Richt lets fake injury comments slide
Coach Mark Richt took the high road this week when asked about ESPN analyst Andre Ware’s comments during Miami’s 49-24 victory at Toledo Saturday.
Ware accused Miami safety Jaquan Johnson of faking an injury when he went down during Toledo’s first scoring drive. Johnson came out of the game and never returned with what Richt said is a strained hamstring.
On the broadcast, Ware said Toledo caught Miami misaligned on two plays, the last of which Johnson was injured.
“I think he’ll be OK,” Ware continued. “That’s one of those convenient ‘I’m gonna go down . ... the tempo is getting a little fast . ... a lit
tle too much success is taking place.’”
When play-by-play announcer Kevin Brown asked Ware if he was “smelling something fishy” about the injury, Ware answered: “Yeah. No doubt.”
Richt, though, would not talk directly about Ware’s accusation.
“There’s been a lot of that going on to slow down the offense of teams that go
fast,” Richt said. “I’m sure they’ve done enough games where they’ve seen a guy just go down and then one or two plays later go back in the game.
“We knew he was hurt
and we told him to get down so we could come see him. You just don’t want a guy to have an injury and then he wants to gut it out and be the
tough guy and not have peo- ple help him. Sometimes you can make an injury worse if you try to drag yourself off the field.”
Richt said Johnson, a preseason All-American, “definitely” has a hamstring strain and still is being evaluated.
“Those things you just never know what they’re going to do as to how severe they are,” he said.
Miami definitely missed Johnson. The Rockets scored on the drive in which he was
injured and on their next
three before the Hurricanes defense regrouped.
Spreading the wealth:
Richt was pleased with the way running backs DeeJay Dallas and Travis Homer shared the carries against Toledo. Dallas had 17 carries for a career-high 110 yards. Homer, from West Palm Beach, had 16 totes for 80 yards.
“Your top two backs you’d like to have them carry anywhere from 12 to 20 times a game depending how the game goes,” Richt said. “This is one of the games where we were able to control the
ball running at times.” Richt cited the Hurricanes’ first series of the game when the last seven plays were all
runs covering 50 yards and concluding with a 5-yard Malik Rosier touchdown. The key call: An end around to Jeff Thomas that picked up 19 yards,
“That’s about the most fun as I can get as a play caller,” he said. “Just dial up a run and get another run and third-and-short we make it. We get a first down run for 8 yards. Run another run to get the first down on second-and-two. I can call those plays pretty good.”
Keeping mistakes to a minimum: The Hurricanes were not flagged for a penalty last Saturday (although place-kicker Bubba Baxa did
kick the ball out of bounds twice, which technically is not a penalty), did not commit a turnover and did not give up a sack in the win.
“You do that offensively and it’s going to increase your chances of winning by a long shot,” Richt said.
Richt said it might the only time his team did not have a penalty in his 225 games as a head coach.