US LBM Coaches Poll: Georgia Remains Firm Leader in Nation
Paul Myerberg discusses the latest LBM USA Coaches Poll and how Georgia continues to be the best in college football.
There’s a game broken, and then there’s what No. 17 Miami did Saturday night.
Miami had the ball at Georgia Tech’s 30-yard line and led 20-17 with just under 40 seconds left – and the Yellow Jackets ran out of timeouts. Conventional wisdom predicts the Hurricanes will take a knee and advance to 5-0.
Instead, the Hurricanes ran the ball. Just before he went down, Donald Chaney Jr. lost the ball and Georgia Tech recovered, giving the Yellow Jackets a chance with 26 seconds left.
On the second play of the drive, Haynes found King Malik Rutherford for a 30-yard pass that took the ball to the Miami 44-yard line with 15 seconds left. The next play was an incomplete pass, leaving Georgia Tech with only one play left to get into the end zone. Then King crawled out of the pocket and threw a rainbow throw to Christian Leary, who caught it at the 6-yard line and carried it into the end zone to give Georgia Tech a commanding 23-20 lead with one second left, one end must see to believe.
The Hurricanes were able to make one last play, which was an unsuccessful sideline save that resulted in Miami’s first loss of the season with a questionable ending.
Miami’s head coach admits the team should have taken a knee
After the game, Miami head coach Mario Cristobal admitted he made a mistake.
“We should have taken a knee,” Cristobal told reporters after the game.
The second-year Hurricanes coach added that he should have called a timeout before the fumble.
“I thought we got the first down and we talked about two hands on the ball, but that’s not good enough. I should have just told him to get on his knees. That’s it. Fumbled the ball at the 25 and they went 75 yards in two plays. No excuses, Cristobal said.
The loss in Miami wasn’t the first time Mario Cristobal’s team fell short
The questionable decision not to take a knee is nothing new for Cristobal, as he lost a game that exact way when he was coach at Oregon.
In 2018, Oregon was 3-0 and up 31-28 against Stanford with under a minute to play. The Cardinal only had one timeout left, and instead of taking the knee to bleed out the clock, the Ducks ran the ball, resulting in a fumble that Stanford recovered with 51 seconds left. Stanford was able to kick the game-winning field goal to send it into overtime and later won 38-31 in overtime.