Miami at Florida Game Preview: Josh Pate says Cam Ward has 'as good a skillset' as any Miami QB

Welcome back to the college football pregame show here on CBS sports HQ. Last season Josh Pate invited us to join him at a new college football stadium each and every week, the Once Upon a Saturday tour. Well, this year, Josh is back on the road and it's the whole new Saturday tour powered by QuikTrip. Josh is giving away tanks of gas all season long, and this week he is there for the pressure Bowl in Gainesville, Florida between 19 Miami and the Florida Gators. Josh always good to see you. First let's get a vibe check here. How are things in Gainesville. What's the mood here as we get this all Florida rivalry going. It's nice. Jeremy, as you notice, the sun is not beating down on the forehead yet. No sweat stains, nothing going on yet. It will change and it will change drastically and rapidly as we head outside. The swamp is about two blocks away from where we are right now. The vibe is. I think people around here have a pretty firm grasp on the outside expectations. I think they have a healthy concern internally about the expectation this year. A lot of that with Florida is married to the schedule. I think a lot of folks around here want to detach themselves from the schedule, and today they play an opponent they think they should beat. Miami's a slight favorite in here. They don't care. This is an opponent that's not Georgia. This is an opponent that's not Texas or Alabama. They think they should beat Miami. And so I think they view today as much as anything. The rest of this way is a good barometer of whether Billy Napier and this staff and this program are right when they talk about how far they've come, because that that schedule you're looking at is daunting. But you only play one game per Saturday. That's what they said in the spring, repeatedly when we were here. And they also said everyone on that schedule has to play us as well. So the fan base wants to know is there is there bite behind that bark? Well, and that's the key, right. With this whole Florida team, the infrastructure, that's the one thing that Billy Napier has talked about is the fact that when he came in he had to change the infrastructure. Well, now the infrastructure has been changed. Now they need those results on the field. So let's talk about some keys to this game. Josh, you wanted to talk about O-line play here for Florida. Why could this be a big thing to watch today. Well it's probably the best pass rush you'll see all year. And unfortunately they draw it out of the gate and they draw it at a time where if you followed our folks over at swamp 24 seven, if you follow practice reports, if you pay attention to the drumbeat and the rumblings out of fall camp offensive line was one of the biggest concerns. I don't ever go as far as to say weakness. There's a big difference in a question mark and a weakness, but if it is a weakness, we'll see it on full display today, because even with the crowd noise, not at Miami's back that match up, especially the recruiting, and then topped with the guys that Mario and his staff went and got out of the portal is one of the best looking pass rushes and one of the best two deeps that Florida will face all year, and that includes that entire rest of the schedule. You see there. So there's a lot of talk about Graham Mertz being back at quarterback. There's a lot of talk about the talent they have out wide. Even their talent. They have stacked up in the backfield. There's a good tailback rotation here, but all of that is rendered totally moot if you get caved at the line of scrimmage all day. Everything. I guarantee you there's nothing in this game plan that works that conditions for offensive line being blown up all afternoon. So that's the first thing. Everything else that we're about to talk about is rendered moot. If that's a minus sign on the Florida checklist, you talk about the players that Mario Cristobal has been able to bring in. One of those is a quarterback in cam Ward. He's the best quarterback that Miami has had in a while, and he knows it. But he also knows that lofty expectations come with it. This isn't just another school. This is the University of Miami. The U. Every year we talk about these legendary Miami teams. So how does cam Ward handle the moment today? Josh million dollar question. Probably about a $2.3 million question. Actually if you read between the lines there, I think that he has as good a skill set. I'll put it that way. As they've had at quarterback here. I can't keep I can't keep from having that thought come in the back of my head that not everything is perfect in college football. Right out of the gate. I think this is a really, really tough place for them to debut this offense with him. I mean, Shannon Dawson, the offensive coordinator there, they've got a lot of confidence. They got a lot of confidence in the pieces they have around him. They think they've got the best offensive line in the ACC all that may end up being true, Jeremy, but as Meemaw once told both of us, what is in week seven is not always in week one. And so there's a scenario where everything we're hearing about them is true. And yet they've got three points on the board with five minutes to go into the half today. And they've had trouble with center to quarterback exchange. And they've had two false starts. And everything looks in disarray. And that's not an indication that everything you heard from camp was a lie. That's an indication that 93,000 people and the other guy wanting to win, too, and having real good, talented players too, can make it really tough on you. And so I think the outside the outside world looks at this if Miami wins it and they'll say, who cares, it's Florida. No big deal. It's a huge deal. It's a huge deal because Florida is not an eight loss team right now. Even if you expect them to be Florida's undefeated and they think like an undefeated team. And this place will sound like their team is undefeated. So it is a task. It is a chore to go in here with a bunch of new pieces today and try to just just function like that. This is not Xbox. This is real life. That's not the way it works. The best part about week one is that every team is undefeated except for Florida State, as we've let Danny know throughout the last couple hours here. And of course, throughout the week, I'm going to get put on his list if I don't watch it. Right. That's the thing. Okay, Josh Miami is loaded. Their favorite to win the ACC Florida is trying to end a five game losing streak coming into this season. Three seasons of losing football. So when you look at these two programs, which program is in the better place right now? I oh man, I feel like from an ability to perform this year, I would lean Miami. But a lot of that has to do with external factors. A lot of that just flat out has to do with scheduling here would be a fun mental exercise. If you and I could go back 3 or 4 months and let people go through the entire summer and all of preview magazine season, but flip the schedules. How differently would people be talking about Miami and how differently would people be talking about Florida? I think Florida is a lot more unknown. I think in the aggregate, this is an improved team. I was around here in the spring. They look different. It feels different. The vibe is different. In fact, you know, we go to Georgia a lot. We walk the halls at Alabama a lot. If I were to not tell you anything else and I just brought you in this building and you, you watched nutrition, strength and conditioning, you watched player personnel and recruiting staffs and the Army that those are you watched the way they go about practice. So you sit down with staffers. Sounds a lot like the big boys sound. The results don't look like the big boys results. So they're convinced that they inherited a little bigger rebuild than the outside world thought. Which means this year they're convinced that they're ready to spring a little bit of a surprise on people. I don't doubt they've improved. I wonder if the external factor of the schedule will allow us to be able to properly gauge how improved Florida is on the other side, Jeremy Miami better win double digit games because if they're serious about the progress they've made with the schedule they have, and especially if they get past today, it is game on. You're looking down the road. What are you looking at? A Virginia Tech game at home on a Friday night. You're looking at the FSU game being at home. You're looking at no Clemson. If I'm not mistaken, on the regular season schedule. So everything's there for Miami. But the difference is, I know a lot of people are talking hot seat. The difference is today, this is not equal in terms of pressure. Billy Napier has infinitely more pressure on him in this game because there's a world where Miami and Mario lose this game and go on to win the ACC, I could easily see that there is no world where Florida's not good enough to get it done. Today. They end up doing anything of note this season. Well, it's going to be there's a lot at stake for both teams and for week one. That's the incredible part about it, which makes this game so very interesting. The line here is very tight. Miami favored by less than a field goal at last check. Josh are you predicting a hurricanes win in Gainesville for the first time in a while? Or do the Gators get off to a winning start? Jeremy I went with Miami by the slimmest of margins. I went with Miami. No confidence. There will not be a dime of my own personal money bet on this game today. I do like the under grabbed it at 54.5. I do like that. I think it it could really be sloppy out of the gate and sloppy in a sense that no fireworks, each other being felt out. I just ultimately I looked at which team has the bigger game breaking potential, and I think both sides. I think getting a guy like Sammy Brown out of Houston at wide receiver, coupled with cam Ward could be the difference. With just 1 or 2 explosives. I think Miami's ability to create havoc with that front, they have even if they are vulnerable in the secondary and young, they're a little bit I'm not sure Florida has an opportunity to expose that enough today because I don't know that Graham Mertz has enough time to operate. So the swamp matters a whole lot. I just did not let it overtake what I thought would happen on a neutral. And so I went with I went with Miami. Jeremy, you hear the trepidation? You hear me stumbling over my words. I don't have a lot of confidence in this. You're going with head instead of heart, even though you're in Gainesville. Josh Pate, always great to see you, buddy. We're going to have Josh with us, of course, throughout the course of the season. Miami's last win in the swamp by the way, back in September of 2002 when he was coming off its last Natty. So keep that in mind as you make a wager today. Josh Pate is the host of Josh Pate's college Football show. You can watch it Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday at