As Miami was stacking wins early this season and the Hurricanes started to feel like one of the two best teams in college football, head coach Mario Cristobal never joined the hype machine.
That’s Crisotbal’s temperament as a person. Never too high. Never too low. He understands early success doesn’t make the season, especially as he guides a program that has been prone to letting its fans down during promising campaigns.
Still, this Miami team was supposed to be different. This one was supposed to be too good to be upset in the ACC, even against solid opponents.
But on Friday night, it felt the same as past Miami teams. Louisville walked into Hard Rock Stadium as a 13.5-point underdog and shocked the Hurricanes, throwing another wrench in what has already been a wild college football season.
For scarred Miami fans who weren’t ready to accept this Hurricanes team destined to make a run in the College Football Playoff, this had trap game written all over it. It didn’t matter what Miami already put on tape this year. The wins over Notre Dame, Florida and Florida State didn’t make this any less scary. You have a really good Louisville team — backed by quarterback Miller Moss and stud running back Isaac Brown — traveling in for a weird Friday night ACC matchup. The alarm bells for a trap game were going off.
Then, true to the way this sport works, Louisville proved those pessimistic Miami fans right. The Cardinals jumped out to a quick 14-point lead and never relinquished, as Miami fluttered around on offense for four quarters. Carson Beck had his worst game of the season and the Hurricanes — backed by one of the best offensive lines in the country — ran for only 63 yards.
What we thought we loved about this Miami team didn’t come to fruition. Beck struggled for the majority of the game, which was never more evident than when he threw his fourth interception of the game with 32 seconds left to seal the victory for Louisville. He was out of sync, sloppy and mistake-prone.
Even so, Miami had a chance to win. For a while, Miami looked like it was going to pull it out. After Beck’s third interception of the contest with Miami down 11 and less than eight minutes remaining, Brown fumbled the ball back to the Hurricanes deep in Louisville territory. Miami scored one play later on a 12-yard run by sensational freshman Malachi Toney, who also threw a pass for a two-point conversion to get the Hurricanes within three.
Miami got another stop and drove all the way down the field for what would have been a game-winning touchdown. Had the Hurricanes pulled that off, they would have won a hard-fought, Friday night game in the ACC. They would have been championed as resilient, a team that could overcome the worst game of the season for its quarterback and still got the win. We would have continued to view them differently.
Now we view them as the same. A promising team with big aspirations lost a game it should have won. As a result, Miami is on the outside looking in on the ACC title race. Duke and Georgia Tech — who play Saturday — have both yet to lose in conference play. Virginia is also unbeaten in ACC play. Now the Cardinals, who have one loss in league play, own any tiebreaker they may need later over the Hurricanes.
It’s disappointing. Miami felt like one of the two best teams in college football alongside Ohio State. Now the Buckeyes stand alone in a class of their own as another unbeaten time bit the dust.
Miami was supposed to have a veteran quarterback above meltdowns, a true freshman in Toney who could change a game on his young shoulders, two of the best offensive and defensive lines in the country and the best defensive game-wrecker in the sport in Ruben Bain. The Hurricanes have those pieces — though maybe less so now with Beck — but they certainly aren’t as complete as they felt Friday morning. Clearly, they are mortal. And its head coach, who has taken shots his entire career for not being able to get over the hump, is back on trial.
Miami isn’t cooked yet. This isn’t the old college football where a loss ruins a season and the ACC race is going to get weird given the Hurricanes don’t play Georgia Tech, Duke or Virginia. But the Hurricanes — who still face Stanford, SMU, Syracuse, NC State, Virginia Tech and Pitt — likely have to run the table to to make it to the ACC title game and/or College Football Playoff.
This wasn’t supposed to be this year’s Miami. This team was supposed to be too good to get exposed on a national television. But here we are again, with more of the same.
First Appeared on
Source link
