With Miami athletic director Dan Radakovich making a rare appearance at a football press conference Monday, Mario Cristobal and his coordinators took ownership for the Hurricanes’ epic late-game meltdown in an embarrassing loss to Georgia Tech over the weekend. Here’s what was said:
- Cristobal said he “made the wrong call” not taking a knee when the Hurricanes had a 20-17 lead, possession of the ball with under 40 seconds to play and the Yellow Jackets out of timeouts.
- Instead of lining up in the victory formation and taking a knee on 3rd-and-10 to run out the clock, running back Don Chaney Jr. received a handoff and fumbled the football, which Georgia Tech recovered at its own 26. The Yellow Jackets drove the field and later won on Haynes King’s 44-yard touchdown pass to Christian Leary with one second remaining.
- Cristobal said Miami requested feedback from the ACC on whether or not Chaney’s elbow was down before he was stripped of the football as replays seemed to indicate, but had not heard back.
What Miami coaches are saying
“I’ll take full ownership in not taking the knee and giving them the opportunity to have a couple extra plays and preventing us from sealing the win,” Cristobal said. “Both coaches and players showed up with a tremendous attitude to get right back to work.”
Offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said he called for the handoff, but didn’t elaborate as to what was said on the headsets before the play was called. Dawson said he didn’t sleep Saturday night and called it “as hard of a loss as I’ve had in my career.”
“What we did at the end was the wrong decision,” Dawson said. “I called it, it is what it is. I wish we would have done something different but we didn’t. So gotta live with it. It was the wrong thing to do.”
Even after Georgia Tech recovered the fumble, the Yellow Jackets had only 26 seconds and 74 yards to go to win the game. Miami defensive coordinator Lance Guidry said he called for regular coverage out of the team’s base defense to try and prevent the Yellow Jackets from getting into field goal range.
Georgia Tech reached the Miami 44 with 10 seconds to play. King scrambled and found Leary open for the winning touchdown. Instead of staying over the top on coverage, All-American safety Kam Kinchens bit on a double move made by Leary on the play and got beat over the top.
“I knew that they needed a field goal to tie and the touchdown to win so you can’t get too soft,” Guidry said. “I really wanted to pressure (King) because I thought they had two plays left. If he throws an out route or anything like that, they can kick the field goal. It’s all on me. My job as a defensive coordinator is to get a stop at the end. That’s what I’m hired to do. I’ve talked to the players and told them the same thing. It’s not on them. It’s on me.”
Does Miami have victory formation in its playbook?
This was the second time a Cristobal coached team failed to take a knee late in a game it could have won doing so. In 2018, his Oregon Ducks fumbled late instead of taking a knee in an overtime loss to Stanford.
Asked Monday if he doesn’t believe in taking a knee at the end of games, Cristobal replied: “That’s not true. We’ve done it before in practice. We work it during four-minute (drills). We didn’t do it Saturday and we should have. Like I mentioned before, I take complete ownership of it.”
Required reading
(Photo: Jasen Vinlove / USA Today)
