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Keep playing with fire and you’ll eventually get burned.
Sure, it’s a worn-out clichè. But remember, most clichès are based on truth. So it was only a matter of time before Miami’s hopes for an undefeated season eventually went up in smoke.
After coming back from double-digit deficits 3 times this season, the No. 4-ranked Hurricanes finally dug themselves into a hole from which star quarterback Cam Ward couldn’t dig them out.
Ward did what he could. He threw for 348 yards and 3 touchdowns against Georgia Tech on Saturday to give his team a chance at erasing a late 12-point deficit. In the process, he became the first Miami quarterback to throw 30 TD passes in a season. Now with 32, Ward has a chance to reach 40.
But after leading improbable comebacks against Virginia Tech and Cal, then sparking a second-half blitz to rally past Duke last week, the Heisman Trophy frontrunner ran out of rabbits to pull from his hat.
The Yellow Jackets’ 28-23 win was a shocker and a result that all but guarantees that the ACC will only have 1 team in the year’s Playoff.
But other than adding a little extra intrigue and a lot less margin of error for the Hurricanes over the final 3 weeks of the regular season, the result did little to shake up the race for the ACC Championship Game.
No. 13 SMU, which was idle Saturday, is the only team with an unbeaten conference record. Miami and Clemson are tied for second with 1 loss. But because of tiebreakers, Miami and SMU are still on pace to play one another in Charlotte on Dec. 7 for the league title and an automatic Playoff bid as long as they both win out.
Sounds simple.
But as we learned from this weekend’s results, nothing is ever simple when it comes to the ACC in general and Miami football specifically.
That’s only one of the things we learned about the ACC in Week 11. Here are some of the other big takeaways from around the conference:
Get out your checkbook again, Pat
Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi was fined $5,000 by the ACC earlier this season for publicly criticizing the officials working his team’s win against West Virginia.
“We beat West Virginia in the Backyard Brawl and we beat the officials, too, in one game,” he said.
If Narduzzi was that fired up about the calls in a game his team won, you can only imagine how bent out of shape he must have been after Saturday’s officiating debacle in the 4th quarter of a loss to Virginia that ended any chance of Pitt advancing to the conference championship game. He’d be justified to rip the officials again.
Regardless of the cost.
Pitt trailed by 2 with just over 5 minutes remaining when it appeared to stop the Cavaliers on a 4th-and-1 play. But because referee Nate Black ruled that his crew wasn’t in position when the ball was snapped, the play was nullified and UVa was given another shot at making the first down.
Pitt just got absolutely screwed by the refs. “Not being in position to make a call” https://t.co/Ly4NMy259O pic.twitter.com/7z4dxYvIir
— Jake Wojo (@J_Wloczewski) November 10, 2024
The Cavaliers took advantage of the do-over to extend their drive, eat another 3 minutes off the clock and kick a field goal that forced Pitt to score a touchdown rather than just a field goal to take the lead. We’ll never know how things might have turned out had the original play stood. But we can say with 100% certainty that it completely changed the dynamic of the game.
This controversy is the latest in a series of officiating issues involving ACC refs this season. And Narduzzi isn’t the only coach that has been critical of them. Louisville’s Jeff Brohm and Virginia Tech’s Brent Pry have also sounded off because of questionable, game-altering calls. It’s a problem the league must take steps to fix this offseason to avoid any further hits to its credibility.
Who’s bowling them over? Who’s not?
OK, so we’ve pretty much ascertained that the ACC is only going to have 1 team in the Playoff. So let’s turn our attention to football’s version of the NIT. All those other bowls that dot the postseason schedule between Christmas and New Year’s Day.
Eight ACC teams have reached the 6-win threshold for bowl eligibility.
Georgia Tech became the latest to qualify for the postseason with its upset of Miami on Saturday. The Yellow Jackets join the Hurricanes, SMU, Clemson, Pitt, Louisville, Duke and Syracuse in the pool to fill the ACC’s 11 bowl tie-ins.
NC State and Virginia Tech each had a chance to join them. But both lost Saturday, meaning that they’ll still need at least 1 more win to avoid staying home for the holidays. Boston College, Cal and Virginia are in a similar situation after each claiming their 5th victory – the Eagles against Syracuse, the Bears against Wake Forest and the Cavaliers against Pitt.
Although everyone else is a long shot to remain in bowl contention, only Florida State and Stanford have been mathematically eliminated.
The Devils are still defensive
The coaching staff may have changed. So has much of the personnel. But Duke’s identity has remained the same despite the transition from Mike Elko to Manny Diaz.
The Blue Devils flexed their defensive muscle again on Saturday in a 29-19 win at NC State. They set the tone by sacking quarterback CJ Bailey in the end zone on the Wolfpack’s second play of the game and kept the pressure on all day while forcing 8 tackles for loss, 7 quarterback hurries, 6 pass breakups and a pair of turnovers.
Duke limited its neighboring rival to just a single touchdown while forcing 5 field-goal attempts in improving to 7-3 in its first season under Diaz, who like his predecessor was a successful defensive coordinator before becoming a head coach.
Considering the changes that have taken place since Elko took off for Texas A&M in the dead of the night last December, the comparisons between the past 2 Blue Devil defenses are remarkable. Duke led the ACC in scoring defense at 19.0 points per game in 2023. It’s currently in the top 4 with an average of 22.4. This year’s team is giving up fewer yards per game than last year – 349.1-352.7 – while allowing the fewest passing yards per game in the league at just 192.6.
It limited Bailey to 184 yards through the air and State to 268 total to get back on the winning track after losing 2 straight. Albeit to the 2 best teams in the conference, SMU and Miami.
Clemson still isn’t getting its kicks
The Tigers’ place-kicking situation was so bad last year that Dabo Swinney literally pulled a former player with a year of eligibility remaining off the beach to rejoin the team and handle the field goal and extra point chores. This season, the kicker hasn’t been the problem. But the players up front who are supposed to be protecting him.
Freshman Nolan Hauer is 12-of-17 on field goals this season. All 5 of his misses were blocked. Two came in a win at Florida State, caused by what Swinney described as breakdowns on the left side of the line. He had the same explanation for the next 2, which came in last week’s loss to Louisville. Swinney addressed the problem by making some personnel changes to the field goal unit.
So what happened on Saturday?
Hauer got another kick blocked. This time it came from the middle of the line and resulted in a Virginia Tech touchdown when the Hokies’ Quentin Reddish caught the ball and returned it 77 yards for the score. In case you were wondering, Mike Reed is Clemson’s special teams coach. But maybe not for long.
The Bears are finally bullish
Former North Carolina, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech coach Bill Dooley had a unique way of finding something good to say about every opponent his team played.
No matter how bad it was.
One of my favorites is when he called Tulane, or Too-lane as it sounded in his distinctive Southern drawl, “the finest winless team in America.”
Cal wasn’t exactly winless entering the weekend. It’s actually undefeated against nonconference competition. But at 0-4 against the ACC in its first season in the league, an argument can be made that the Bears were the finest last-place team that was winless in its conference.
Justin Wilcox’s team leads the conference in scoring defense at only 19.3 points per game allowed. Their 17 interceptions are also the best in the league while their 29 sacks are the 2nd-most. And at 28.7 points per game, the Bears are also in the top 10 in scoring offense.
They’re good enough to have led No. 4 Miami by 25 points in the second half. Just not good enough to close games out. Their 4 ACC losses are by a combined total of 9 points. Their luck changed on Friday at Wake Forest.
Cal tried its best to cough up another lead by allowing the Deacons to narrow a 15-point 4th-quarter advantage to only a field goal. This time, though, it answered with a late touchdown to hang on for 46-36 victory.
Now that the Bears have finally broken the ice in the conference, the vibe surrounding them has changed dramatically. At 5-4 overall, they’re only 1 win away from bowl eligibility, And with a season-ending game at SMU, they can potentially have a say in both the ACC Championship Game matchup.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
