No comeback this time as No. 4 Hurricanes fall to Georgia Tech for first loss of season
The Miami Hurricanes have been in this position before. Too many times for their liking.
But their offense, which has been the best in the country all season, had the ball in its hands and a little under two minutes left for one final scoring drive.
More often than not, Miami likes its chances in that scenario.
It didn’t work out this time. The latest round of magic, the latest wild comeback, was not there.
Quarterback Cam Ward evaded pressure, then tried to evade some more, then ultimately fumbled the ball. Georgia Tech’s Jordan Van Den Berg scooped it up.
And with that, the Hurricanes’ undefeated run came to an end, with Georgia Tech sealing the 28-23 upset over No. 4 Miami on Saturday at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
Yellow Jackets fans stormed the field. The Hurricanes walked off dejected.
“We’ve got to own it,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “Got to own every bit of it, all of us. In this profession, when you take one on the chin like that, you’ve got to be a grown man. You’ve got to own it. There’s no finger pointing — and by that starting, of course, with myself and every coach on the staff and every player. You just own it, and you don’t talk about it very much. You just go do something about it. We have a bye week with everything in front of us to play for, to do something about it, and to make sure that as sick as everyone’s feeling, that I hope we all feel sick to the point where it drives us to be better, because certainly that was not our best football.”
As Cristobal alluded to, the Hurricanes’ season is not completely lost just because of its first defeat. Miami still has a path to the ACC Championship Game and, with that, the College Football Playoff.
But the Hurricanes — the Cardiac Canes, if you will — have been playing with fire like this throughout their Atlantic Coast Conference slate.
A prolific offense led by a Heisman Trophy frontrunner quarterback has masked the deficiencies of a subpar defense. No deficit has seemed to be too much to overcome.
It finally caught up to them on Saturday.
Miami (9-1, 5-1 ACC) entered halftime trailing Georgia Tech 14-10 and then went down by 11 when the Yellow Jackets (6-4, 4-3 ACC) scored on their opening drive of the second half.
It was familiar territory for Miami. Saturday marked the fourth time in six ACC games that the Hurricanes were behind at the half and trailed by double digits at some point in the second half.
They had no problem overcoming the deficits the first three times.
Down by seven at the half and by 10 on multiple occasions against Virginia Tech? A 38-34 win.
Down by 11 at the half and by as many as 25 against Cal? A 39-38 win.
A four-point deficit at halftime and down by 11 early in the third quarter against Duke? A 53-31 win.
On Saturday? Not so much.
The Hurricanes had no answer for Georgia Tech’s potent running game. The Yellow Jackets gashed Miami for 271 yards on the ground — the most Miami has allowed in a game since giving up a school-record 554 rushing yards on Dec. 12, 2020, against North Carolina. Miami knew Georgia Tech was going to be run-heavy, considering starting quarterback Haynes King was limited.
They still couldn’t stop it, nor could they stop the few timely passes Georgia Tech did need to make.
The biggest of them all came on the first play of the fourth quarter. Miami, down 21-16 at that point, had forced Georgia Tech into a third-and-18 at the Miami 45-yard line. True freshman Aaron Philo, who rotated at quarterback with King, moved the chains on a 27-yard pass to a wide-open Bailey Stockton. King scored on a 5-yard rushing touchdown to plays later for what ultimately became the game-winning score.
Georgia Tech went 9 for 14 on third down overall on Saturday against Miami, who entered the game with the 12th-best third-down defense in the country.
“They had a great scheme and great players,” Miami linebacker Jaylin Alderman said, “but I feel like we have to do a better job of executing the calls that [defensive coordinator Lance] Guidry gives us and just continue to be better and get off the field on third down.”
Miami’s offense, meanwhile, was pedestrian until it was too late. Ward had a 74-yard touchdown pass to Elijah Arroyo on Miami’s second play from scrimmage and then led a field goal drive to give Miami a 10-7 lead midway through the first quarter. The touchdown pass to Arroyo was Ward’s 30th of the season, which broke Steve Walsh’s single-season school record set in the 1988 season.
But UM failed to put up points on its next four drives, punting twice and failing to convert on a pair of fourth-down attempts on the other two drives as Georgia Tech built its lead to 21-10.
Miami got the deficit down to one score twice — first 21-16 with 2:43 left in the third quarter on an 8-yard pass from Ward to Isaiah Horton (followed by a failed two-point conversion), then 28-23 with 6:07 left on a 38-yard touchdown pass from Ward to Xavier Restrepo. The Hurricanes’ defense then forced a needed stop to give the offense one final chance to complete the rally.
But for the first time this season, Miami couldn’t seal the comeback.
“It hurts,” Ward said, “but all you can do is play the next game. Can’t go back into it and try to relive that moment. If we get the opportunity again, I’m sure it go a different way. So, you know, you just watch the tape. Get get ready for it.
This story was originally published November 9, 2024 at 3:42 PM.
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