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Mario Cristobal calls run defense ‘extremely disappointing’ in Miami loss
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Miami saw its unbeaten season go up in a cloud of smoke on Saturday.
A one-dimensional Georgia Tech team beat the fourth-ranked Hurricanes 28-23 in Atlanta. Miami was a 9.5-point favorite (via ESPN Bet). Quarterback Haynes King was limited, leading to just 16 pass attempts all game from the Yellow Jackets. But Miami couldn’t press the issue because Miami couldn’t stop the ground game.
Georgia Tech averaged 5.6 yards per carry, rushing for 271 total yards.
“They did what they do. They run counter, they run power sweep, they run some split zone, they run some wide zone. They got the ball off the edge several times, and not only on sweeps,” coach Mario Cristobal said after the game. “Some of it was busts. Some of it was just (Georgia Tech) playing really good. Sometimes it was just getting an extra hat there — we’ve got to make an adjustment and get one there. So, it falls on all of us the way they ran the football.
“Knowing they were banged up at quarterback, they did a better job than we did.”
Georgia Tech ran 27 plays on first down in the game. All 27 of them were run plays. The Yellow Jackets averaged 4.4 yards per carry on those first-down plays and only faced 2 third downs longer than 8 yards all day.
Miami knew what was coming. And it didn’t do a good enough job of stopping it. The Canes had offensive issues of their own to work through, but the run defense was fine entering Saturday’s game (3.6 yards per carry allowed, 30th nationally) and it collapsed.
“Extremely disappointing,” Cristobal said. “You have to own it. You can’t sugarcoat ‘if this’ or ‘if that.’ We didn’t do a good enough job.”
With the loss, Miami has surrendered control of its future in the ACC title race. Clemson and Pitt went into the weekend each with a loss and Miami won’t play either. SMU, at 5-0 entering Week 11, moved into sole possession of first place in the ACC.
Miami certainly can’t afford a second. It has a bye week to get right before closing out the regular season with Wake Forest at home and Syracuse on the road.
“We’ve got to own it. We’ve got to own every bit of it. All of us,” Cristobal said. “You just own it. You don’t talk about it very much, you just go do something about it. We have a bye week, with everything in front of us to play for, to go do something about it and make sure that, as sick as everyone’s feeling, I hope we all feel sick to the point it drives us to be better because that was not our best football.”
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
