Forget the big rally & not quitting. This was bad Hurricanes loss in disappointing year | Opinion

The Miami Hurricanes aren’t very good. Can we stop pretending and just say it? As midseason nears this has shown itself to be an ordinary college football team, one capable of spasms of faith-lifting quality but also bewildering, head-shaking deep dives into mediocrity.

Saturday they showed every bit of the very good and very bad, the whole wild ride in one careening afternoon-into-evening at Hard Rock Stadium.

They had a Miami Miracle-type of comeback.

Ultimately they had a heart-busting loss. A bad one.

“The New Miami?” Looks more like The Neutered Miami for now.

Saturday the Hurricanes were dominated early and ultimately embarrassed at home in a 42-35 loss to Virginia Tech in an ACC Coastal Division game. I have covered UM football since the 1980s birth of a five-championship dynasty, and at 28-0 early in the second quarter this was among the worst performances I have seen by a team not so much wearing Canes uniforms as desecrating them.

Sorry, Miami, but pardon the lack of effusive credit for playing respectably after the nightmare start. You still lost big at home as a big favorite. This is a big boy sport. No points and consoling back-pats for “didn’t quit.”

UM’s fight was epic, but the bottom line is still a gut-punch: Miami is now 2-3 overall and 0-2 in conference play after being whupped by a Hokies team it was a 14-point favorite to beat. An opponent that had lost its previous game, in Blacksburg, 40-15, to Duke. The Canes victories? A perfunctory rout of lower-level Bethune-Cookman, and a 17-12 escape against smaller-conference Central Michigan.

Not good. Might as well call a priest now, OK? Between the immensely disappointing Canes and the tanking Dolphins, it’s time for last rites for football in the city of Miami in 2019. R.I.P.

“An absolutely insane football game,” UM coach Manny Diaz called it -- and that was almost an understatement. A Miami win, he said rightly, “would have been one of the most historic of all time.”

Miami roared from 28 down to tie it 35-35 on a 62-yard DeeJay Dallas run, only to miss the go-ahead extra point kick.

Then the Canes defense got overrun for the final score -- but not before Miami had two pass from the Tech 10-yard line with five and one second to play.

“Our guys are hurting right,” Diaz said. “I can’t be more proud of our coming back from 28 down. The errors we made, it’s not complicated. The turnovers occurred. The self-inflicted wounds. To battle back with a chance to win the game shows we have something special in that lockerroom, something worth protecting. This is a young team just learning to get over the edge. But nobody wants to hear that right now and I’m fine with that.”

No surprise for Diaz to be as positive as possible, but, I mean, just call a priest now, OK? Between the immensely disappointing-so-far Canes and the tanking Dolphins, it’s time for last rites for football in the city of Miami in 2019. R.I.P.

(I alsowonder if part of Diaz wishes yet that he’d stuck with the low-watt pressure of being Temple’s head coach? Because what he took over in Coral Gables turned Saturday into a bit of a holy mess).

Now the Canes host No. 23-ranked Virginia Friday night. Miami must pretty much run the table on the rest of the schedule to make anything of this season. And the idea of any 2-3 team winning out gets you a Breathalyzer test if you dare say it out loud.

This was the third of five consecutive UM home games, the longest in-season streak since 1987. Which means the schedule is back-loaded with road games, further complicating that run-the-table stuff.

Almost forgot: the quarterback thing. Jarren Williams left late in the first quarter with a sore throwing shoulder, after tossing three interceptions. N’Kosi Perry replaced him. Williams did not return. So there’s a QB question now, too. (No controversy, though. Despite Perry leading the rally, a healthy Williams should start).

A win by Miami Saturday, which had been so expected, would have couched this coming Friday’s Virginia game in high stakes. Now it feels like the Canes are mostly playing merely to salvage their battered pride.

We know by now that this is isn’t a slow start, bad luck, a tough schedule, poor officiating -- none of that.

It’s a bad team, is all. Or an average one capable of less.

The Turnover Chain and Touchdown Rings should be retired for the rest of this season, because this team hasn’t earned the right. If there is swagger here, there’s some stagger, too.

The season wilted from the start with opening losses to the Florida Gators in Orlando and then at ACC rival North Carolina. A perfunctory rout of small Bethune-Cookman followed, then a win that didn’t feel like one -- that 17-12 escape past a Central Michigan team UM had been favored to beat by 29.

Now this.

Five UM turnovers -- four on the first four possessions -- buried home hopes. A sixth turnover was erased by a penalty. It was 28-nothing before Miami lucked to cash a deflected Hail Mary pass on the final play of the first half. (It was the first time since the 2002 Sun Bowl that a UM team had turnovers on four consecutive possessions).

But it didn’t take Saturday to tell us this team was nothing special. The warning signs had been there, pulsing in neon.

Miami entered the game with a nation-worst 23 percent third-down conversion rate, and 18 percent vs. FBS opponents. Saturday the Canes were an OK 7-for-15 on thirds.

UM also was allowing opponents an average of nine tackles-for-loss and 4 1/2 sacks per game.

Why? Start with a bad offensive line -- or, more charitably, a young one still learning.

Zion Nelson is one of three true freshmen starting at left tackle in all of FBS-level football -- that’s 130 schools. The failing surely isn’t all on his young shoulders, though. This was the sacrifice UM was willing to make. Miami’s O-line starts two freshmen and two sophomores. Dues are being paid this season to develop cohesion at a position where experience is so important.

Like their offensive line, the Hurricanes might be good again. Maybe next year?

Not this year. Saturday sort of erased any pretending on that point.

We almost just saw a miracle finish.

We’ll need another one of those if these staggering Canes are to still make something special of this season.

You want the respect you’ve not yet earned this season, Canes?

Start by showing up this Friday night against No. 23-ranked Virginia.

Because, right now, Miami, at 2-3, to quote the splendid double-negative of Stevie Wonder: You haven’t done nothing.

This story was originally published October 5, 2019 at 8:11 PM.