Miami basically did whatever the **** they wanted to on both sides of the ball on the way to an easy win. It's so much fun to be a fan of this team right now.
USF sucks. That's the nicest thing I can think of to say about them. The final score doesn't accurately reflect how un-close this game was. Back 2 back weeks where our 3rd string QB Gray Crow and walk-on offensive linemen like Sean Harvey got into the game. It was basically like playing back to back FCS schools. The only saving grace for USF is that we didn't have to shorten the 4th quarter to 12 minutes.
The best thing about this game was how well we moved the ball once Morris limped off. There didn't seem to be much drop off in this offense from Morris to Williams. He may not have Stephen's arm, but he's able to move the offense down the field just as efficiently. Any questions about how far we can go next year, or if any freshmen will be starting next year are done with as far as I'm concerned.
Highlights:
[video=youtube;fETtVD2ue1w]www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETtVD2ue1w[/video]
Here's what I said were the main story lines in the game day post:
1. Can Miami shut down USF's running game?
Good enough. Shaw got his yards (127 on 20 carries), but as a team USF had 99 yards on 33 carries (3 yards per carry). 44 of those yards came on 1 run by Shaw in their first series. Once the running game dried up, so did their offense because Steven Bench is probably the worst QB I've ever seen this side of John Brantley.
2. Can Duke Johnson have a big day?
He had 84 yards on 14 carries and a TD. He barely played in the 2nd half, which is the only reason why he didn't have more. He also had a 101 yard kickoff return negated because of a flag. The only problem was he fumbled twice inside the 5 yard line, which was pretty frustrating. He's the best player on our team, so I'm not even mad.
3. Can Miami protect Stephen Morris?
Morris got hit several times, but I wouldn't attribute it to poor protection. A couple of times he held on to the ball a little too long. The problem is he still aggravated his ankle injury from the week before. Morris attributed that to USF's players being dirty. Here's his exact words according to the Herald:
4. Can Miami get some non-offensive touchdowns?
USF has given up a defensive TD in every game this year, and Miami continued that streak. They've now given up 5 in total for the year. Shayon Green came in unblocked to rag-doll Steven Bench and Jimmy Gaines was there for the recovery. It happened right after Duke's 1st fumble, so it was pretty cool to swing any momentum USF could've gotten on that play back in our favor so quickly.
Lets Recap.
1st Quarter:
UM received to start the game and after Duke was tackled on his return, some guy started giving him the business. Duke stood up and stomped on his chest. Duke gives zero *****. On the first play from scrimmage Stephen Morris shows play action to Duke and then finds Allen Hurns for a 24 yard gain. 2 plays later Duke breaks a run to the outside for a 17 yard run down the sideline. UM lines up in the Pistol formation and Morris finds Stacy Coley for an 18 yard gain. He could've made a bigger play but he slipped after the catch. A couple of plays later Dallas Crawford runs it 7 yards off the right tackle for the touchdown.
7-0 UM. Pretty easy.
On USF's first play Anthony Chickillo drills Steven Bench, but the throw gets to Chris Dunkley for a 17 yard gain. UM would go on to hit Bench all game long. Before you could care about them getting a 1st down, Marcus Shaw was running 44 yards down the field to Miami's 14 yard line. 3 plays later Shaw ran it in for the TD.
7-7. Yikes.
Duke returned the ensuing kickoff for a TD, but it got called back because Mo Hagens was holding somebody. Morris didn't care. He was like, "more stats for me". On the next play Morris throws a 55 yard bomb to Dorsett.
That throw moves Morris ahead of Steve Walsh for 9th all time in UM history for passing yards. A few plays later it's 3rd and 7 and Morris finds Herb Waters wide open in the middle of the field for the touchdown.
14-7 UM.
On USF's next possession Thurston Armbrister gets a sack to put them in a 3rd and long situation.
What a season he's had so far. USF goes 3 & out and punts. Dorsett returns the punt 57 yards, but it gets wiped out because of a pretty weak block in the back call on Tracy Howard. Morris finds Clive Walford on the first play for an 18 yard gain. Then Duke picks up another 1st down on a 10 yard run. He collapses to the ground a few moments later because he took a headshot from a USF defender. He took a concussion test and was fine. He returned to the game on the next possession. A couple of plays later Morris drifts backwards facing heavy pressure. He launches a rainbow pass off his back foot to the back of the endzone just before getting drilled. Coley runs underneath it for a 34 yard TD.
21-7 UM.
Golden was so super pumped up after that play that he ran onto the field and jumped on Morris. Shaw picked up another 20 yards on the 1st play and the quarter ends with UM still leading 21-7.
2nd Quarter:
USF sucks so they punt 3 plays later. Morris takes over again and finds Hagens on a check-down. Some guy tries to tackle him by the jersey. Hagens drags him and 3 other guys 17 yards down the field.
Morris is doing his thing with short passes to Crawford and Hurns to get to midfield. A couple of plays later Morris takes another hit and limps off the field. He never returned. If anyone was worried about Ryan Williams coming off the bench that ended after his first snap, where he hit Coley for a 33 yard gain. UM gets inside the 1, but Duke fumbles stretching out for the TD. USF takes over at their own 1. Three plays later USF's Offensive Coordinator calls for a naked bootleg in the shadow of his own endzone. Shayon Green was like "thanks, LOL" and threw Bench to the ground, forcing a fumble in the process. Jimmy Gaines was there to fall on it to complete the Sack/Fumble/TD combo.
28-7 UM. LOL at Bench's face in that pic. It was Green's first sack in his college career. It was also UM's first defensive TD since Perryman's pick 6 against Boston College last year.
USF goes 3 and out again. Dorsett dropped the punt but UM still recovered it. A shoving match ensued. Fentress was regulating. When UM's offense gets back on the field Williams is still looking awesome. He makes a beautiful back shoulder throw to Hurns down the sideline for a 31 yard gain.
Three plays later Duke walks into the endzone untouched for the TD to make it 35-7.
I swear, my notes for each play of this game for USF reads like a page in a Mad Libs book. "So then on the ensuing kickoff USF get's flagged for 2 guys being on the field wearing the same number". What a disaster they are. On 3rd down Tyrone Cornelius and Denzel Perryman blitz up the middle and pressure Bench into a wild throw. Tyriq McCord jumps up and snags it for the pick. It's all for naught because Duke fumbled it away again inside the 5 yard line. The whole play was pretty fubar'd from the beginning. Waters came in motion like they were faking the jet sweep before the handoff to get the defense on their heels. Waters ran right into Williams and he barely got the ball to Duke. Oh well.
USF goes 3 & out again. Some guy for them shanks the punt and it goes 2 yards.
UM tries to tack on a 23 yard field goal, but Matt Goudis pushed it too far to the right. The 1st half ends with UM still leading 35-7. The 411 yards of offense in the 1st half was a school record. Our 1st half performance made a lot of money for Floyd Mayweather today. The 35-7 halftime score was enough to hit on his bet. He won almost $87,000.
3rd Quarter:
USF opens the 2nd half throwing the ball all over the place. Before you know what's going on they're at UM's 35 yard line. Then UM's defense gets serious and starts making plays. USF needs points and decides to go for it on 4th and 4. No dice. UM takes over and on 3rd down USF jumps offsides. Ryan Williams knows he has a free play and he throws a bomb to Waters for a 54 yard gain down to the USF 11 yard line.
On the very next play Williams gets flushed out of the pocket and throws it to Coley, who makes a tremendous leaping catch for the touchdown. Some guy tried to push him out of bounds before his feet came down. Nice try, joke.
It looked like his feet didn't come down in bounds so it gets reviewed. On the replay it shows Coley getting his hand on the ground before his feet touch. The call is upheld and the score is now 42-7 UM.
USF and UM exchange punts for a while. Eventually UM decides to start doing something on offense again after Coley makes a nice punt return to the USF 42 yard line. Augustus Edwards enters the game and picks up 29 yards down to the USF 14. After picking up another 1st down, UM proceeds to hand it off to Edwards 3 straight times from the 1 for no gain. Aaron Lynch starts celebrating and blowing kisses to the crowd. LOL, you're still losing by 35 points A-Aron. Golden puts Crawford back in and he drags a couple of guys with him into the endzone.
49-7 UM. USF goes 3 and out again to end the 3rd quarter.
4th Quarter:
Corn Elder is back to receive the punt. Some guy clearly makes helmet to helmet contact to him. They threw a flag, then said it was ok because he wrapped his arms around him after he hit him in the head...Ok.
Gray Crow is now in the game, along with Alex Gall, Sean Harvey, and a few other guys who are way down on the depth chart. You aren't supposed to be able to get walk-ons on the field against what is allegedly a BCS school. On 3rd down Crow's pass gets deflected and Julius Forte returns it 11 yards for the TD.
Whatever. UM still leads 49-14.
UM goes 3 & and out. Then USF turned it over on downs because Raphael Kirby is awesome. On 1st down he sacked Bench when he scrambled to the right. On 2nd down he drilled some back up running back. On 3rd and 4th downs he pressured Bench into poor throws. Great series by him. Williams is now back in at QB, but he's playing with 3rd and 4th string guys so UM just punts it back to USF. USF gets to midfield, but then Deon Bush comes off the edge on a Safety blitz. He drills Bench which forces a fumble that is recovered by Luther Robinson.
Williams gets picked off on a really bad throw. 3rd string guys are on the field now and USF takes advantage of it and tries to get a score before the end of the game. They go 96 yards down the field and Bench throws a TD pass to Derrick Hopkins right in front of Bush with 2 seconds left on the clock. USF squib kicks it and the game ends. 49-21 UM.
Your football team sucks, Taggart.
We're 4-0!!!!! Georgia Tech is next week. Last year was a crazy shootout. We'll find out what time the kickoff will be sometime tomorrow. It's probably going to be at noon.
USF sucks. That's the nicest thing I can think of to say about them. The final score doesn't accurately reflect how un-close this game was. Back 2 back weeks where our 3rd string QB Gray Crow and walk-on offensive linemen like Sean Harvey got into the game. It was basically like playing back to back FCS schools. The only saving grace for USF is that we didn't have to shorten the 4th quarter to 12 minutes.
The best thing about this game was how well we moved the ball once Morris limped off. There didn't seem to be much drop off in this offense from Morris to Williams. He may not have Stephen's arm, but he's able to move the offense down the field just as efficiently. Any questions about how far we can go next year, or if any freshmen will be starting next year are done with as far as I'm concerned.
Highlights:
[video=youtube;fETtVD2ue1w]www.youtube.com/watch?v=fETtVD2ue1w[/video]
Here's what I said were the main story lines in the game day post:
1. Can Miami shut down USF's running game?
Good enough. Shaw got his yards (127 on 20 carries), but as a team USF had 99 yards on 33 carries (3 yards per carry). 44 of those yards came on 1 run by Shaw in their first series. Once the running game dried up, so did their offense because Steven Bench is probably the worst QB I've ever seen this side of John Brantley.
2. Can Duke Johnson have a big day?
He had 84 yards on 14 carries and a TD. He barely played in the 2nd half, which is the only reason why he didn't have more. He also had a 101 yard kickoff return negated because of a flag. The only problem was he fumbled twice inside the 5 yard line, which was pretty frustrating. He's the best player on our team, so I'm not even mad.
3. Can Miami protect Stephen Morris?
Morris got hit several times, but I wouldn't attribute it to poor protection. A couple of times he held on to the ball a little too long. The problem is he still aggravated his ankle injury from the week before. Morris attributed that to USF's players being dirty. Here's his exact words according to the Herald:
If they cared half as much about stopping our offense as they did about trying to injure our players, they might have been able to keep us under 35 points in the 1st half. That's not all they did. They were leading with the crowns of their helmets all game, especially whenever Duke carried the ball. All the bull**** you see refs throwing flags for all over the country, I couldn't believe there wasn't a targeting penalty called in this game. Some ****** player of theirs dove helmet first at Standish Dobard's knees on the squib kick at the end of the game. He limped off the field. USF sucks.Stephen Morris said:
4. Can Miami get some non-offensive touchdowns?
USF has given up a defensive TD in every game this year, and Miami continued that streak. They've now given up 5 in total for the year. Shayon Green came in unblocked to rag-doll Steven Bench and Jimmy Gaines was there for the recovery. It happened right after Duke's 1st fumble, so it was pretty cool to swing any momentum USF could've gotten on that play back in our favor so quickly.
Lets Recap.
1st Quarter:
UM received to start the game and after Duke was tackled on his return, some guy started giving him the business. Duke stood up and stomped on his chest. Duke gives zero *****. On the first play from scrimmage Stephen Morris shows play action to Duke and then finds Allen Hurns for a 24 yard gain. 2 plays later Duke breaks a run to the outside for a 17 yard run down the sideline. UM lines up in the Pistol formation and Morris finds Stacy Coley for an 18 yard gain. He could've made a bigger play but he slipped after the catch. A couple of plays later Dallas Crawford runs it 7 yards off the right tackle for the touchdown.
7-0 UM. Pretty easy.
On USF's first play Anthony Chickillo drills Steven Bench, but the throw gets to Chris Dunkley for a 17 yard gain. UM would go on to hit Bench all game long. Before you could care about them getting a 1st down, Marcus Shaw was running 44 yards down the field to Miami's 14 yard line. 3 plays later Shaw ran it in for the TD.
7-7. Yikes.
Duke returned the ensuing kickoff for a TD, but it got called back because Mo Hagens was holding somebody. Morris didn't care. He was like, "more stats for me". On the next play Morris throws a 55 yard bomb to Dorsett.
That throw moves Morris ahead of Steve Walsh for 9th all time in UM history for passing yards. A few plays later it's 3rd and 7 and Morris finds Herb Waters wide open in the middle of the field for the touchdown.
14-7 UM.
On USF's next possession Thurston Armbrister gets a sack to put them in a 3rd and long situation.
What a season he's had so far. USF goes 3 & out and punts. Dorsett returns the punt 57 yards, but it gets wiped out because of a pretty weak block in the back call on Tracy Howard. Morris finds Clive Walford on the first play for an 18 yard gain. Then Duke picks up another 1st down on a 10 yard run. He collapses to the ground a few moments later because he took a headshot from a USF defender. He took a concussion test and was fine. He returned to the game on the next possession. A couple of plays later Morris drifts backwards facing heavy pressure. He launches a rainbow pass off his back foot to the back of the endzone just before getting drilled. Coley runs underneath it for a 34 yard TD.
21-7 UM.
Golden was so super pumped up after that play that he ran onto the field and jumped on Morris. Shaw picked up another 20 yards on the 1st play and the quarter ends with UM still leading 21-7.
2nd Quarter:
USF sucks so they punt 3 plays later. Morris takes over again and finds Hagens on a check-down. Some guy tries to tackle him by the jersey. Hagens drags him and 3 other guys 17 yards down the field.
Morris is doing his thing with short passes to Crawford and Hurns to get to midfield. A couple of plays later Morris takes another hit and limps off the field. He never returned. If anyone was worried about Ryan Williams coming off the bench that ended after his first snap, where he hit Coley for a 33 yard gain. UM gets inside the 1, but Duke fumbles stretching out for the TD. USF takes over at their own 1. Three plays later USF's Offensive Coordinator calls for a naked bootleg in the shadow of his own endzone. Shayon Green was like "thanks, LOL" and threw Bench to the ground, forcing a fumble in the process. Jimmy Gaines was there to fall on it to complete the Sack/Fumble/TD combo.
28-7 UM. LOL at Bench's face in that pic. It was Green's first sack in his college career. It was also UM's first defensive TD since Perryman's pick 6 against Boston College last year.
USF goes 3 and out again. Dorsett dropped the punt but UM still recovered it. A shoving match ensued. Fentress was regulating. When UM's offense gets back on the field Williams is still looking awesome. He makes a beautiful back shoulder throw to Hurns down the sideline for a 31 yard gain.
Three plays later Duke walks into the endzone untouched for the TD to make it 35-7.
I swear, my notes for each play of this game for USF reads like a page in a Mad Libs book. "So then on the ensuing kickoff USF get's flagged for 2 guys being on the field wearing the same number". What a disaster they are. On 3rd down Tyrone Cornelius and Denzel Perryman blitz up the middle and pressure Bench into a wild throw. Tyriq McCord jumps up and snags it for the pick. It's all for naught because Duke fumbled it away again inside the 5 yard line. The whole play was pretty fubar'd from the beginning. Waters came in motion like they were faking the jet sweep before the handoff to get the defense on their heels. Waters ran right into Williams and he barely got the ball to Duke. Oh well.
USF goes 3 & out again. Some guy for them shanks the punt and it goes 2 yards.
UM tries to tack on a 23 yard field goal, but Matt Goudis pushed it too far to the right. The 1st half ends with UM still leading 35-7. The 411 yards of offense in the 1st half was a school record. Our 1st half performance made a lot of money for Floyd Mayweather today. The 35-7 halftime score was enough to hit on his bet. He won almost $87,000.
3rd Quarter:
USF opens the 2nd half throwing the ball all over the place. Before you know what's going on they're at UM's 35 yard line. Then UM's defense gets serious and starts making plays. USF needs points and decides to go for it on 4th and 4. No dice. UM takes over and on 3rd down USF jumps offsides. Ryan Williams knows he has a free play and he throws a bomb to Waters for a 54 yard gain down to the USF 11 yard line.
On the very next play Williams gets flushed out of the pocket and throws it to Coley, who makes a tremendous leaping catch for the touchdown. Some guy tried to push him out of bounds before his feet came down. Nice try, joke.
It looked like his feet didn't come down in bounds so it gets reviewed. On the replay it shows Coley getting his hand on the ground before his feet touch. The call is upheld and the score is now 42-7 UM.
USF and UM exchange punts for a while. Eventually UM decides to start doing something on offense again after Coley makes a nice punt return to the USF 42 yard line. Augustus Edwards enters the game and picks up 29 yards down to the USF 14. After picking up another 1st down, UM proceeds to hand it off to Edwards 3 straight times from the 1 for no gain. Aaron Lynch starts celebrating and blowing kisses to the crowd. LOL, you're still losing by 35 points A-Aron. Golden puts Crawford back in and he drags a couple of guys with him into the endzone.
49-7 UM. USF goes 3 and out again to end the 3rd quarter.
4th Quarter:
Corn Elder is back to receive the punt. Some guy clearly makes helmet to helmet contact to him. They threw a flag, then said it was ok because he wrapped his arms around him after he hit him in the head...Ok.
Gray Crow is now in the game, along with Alex Gall, Sean Harvey, and a few other guys who are way down on the depth chart. You aren't supposed to be able to get walk-ons on the field against what is allegedly a BCS school. On 3rd down Crow's pass gets deflected and Julius Forte returns it 11 yards for the TD.
Whatever. UM still leads 49-14.
UM goes 3 & and out. Then USF turned it over on downs because Raphael Kirby is awesome. On 1st down he sacked Bench when he scrambled to the right. On 2nd down he drilled some back up running back. On 3rd and 4th downs he pressured Bench into poor throws. Great series by him. Williams is now back in at QB, but he's playing with 3rd and 4th string guys so UM just punts it back to USF. USF gets to midfield, but then Deon Bush comes off the edge on a Safety blitz. He drills Bench which forces a fumble that is recovered by Luther Robinson.
Williams gets picked off on a really bad throw. 3rd string guys are on the field now and USF takes advantage of it and tries to get a score before the end of the game. They go 96 yards down the field and Bench throws a TD pass to Derrick Hopkins right in front of Bush with 2 seconds left on the clock. USF squib kicks it and the game ends. 49-21 UM.
Your football team sucks, Taggart.
We're 4-0!!!!! Georgia Tech is next week. Last year was a crazy shootout. We'll find out what time the kickoff will be sometime tomorrow. It's probably going to be at noon.
