Left tackle Jason Fox, he of 47 career starts, will miss the Champs Sports Bowl after season ending knee surgery. While Fox is not exactly 1st round draft material, he still will be drafted, and if he ends up a respectable starter in The League, perhaps like Chris Meyers, there is nothing wrong with that. This season Fox has graded out admirably.
Through 11 games, Fox graded out at 96 percent with 20 pancake blocks and 15 lumberjacks and allowed just one sack on the season. He helped Miami rack up more than 4,500 yards, which is the most since the 2004 season (4,593 yards) as the Miami offense is in line to become just the eighth team in school history to gain 5,000 yards in a season. He graded out at 95 percent or higher in 10 of the 11 games.
The stat that really hit home was this year’s offense has the most yards since the 2004 squad. As in, wait a second, Brock Berlin was the QB that year, wasn’t he horrible? Most Hurricane fans forget, or refuse to acknowledge, that Berlin was actually very good his senior season.
2003 season (Junior): 2,419 yards, 12:17 TD:INT ratio
2004 season (Senior): 2,680 yards, 22:6 TD:INT ratio
As a stand alone year, Berlin’s senior campaign is not earth shattering. Compared to his 2003 debacle, however, and you have to be impressed at his progress. I think we forget how great and efficient Berlin was in 2004 because it was the first year in the ACC, and we all expected Miami to go undefeated in conference play. In reality, it was the beginning of Larry Coker’s inability to recruit and develop players, thereby depleting the depth of the team. You can beat the Big East with no 2nd string quality, but not the ACC. Did Berlin have bad games his senior year? Of course. The de facto ACC title game at home against Va Tech when the offense laid a 10 point egg definitely comes to mind. Nonetheless, three whoosh, whoosh cheers to Brock Berlin for going unrecognized for his high quality senior year play. A halfway decent coach wins 11 games that 2004 season with an offense that played better than this year’s unit.
