The U-turn: Miami Hurricanes’ season, Diaz’s future get huge boost with 2nd big win in row | Opinion
The Comeback Kids. The Cardiac Canes. Call them what you will, just don’t call them quitters, or count them out.
The Miami Hurricanes saved their season on Saturday in Pittsburgh. Coach Manny Diaz may have saved his job.
UM upset No. 17 Pitt, 38-34, led by the gift fate gave this program: second-year freshman quarterback Tyler Van Dyke, who also led last week’s upset of No. 18 North Carolina State.
For The U, the season has made a dramatic U-turn in the right direction the past two weeks.
“What an extraordinary football game,” Diaz said afterward. “It was gonna be a battle of perseverance. It was a grind to see it through. To go back to back beating top-20 teams — so proud of our guys, with so much against us a couple of weeks ago.”
This is the first time — in the 85-year history of Miami football — that the Canes have scored consecutive wins over ranked opponents when unranked themselves. And the young QB teammates call “TVD” has been all over both triumphs.
Pittsburgh’s 23-year-old, fifth-year senior quarterback, Kenny Pickett, had all the hype coming into this game, with 23 touchdown passes against a mere one interception, and Heisman Trophy talk building. (I’d offered the Panthers a motto for the Heisman campaign but I don’t think they liked it: ARM PITT!)
Well, UM’s baby QB, Van Dyke, outplayed Pickett.
Last week Van Dyke, replacing injured and out-for-the-season D’Eriq King, had boasted the Canes would upset N.C. State, and he delivered.
No boasting this week. Same result, though.
Van Dyke completed 32-of-42 passes for 428 yards and three TDs, his only interception occurring when his receivers slipped. He was so good, he was able to outscore both Pitt and his own lousy defense.
“Guy comes off the field after throwing a touchdown pass as if it’s a walk in the park,” said Diaz of Van Dyke. “Such a demeanor about him. To hang 38 [points] on them and throw for 428, that’s pretty special.”
Said Van Dyke: “I’m learning mentally how this thing goes. This team has a lot of fight. A lot of heart.”
The back-to-back signature wins, so needed for Diaz, put Miami level at 4-4 overall this season and 2-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Not worth a brag, but surely worth a heave of relief after where this program was two weeks earlier, when Diaz seemed like a Dead Man Coaching.
It underlines the parity in the ACC this misfit of a season, one that has seen usually dominant Clemson turned mortal.
If you said to me right now that Miami, at 4-4, is as good as anybody in the ACC, I’d nod before I’d argue.
A loss at Pitt and UM’s chances to win the Coastal Division would have been all but mathematically dead. Now, if the Canes win their final four games (and they should be favored in each), a Coastal title and a spot in the ACC Championship Game will be very much in play.
“This keeps us alive in the Coastal Division,” as Diaz put it. “If we continue to play with the spirit and fight we have ...”
The Hurricanes have owned Pitt in the championship/relevance era, since 1983. UM is now 22-3 in the series since then with four consecutive wins, including 12-2 at Pitt and now 7-1 at Heinz Field.
Saturday was supposed to reverse that, with Pitt ranked and up and the Hurricanes down. It did not.
Miami’s three previous games had been decided by six points. Total. The season has seen UM luckless, lacking breaks, losing one game when a short last-second field goal boinked off the upright.
On Saturday, some of the breaks caught up with the Canes and Diaz. That included James Williams’ late interception of Pickett that helped save the game.
“Brought our swagger back,” Williams said of this win. “Fought off the haters.”
The Hurricanes are alive in the Coastal race today with their third-string quarterback. Without their top running back. And, Saturday, with leading tackler Bubba Bolden also out for the season injured.
Good fortune has not blessed Diaz at all this strange season, until the past two games. Until Tyler Van Dyke put up back-to-back performances to rank with any by any quarterback in this program’s annals.
These two games have given the Canes a legitimate chance to pull an 8-4 regular season from the ruins. To make a decent bowl game, which until recently seemed a tall climb. Maybe to even somehow reach the ACC title game.
Before these last two games the Hurricanes were seen as in chaos, with director of athletics Blake James declining to assure Diaz would be back.
The head coach and this program were cast as underdogs.
You root for the underdog, right?
The Miami Hurricanes and Manny Diaz are showing they’re up for the fight.
This story was originally published October 30, 2021 at 4:21 PM.
