Alex Donno reacts to the heartbreaking and puzzling loss that the Miami Hurricanes suffered at home against Georgia Tech. Why not run down the clock when you had the chance?
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00:00 I know the moment that we all want to talk about, and we will get to it because that
00:07 was, that coaching decision was the defining moment of that game.
00:11 Believe me, we're going to talk about it.
00:14 This was a collective loss.
00:15 A lot led up to that point.
00:18 I can't put this 100% on the head coach, even though, and let me be clear on this, his error
00:26 was by far the worst.
00:29 We will get to that.
00:31 How can the same Miami Hurricanes team that comfortably beat Texas A&M less than a month
00:36 ago lose at home to a team that had just lost to Bowling Green?
00:41 It's mind boggling.
00:43 Miami's offense was out of sorts from the jump.
00:46 Three interceptions, including one thrown in the end zone, another thrown in scoring
00:51 position.
00:52 So those two picks cost you six points, perhaps even 14 points, depending on how those drives
00:57 could have played out.
00:58 Tyler Van Dyke and his receivers were out of sync.
01:01 This was really the first time that Shannon Dawson's play calling, you know, wasn't perfect.
01:07 The call that they made on that fourth down try early in the game was a real head scratcher.
01:14 The offensive line did not protect as well as they had in previous games.
01:20 Penalties were another problem.
01:21 And listen, I acknowledge that a lot of those personal foul calls were absolutely horrific
01:27 calls.
01:28 But at the end of the day, Miami gave up 81 yards in penalty yardage and that touchdown
01:34 from Henry Parrish that should have counted.
01:36 That holding call was bogus.
01:38 But the penalty yardage still hurt you, man.
01:41 The Miami defense.
01:43 They played like superheroes for more than 59 and a half minutes, that defense.
01:50 But they couldn't keep Georgia Tech out of the end zone with 26 seconds left and no Georgia
01:55 Tech timeouts.
01:57 OK.
01:58 But yes, let's get back to the coaching decision.
02:02 Despite all of what I just said about the collective failures, despite all of that,
02:08 one coaching decision, if it had been made differently, could have allowed our Hurricanes
02:14 to leave Hard Rock Stadium with a 20 to 17 victory and a lesson learned.
02:22 Right.
02:23 And I say a lesson learned because I don't think anybody would have been happy about
02:27 winning that game 20 to 17.
02:29 Happy is not the word I would use for it.
02:32 Relieved is the word I would use for it, because relieved is how I felt before that fateful
02:38 running play with 40 or less seconds on the clock.
02:41 I was feeling a sense of relief.
02:43 Oh, my gosh, we're going to escape this game.
02:46 We're going to win this game.
02:48 This is hopefully going to be like like the Boston College game of 2001, where you like
02:53 barely escape out of there.
02:56 That was before absolute catastrophe and disaster struck.
03:02 Offenses on the field in Georgia Tech territory, third and 10 with under 40 seconds left.
03:09 When?
03:10 What happens?
03:11 Do you take a knee victory formation?
03:13 Now the ball is snapped.
03:17 Don Chaney runs the football.
03:20 You could have taken a knee and the game is freaking over.
03:23 You could have taken the knee and the game is over.
03:26 Instead, you hand it off to Chaney, who had been playing really, really well.
03:29 He did play really well.
03:30 I'm not going to take anything away from Chaney.
03:33 You hand the football to Chaney.
03:35 The ball ends up on the turf.
03:37 Georgia Tech ends up in possession of it.
03:40 I'm not even going to call that a fumble because Chaney was down.
03:45 I saw 100 different replays and all 100 of them showed me the elbow was down.
03:50 The officials made a terrible call in saying that was a fumble.
03:54 I feel like they being the officials or karma were punishing Miami for running the ball
04:00 instead of taking a knee.
04:02 [BLANK_AUDIO]