UM’s Dawson - on his game late - blames himself for a few things. And Canes news
A six-pack of Miami Hurricanes notes on a Tuesday, as they begin preparing for their quarterfinal playoff game against Ohio State on New Year’s Eve in Dallas (7:30 p.m., ESPN):
▪ UM offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson sometimes challenges reporters who question his play-calling, doing it in a prickly and pointed -- but not openly disrespectful -- manner.
On Monday, though, he was self-critical of the job he did during Saturday’s 10-3 playoff win at Texas A&M.
“I could have done better play-calling, looking back at it,” he said.
Despite a dominant day, UM running back Mark Fletcher Jr. didn’t have consecutive carries until late in the third quarter.
At halftime, Dawson said quarterback Carson Beck told him that “running right at them was a good way to attack them in the second half.”
Dawson agreed: “Ultimately, running right at them was the right way to go. We were pushing them in the middle, which was obvious. I’m not always patient. It’s easy to get impatient and start trying to throw the ball around the yard on a day it wasn’t working like that. What we had going for us, that they didn’t, is we could run the football.
“Our offensive line was the reason the game tilted; they were physical. And the wide receivers were unbelievable blocking safeties and nickels.”
He was blaming himself about two other things:
1). Even though Beck’s shovel pass to Malachi Toney for the game-winning touchdown was a perfectly timed call, Dawson said he wishes he had done more to free up Toney earlier in the game. Toney had just 31 yards from scrimmage.
“We try to find unique ways to get him involved,” Dawson said. “Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. I could have done things in the pass game to loosen him up a little bit. I could do a better job at that. We kind of threw the kitchen sink at them in a way and they played good defense.”
2). He blamed himself for UM’s one delay of game penalty. “It was my fault… We froze. I thought we got the play in quick and I looked up and was like ‘uh oh.’”
Though Dawson should have run the ball more in the first half, his early misdirection and gadget plays were effective in loosening up the A&M defense.
And Dawson nailed the final drive, with five consecutive runs by Fletcher and the shovel pass to Toney.
He said it was a “weird” game: “It was one of the windiest days in my career. The wind was swirling. It did affect the game in some ways.”
Beck thought his early incomplete deep pass to Jojo Trader would a touchdown but the wind altered its course, Dawson said.
▪ Freshman receiver Daylyn Upshaw sustained a foot injury at practice last week and will miss a “significant amount of time,” Mario Cristobal said.
The Canes are now down to seven scholarship receivers after Ray-Ray Joseph and Ny Carr left the team in the past couple of weeks with the intention of entering the transfer portal when it opens Jan. 2.
Except for Tony Johnson and Chance Robinson, all of UM’s remaining healthy scholarship receivers played against Texas A&M, Toney played 48 of UM’s 49 offensive snaps, while CJ Daniels played 44, Keelan Marion 41, Joshua Moore 6 and Trader 5.
▪ Ohio State star receiver Jeremiah Smith has grown tired of Hurricanes fans complaining about the late and highly questionable pass interference call against Miami that cost UM the 2003 BCS national championship game against Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.
“You see it all over the internet, all over Twitter,” Smith said this week. “They’re still talking about it 20 years later, still worried about it… we got something coming for them New Year’s Eve.”
Asked about opposing players talking trash before a game, Cristobal said: “To each his own, I don’t judge. It’s not part of our culture. Always respect your opponent. Always prepare to the highest standard humanly possible…. I don’t think any extra motivation is needed.”
▪ Cristobal reiterated at his Monday news conference that Carter Davis will remain UM’s kicker after missing three of four field goals (from 47, 40 and 35 yards) on a windy day at Texas A&M. His one make was from 21 yards.
Davis was 14 for 16 on field goals this year. At this point, UM has opted not to open up the competition with Texas transfer Bert Auburn, who was beaten out by Davis during fall camp.
Auburn has connected on 67 of 86 career field goals, including 16 for 25 for Texas last season.
“As of right now, I don’t see a reason to change,” Cristobal said. “Those conditions [at Texas A&M] were extremely difficult.”
▪ Impressive freshman running back Girard Pringle Jr. had only one carry and three offensive snaps against the Aggies because Dawson wanted to ride Fletcher’s hot hand.
“We weren’t running a lot of plays,” Dawson said. “There weren’t a lot of plays to go around. I felt like for sure Mark was the hot hand and the guy we needed and I didn’t want to sacrifice drives. It was the right thing to do. When you have a guy playing that well, you have to ride him.”
Running backs CharMar Brown, Jordan Lyle and Chris Wheatley-Humphrey didn’t play at all on offense.
▪ Count ESPN’s Paul Finebaum among those rooting for UM to win the championship -- but for an amusing reason. “I’d like to see Miami win it all, just to shut up Notre Dame fans,” he said on The Matt Barrie Show.
▪ The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story last week about Cristobal’s infamous secrecy, noting that UM was the only FBS school in August that did not post player weights on its web site and how Notre Dame had to comb the internet to try to find that information before the season opener.
“We‘re in the information-gathering business, not the information giving business,” Cristobal likes to say, according to Joe Moorhead, his former assistant at Oregon. Cristobal declined to comment for the story.
This story was originally published December 23, 2025 at 9:51 AM.
