“An opportunity to prove themselves.…”

August 16, 2026 -

Miami head football coach Mario Cristobal and his staff have completed about half of fall camp, capped by the first fall scrimmage on Friday.

Coach Cristobal met briefly with the media after the scrimmage at Hard Rock Stadium. He reflected on the team’s performance and progress during the scrimmage Friday.

On the team’s performance at Friday night’s scrimmage…

“Back and forth … I thought there were some explosive plays and then some other plays where the defenses got after their butts. And then I saw it flip around the other way, too, in certain parts of the field and that’s what we were hoping for. We’re hoping for max effort, for physicality, and exchanging blows and then we felt like we saw that today.”

On the level of competition…

“We put a lot of guys in situations, some young guys, guys that haven’t gone with the ones yet, and gave them an opportunity to prove themselves. So, we’re going to watch film and see where that’s at.”

On the team’s health and and physicality…

“Looks like we came out relatively clean from an injury standpoint and we reminded the players, [it’s] tackle football, right? You have to block and tackle and certainly we don’ t ever want to get anybody hurt, but we have to play and we have to play hard and we have to practice physical.”

BOTTOM LINE:

With about two weeks until our Canes travel to Stanford for the opening game of the season, position battles are still raging. Coach wants no complacency to set in.

GO CANES!