South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Hyde
ing yards (544) than any tandem in FBS history. On North Carolina’s first play, Carter ran for 12 yards. That wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Carter went on to average 12.8 yards a carry as he ran for 302 yards.
“Obviously we did not make the adjustments during the course of the game to get it stopped,’’ Diaz said. “They did the same two or three things over and over again.”
Here’s the worst part of all this: North Carolina isn’t exactly Clemson. It’s ranked 17th. It’s lost to lightweights like Florida State and Virginia. Tenth-ranked Miami entered the game as a 3-point favorite on full merit. But when it came to being overwhelmed — and over-rated — well, Miami stated its case. Here’s one play in a game full of them: North Carolina was up 7-3 and driving when Miami’s DJ Ivey stepped in for a nice interception. That’s the kind of play to shift a game, right? Except there were 12 Hurricanes on the field. Diaz knew it, as he was running to call a timeout when the ball was snapped.
North Carolina went on to
score there and the walls fell in on Miami. At 31-3 in the second quarter, there was no sugar-coating it and even the network broadcast team didn’t try.
“What is disappointing if you’re Manny Diaz is the lack of effort, the lack of tackling,’’ ABC’s Kirk Herbstreit said. “They’re just out there right now. And if you do that against a good offense you’re going to get embarrassed. That’s what we’ve seen so far.”
At 34-3 just before half, boothmate Chris Fowler called it a, “first half that will live in infamy in Miami history.”
Well, there’s been a lot of infamy over the last 15 years. This was one example of embarrassing. Effort? The offense showed some scoring a touchdown just before half to make it 34-10. Could you dream of Hurricane great Michael Irvin saying, as he famously did down 26-3 to Florida State’s Deion Sanders, “We’re coming back?” Uh, no.
Carolina did whatever it wanted. It took the opening drive 75 yards on 13 plays to make it 41-10.
For so much of this year, Diaz navigated the COVID-19 issues and a series of close games in a manner to appreciate. There was,
to be sure, a certain precariousness to Miami’s situation as the season wore on, though.
After playing out of its weight class in a predictable blowout loss to Clemson, Miami won by the hair of their chinny-chinchin. It scuffled by a Pittsburgh team without its quarterback, then beat middle-class Virginia, North Carolina State and Virginia Tech by a combined nine points.
But here’s the thing: They won. They could end any argument by pointing at the scoreboard. And, if they’d done so against a better North Carolina team, this season would have stood on its own merit for maxing out what this season offered.
On Saturday morning, it was all on the table for Miami. By Saturday afternoon, nothing was there. Not the Top-10 ranking. Not the Orange Bowl vs. Florida. Not even some dignity over how to close out what had been a good season.
Instead, with just under four minutes to play, Williams ran into the end zone and what happened next summed up the day. No North Carolina teammate came to celebrate the latest touchdown. Williams handed the ball to the official. Embarrassment complete.