BLACKSBURG, Va. — The Hurricanes took a lead against Virginia Tech on their first drive and never looked back.
Miami never trailed the Hokies and led most of the game by double digits as they rolled to a 34-17 victory in Blacksburg on Saturday.
Here are five things we learned from Miami’s penultimate game of the regular season:
1. Another great Carson Beck performance
The veteran quarterback and offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said they saw things start to click for Beck in UM’s loss to SMU. Now Beck is showing it.
Beck completed 27 of his 32 passes and tossed a season-high four touchdowns in the victory. He reached the 300-yard mark for the second time this year, notching 320 yards.
Pro Football Focus gave Beck a 90.6 passing grade in the win — his second straight game with a score of 90 or higher.
2. Pros and cons on defense
In some respects, the Hurricanes had one of their worst games on defense. But as a whole, the unit did not play too poorly.
The poor side of things was UM’s run defense. Miami gave up a season-high 194 net rushing yards — Virginia Tech gained 243 yards if you remove sacks. The Hokies particularly gashed the Hurricanes on runs to the outside.
“It wasn’t really nothing too complicated,” defensive tackle Justin Scott said. “It was more just on our end, just not doing our job, not being disciplined. But I feel like we kind of knew, had a great idea what they were going to do this game, and we just prepared good for it.”
But it was not all bad. Miami shut down Virginia Tech’s passing game for most of the game, and the Hurricanes were constantly in the Hokies’ backfield. Defensive tackle Ahmad Moten Sr. had three tackles for loss and two sacks on his own. UM finished the game with five sacks and nine tackles for loss.
3. Running it up?
Miami got the ball back with 2:06 left after Virginia Tech fumbled, and instead of just running the ball to run as much time off the clock as possible, the Hurricanes went for the end zone.
UM, aided by the two-minute timeout and a pair of Hokies timeouts, had time to move the ball 40 yards down the field and score. The Hurricanes passed four times out of seven plays during the drive, including a first-down pass to Jojo Trader to convert a third-and-12 and the 20-yard touchdown pass to Malachi Toney for the score with 20 seconds remaining.
Although the game was effectively in hand — UM had a 99.9 percent chance to win after the fumble, according to ESPN’s win probability chart — Miami was not trying to embarrass the Hokies. But Cristobal knows what everyone else knows: Miami needs to do more than win in order to impress the College Football Playoff selection committee. The Hurricanes need to win and look good doing it, and a 34-17 final is more impressive than a 27-17 final score.
“We’re just playing ball. We’re not slowing down,” Cristobal said after the game. “… Some people call it style points and all that other stuff. We’re just playing ball and trying to make our team better and staying aggressive. When we call it aggressive, our players, they play aggressive. And I heard what you said, but I think it’s really important to state: I think it goes for anyone who’s ever played the game or coached the game because people throw around the word eye test. Well how about the field test? Right? Where head-to-head matters. Things like that. So that’s what football’s always been about: on the field, getting it, finding a way to get it done.”
4. A strange game
Saturday’s game had its share of bizarre moments, many of which centered around the referees.
Virginia Tech got three chances to run a short fourth-down play: the first was canceled when UM called a timeout. The second was canceled when the booth reviewed the third-down catch. The third time was the charm, and the Hokies converted.
The Hokies also pulled off a wild third-down conversion where quarterback Kyron Drones was nearly sacked but found a receiver who got the first down. However, that play was wiped out because a referee blew a whistle by mistake.
There were numerous reviews, including on Zechariah Poyser’s game-sealing fumble recovery that set up UM’s final score.
“I was kind of nervous about it, but I kind of knew what it was,” Poyser said.
Cristobal said the team did a good job staying focused despite all of the strange occurrences, but he said he “got to know those officials really well.”
“It’s a little bit of (the players), it’s a little bit of the coaches, it’s everybody involved,” Cristobal said. “We made a commitment before we left the locker room. There’s 70,000 people out there, but our energy is all that matters.”
Cristobal continued: “If you allow yourself to drift and all the crazy, fun stuff’s going on, the scoreboard, the people they’re honoring. It’s like stimuli from hell, man. Like there’s something going on all the time. So let’s stick to playing football for those three and a half, four hours, and I think everything will be okay.”
5. Hurricanes’ hopes are alive
Entering the final week of the regular season, the Hurricanes are alive in the playoff hunt and even the chase for the ACC title, though the former is more likely than the other.
Many things need to happen next week for Miami to make the conference title game. The Hurricanes, of course, need to beat Pittsburgh, hope other games go their way and they can sneak in despite their two conference losses.
Miami’s playoff fate is also complicated. The two-loss teams ahead of the Hurricanes — Notre Dame, Alabama, Oklahoma and Utah — all won. Some won in more convincing fashion than others: Notre Dame vaporized a hapless Syracuse team, while Utah needed a last-minute score to escape a now-sub.500 Kansas State.
How the committee views these results will determine where these potential at-large teams fall.
Miami’s fate may have ultimately been sealed with Beck’s overtime interception against SMU, but right now, there is a path for the Hurricanes to make it.
