MIAMI GARDENS — The No. 10 Hurricanes weren’t routed as Alabama and Oregon were.
MIAMI GARDENS — The No. 10 Hurricanes weren’t routed as Alabama and Oregon were.
But for more than half of Monday night’s College Football Playoff title game, they were suffocated.
And then, as they shed their offensive struggles, the Hurricanes were outlasted, 27-21, by an Indiana Hoosiers team that delivered one championship-worthy moment after another.
In his highly-anticipated homecoming, quarterback Fernando Mendoza was not as prolific as he had been in the No. 1 Hoosiers’ two previous playoff victories. The Heisman Trophy winner threw as many incompletions in Monday’s first half as he had in those previous wins. Mendoza was battered and, at one point, even bloodied by a violent Hurricanes defense.
But in the game’s deciding moments, he was as Heisman-worthy as ever.
Faced with a fourth and 4 in the fourth quarter, Indiana (16-0) decided against a short field-goal attempt from the Miami 12 that would have extended their lead to six.
They instead kept the ball in Mendoza’s hands, dialing up a quarterback draw that brilliantly negated Miami’s pass rush and Hoosiers history will never forget. Mendoza ran for first-down yardage, spun his way out of a tackle and dove for the end zone with a Superman-esque leap.
The way Miami (13-3) was suddenly moving the ball downfield, Indiana might not have capped off a perfect season with the program’s first national championship in football.
Two Charlie Becker receptions were pivotal, too. The first came on a fourth and 5 before Mendoza’s touchdown run, the second on a third and 7 on Indiana’s ensuing offensive possession. Despite being blanketed in coverage, Becker conjured up two extraordinary catches.
Ultimately, the morale of this brutal loss for Miami is that against a team like Indiana, any misstep, or even the slightest flinch, is magnified.
The first punt blocked for a touchdown in College Football Playoff history becomes insurmountable.
Alex Bauman missed his blocking assignment, Mikail Kamara blocked the kick, and Isaiah Jones pounced on it for a third-quarter touchdown, delivering a crushing blow the Hurricanes’ second-half surge.
Rueben Bain Jr.’s second-quarter offside penalty provided more proof of this phenomenon. Bain played a magnificent game, as the presumptive NFL draft declarant did many times in a Miami uniform.
But with Indiana facing a third and 12, he jumped offside, negating an incompletion that was set to produce a Hoosier punt. Indiana converted its second chance at the down and went on to cap off a 15-play scoring drive with a Riley Nowakowski touchdown run that put Curt Cignetti’s team ahead 10-0.
Bain, or even Bauman for that matter, should not blamed for Monday’s loss.
Bain led Miami’s honorable defensive performance as the unit suffocated Indiana plenty itself. He had 2.5 tackles for loss, and Akheem Mesidor added two. Even against a formidable Indiana offensive line, the duo was menacing.
They also sacked Mendoza three times, and forced him to run for his life in the backfield plenty of other times as the Hoosiers’ offensive machine produced only a fraction of the 56 and 38 points it scored in its previous two games.
But Miami paid for playing with an offense that did not convert a third down until less than three minutes remained in the third quarter.
That again saw their field-goal kicker nail an upright.
That without a Mark Fletcher Jr. 57-yard touchdown run, produced only 53 rushing yards after gashing their previous playoff opponents.
Whose quarterback, as a threatening last-second drive was building, badly overthrew a receiver on a play the Hurricanes did not need to bank their entire season on.
Make no mistake: This was a fantastic Hurricanes team.
“I couldn’t be more proud to be associated with them,” Head Coach Mario Cristobal said. “I love them.”
“They had the guts, the faith and the trust to look at a place that was a complete mess and say ‘I’m gonna be a man of action. I’m gonna make the University of Miami a prominent program once again.’”
The Hurricanes somehow ended the game with more yards than the Hoosiers after finishing the first half with only 69 yards from scrimmage.
They went from on the bubble to the championship game, making football feel special in South Florida for the first time in more than two decades.
Throughout it all, the Hurricanes operated with a flair for the dramatic. They made pivotal mistakes, but found a way to not pay for them. On Monday, they finally did.
Curt Cignetti’s Hoosiers don’t forgive, and because of that, they are champions.
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Category: General Sports