Canes Camp Report: Aug. 14

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – The Hurricanes were back in action Friday evening, although instead of working on Greentree on this particular day, the team headed north to Hard Rock Stadium for their first scrimmage of preseason camp.

After the scrimmage, head coach Mario Cristobal shared his thoughts on the workout with radio analyst Don Bailey Jr.

Here’s what he had to say as Miami moves another step closer to its Sept. 4 season opener at Stanford.

On how he felt the team performed in Friday night’s scrimmage at Hard Rock Stadium:

“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.

“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.

“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.”

On what it meant to be able to get quality special teams play on film in the scrimmage:

“We have a lot. We probably logged in 30-some odd plays of special teams today. Had the kickers kick from all kinds of distances, tougher situations: red zone, two-minute, put a lot of pressure on them to see how they performed. They did a good job.”