we want to be defensively. At the very core we’ll play really, really hard. We’re going to finish, will knock back piles. All 11 guys better be in the frame when you freeze it. That has nothing to do with talent. we want to play harder than they did the other day.

We want to be disciplined, and we want to tackle well, tackle better than they did in the game. Those can be your philosophies, but if you don’t have a plan to execute those you’re not going to be able to get it done. Those are things we teach. Tackling – we tackle every single day. You can’t play defense if you can’t tackle well. Sometimes people get caught up in schemes. That’s where we’re going to start – clean up what we need to clean up from what I saws the other day and get into the execution of stopping the run, red zone defense and everything we have to teach.”

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