Hurricanes end regular season with high-stakes matchup: ‘We’ve got to handle Syracuse’
It all comes down to this for the Miami Hurricanes.
One final game, one final opportunity with everything in front of them and everything on the line.
The No. 6 Hurricanes (10-1, 6-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) wrap up their regular-season schedule on Saturday with a 3:30 p.m. road game at Syracuse (8-3, 4-3 ACC), with the game broadcast on ESPN.
And the stakes are high.
If Miami wins in its first game at the JMA Wireless Dome (formerly known as the Carrier Dome) since 2002, it will advance to the ACC Championship Game on Dec. 7 to face the SMU Mustangs. The winner of that game will get an automatic bid into the 12-team College Football Playoff.
If the Hurricanes lose, then they will be holding their breath and hoping to sneak into the field as an at-large team.
“We’re just excited to get a chance to be in the talks of even reaching that point,” fifth-year offensive lineman Jalen Rivers said. “But first, we’ve got to handle Syracuse.”
And that won’t be an easy task, even if the Hurricanes are 10-and-a-half point favorites.
This game has shootout written all over it, with the nation’s leaders in passing yards on either team.
Syracuse’s Cam McCord leads the country in passing yards (3,946), pass completions (341) and pass attempts (522). Miami’s Cam Ward, a Heisman Trophy contender and finalist for the Davey O’Brien National Quarterback Award and the Walter Camp Player of the Year Award, leads the country in touchdown passes (34) is second in passing yards (3,774) despite having 123 fewer pass attempts and 73 fewer completions.
Ward, however, said his focus isn’t on who’s throwing passes for the other team and how that matchup will shake out.
“I don’t have time to watch other quarterbacks,” Ward said. “I watched a couple of his [games] because we would play similar teams, so [I would watch] the defense. But I’m not taking time out of my day to watch him right now. He’s doing good, though. He’s top-five in the country, so he’s balling right now, for sure. But I’m not watching his tape.”
His focus, instead, has been on how he can succeed against a Syracuse defense that has allowed an average of 357.5 and 27.9 points per game.
“They do a lot of different things,” Ward said. “Earlier in the season, they would do some three-down [defensive linemen]. The past couple of games, they’ve been four-down. They do a lot of different looks, coverage-wise, within their fronts. … They probably have some guys back who were hurt in previous games. We’re just going to be prepared for what they do. Got to be able to see space and take advantage of leverage.”
Defensively, Miami has to build on its performance last weekend against Wake Forest when it held the Demon Deacons to just 193 yards, had a pick-six and logged five sacks.
Syracuse will be a much bigger challenge, but the performance last week gave the defense a needed confidence boost.
McCord has a slew of options in the passing game to throw to, but tight end Oronde Gadsden II, a Plantation American Heritage alumnus and the son of former Miami Dolphin Oronde Gadsden, leads the way with 65 catches for 810 yards and five touchdowns.
Junior running back LeQuint Allen adds another dimension on the ground as well, rushing for 819 rushing yards and 12 touchdowns so far this season.
“Syracuse shows a lot on film,” linebacker Francisco Mauigoa said. “They’ve got a really good quarterback with a good core of receivers. ... For us, it’s a big challenge. We’re ready for it.”
And the Hurricanes also need to make sure they don’t let the pressure get to them. There’s a fine line between being fired up for a game with so much on the line and letting that fire impact how they play.
That has been seen across the college football landscape lately.
During the past two weeks, nine teams that were in the top 25 of the College Football Playoff ranking lost to unranked opponents.
It’s a reminder that teams can’t think ahead to what might happen. They have to focus on the present and win their games in front of them.
That’s a message Mario Cristobal has been preaching to his team all season — the “1-0 mentality” that he has been striving for the Hurricanes to prioritize on their way to a potential ACC Championship Game or playoff appearance.
“The college football landscape has helped us with that because every week you watch somebody focusing on the big picture and stumbling,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said. “When’s the last time you’ve seen so many top-25 teams, just week by week by week, succumb to whatever, be it media pressure, program expectations or whatnot? Our process has been really good for us. Our guys believe it. They regurgitate it. They flat-out speak it and live it before we even get to them.”
And it brings them to Saturday, where all the attention has to be on the task at hand.
“This is Miami vs. Syracuse,” Cristobal said, “and the most important game of the year.”
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