Welcome back to
Upon Further Review where each week I will detail the key plays from the previous weeks’ game. Stick with me, as I know many of you are down after another Miami loss brings their record to 2-7 in their last nine games.
Shaq and Finley are actually trying to communicate with one another even after the QB has the ball on the snap. Swing pass to the RB is wide open because they are flat-footed and not ready to play.
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Ivey doesn’t know what to do on the switch route and the WR runs right by him for a huge gain. Somewhere Mark Richt is saying, “I told you so, this play always worked in practice.”
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This should be a pick by Amari Carter but he has no idea where the ball is. It nearly hits him in the head. Safeties have been very poor to start the year.
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Williams waits a beat and he has DeeJay Dallas on the shallow cross for a 1st down as two defenders jumped Jeff Thomas. For some reason Jarren actually throws it to the double-covered guy! Very poor pocket presence as well as just straight staring down Jeff Thomas.
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Bandy absolutely bit on the double-move and was toasted. Knowles literally covered no one and moved coverage to the other side just before the snap.
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Play action was just killing North Carolina so they decided to just straight blitz it off both edges. Try to pull Donaldson and get him all the way across to the blitzing edge defender and that’s not a recipe for success. Bad thing is they had a big play behind it if they had protection.
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Either Carter picked the wrong gap or Bethel got ragdolled out of the hole. Knowles comes down and does make the tackle.
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Carter misses another tackle. Get eligible soon, Bubba.
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Carter targeting. Woof. Shaq blitzed right into the butt of the DT and took himself completely out of the play. (Not pictured)
Gotta make this tackle, Shaq. He gets a 1st down. He's got his arms around a true freshman QB a yard behind the LOS.
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Miami tries to tackle the football rather than the runner and gives up a TD. (Not pictured)
If Pope just hits this in there hard he has a nice 4-5 yards on 1st down. Trying to bounce this outside and he loses one. Gotta keep ahead of the chains.
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Finley beats a block, avoids a QB block, gets into the backfield on an end-around and tackles him for a loss. He’s our best defender right now. (Not pictured)
Jarren showed a howitzer on a slant outside of the LB and in front of the CB. (Not pictured)
Osborn gets in the way of Dallas on a big run and Dallas actually runs into him. Dallas got up HOT and yelled right in Osborn’s face about where he wanted him to go on that play (he wanted him to block the S). I heard him yelling on the broadcast.
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On 3rd & 2, Osborn with an awesome spin move on the fly sweep to pick up the 1st down. He made up for his blocking mishap there. (Not pictured)
Freshman mistakes from Clark, who blocks down, when he has to work inside-out on this play. The MLB blitzes right through the A-gap, which is the first place you have to protect. You can see two people block the edge, no one blocks the MLB, Jarren dumps it off, but it had no chance.
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Of course Baxa misses the kick. It might be time to start looking for kickers. (Not pictured)
That’s the freshman Clark sealing the edge on this run for Harris. We might have something with this kid, he’s been mostly good.
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Miami has two really fantastic RB’s (as you’d expect from a program like Miami). Harris jump cuts around the defender that Harley is blocking, then makes both of these guys in the backfield miss and nearly scores a TD on this one. My goodness, how did Miami lose this game?
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Scaife ducks his head on this play and Surrat runs right by him here (44 in middle of screen). If Scaife just makes a fairly simple block the RB walks into the end zone. Instead it’s a TFL as the RB has to bounce.
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3rd & 9 and Howell steps up, LB vacates his zone, pass goes right to WR who drops it. Miami got lucky there. (Not pictured)
Clark clips #55 in the shoulder and then gets to second level against LB. This OL looks so much better in this game thus far. Dallas cuts behind 55 and then shakes the S and gets into FG range.
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Freshman Clark is put on skates here. Jarren gets it out quick, but you can see Clark is a true freshman going against men at times in the power department.
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That’s your star TE getting the key kick-out block on the edge against #12. Dallas takes this to the 5-yard line. How did Miami lose this game?
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The next time you want to dog on a QB remember this shot right here. Barely any separation by the WR, edge defender leaping, LB’er screaming into the slant zone to take the throw away so he has to wait for him to clear but get it there before the other LB jumps it, S sees it and is coming into that zone immediately. Jarren’s back foot hits the ground and ball is out and perfect to Osborn for the TD. This is high level QB-play.
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Zion rides his man inside and out of the hole, Mallory holds up on the edge pretty well, Dallas hits the hole hard and gets the 1st down. (Not pictured)
This play is defended. Everyone is where they are supposed to be at this point. Shaq has that TE square-in near the sticks and has dropped where he should be. Rousseau has dropped into the hook zone and is spying the QB. LB is dropping to take RB and force the TE to go behind him. For some reason, Shaq just completely vacates his zone and runs towards the TE. When a receiver is running an in or crosser, you don’t run to them, you let their momentum bring them to you. Shaq is clearly uncomfortable in space and he gives up a 1st down here. A very big play in this game due to field position alone.
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I want this alignment to be wadded up and tossed into the fire. The far defensive player just outside the 40? That’s Garvin. The small RB standing on the 0? Garvin followed him out there in man coverage.
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The play was the double-pass. Here is Patchan getting juked out of his shorts, but you’ll also see the yellow flag flying in here and an OL eight yards downfield. The reason they picked the flag up is that you’re allowed to be down the field in college if the ball is caught behind the LOS. For me, Miami has long left opportunities to improve their offense out there by not taking advantage of this rule.
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Pinckney whips the RB’s block and gets the sack. Remember way back on 3rd-and-long when Shaq blew the coverage and allowed the 1st down? Here is the result of that drive. Those plays are game changers and we can’t be having our senior LB give them up.
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Jarren lets the rush impact his mechanics on this one. If he steps into the throw Harley doesn’t have to stop and catch the ball like a punt. He’s falling backwards as he throws it, even though the rush isn’t really there. You see instances where Jarren still has a ways to go.
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Takes Osborn here, but Brevin was the better play because then Brevin can turn it inside and fight for a TD, or take it outside and have a blocker. Osborn gets to the 5, but I think Brevin might score or get closer than the 5.
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I gave Mallory a lot of grief over his blocking last game. Here he takes this edge defender (2 showing) and drives him out of the hole. Harris scores behind it. Hodges has taken Realus’ job already. Baxa missed the PAT. It was an awful kick, low and right into the rush. Your big job on that kick is to make sure it is high.
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Finley sets the edge, gets off this block when the runner bounces, makes the TFL. He’s our best defender.
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Someone blew the block here. Either Gaynor or Clark blew this one. The edge defender is unblocked on purpose, but the DT is not intended to be left clean. You’ve got Brevin in the flat for a nice gain if they don’t let the DT run right in and sack Jarren. I’d have liked to see Jarren just turf the ball towards Brevin, but he isn’t there yet in his development.
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Clark loses his block against Strowbridge immediately. DeeJay is supposed to be there to help and doesn’t touch a soul. Jarren sacked on 3rd down. We need to get better at simply doing our assignments. The protection could’ve been there if protectors would just do their jobs. (Not pictured)
Patchan stunts inside and completely loses the edge contain. Bandy comes down in run support and absolutely whiffs. The run goes for a 1st down when Miami had it defended perfectly if people just stay where they’re supposed to be.
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Garvin forgets his first job is to take the RB gap and then the QB if he gives. He has to sit down and believe in his athleticism if he keeps it. The RB runs right by him as he’s sprinting towards the QB. Pinckney takes the wrong gap and this is a huge play.
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Little swing pass to the slot and Shaq is late getting out there to defend it and it goes for a 1st down. Shaq had a rough game. (Not pictured)
You simply cannot allow your defense to get out-leveraged like this. There is no contain on the edge and a simple vertical run has an easy path to the edge and Shaq doesn’t have the speed to cut this off. Not his fault, it’s a poor design.
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Shaq misses this tackle in the backfield, but luckily his mates rallied and got him down before the 1st down.
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Jeff Thomas tough catch in traffic on 3rd down. (Not pictured)
Everyone blocks well on this play. Donaldson shoulders that poor defender into next season. Brevin Jordan did exactly what I’ve been wanting to see more of as he comes across and wham blocks a DT, which allows the C to get to the second-level. You don’t get big runs without blocks from your WR’s and Jeff Thomas open this one for almost a house call.
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Blake Baker had a tough game. Plain and simple he called stunts and defensive plays that allowed his DL to give up the edge and lose leverage over and over again. Here, his edge loops inside, there is no one to replace him on the edge, a simple give goes around the edge for an easy 1st down. You have to replace if you’re losing leverage on the edge. Especially if you’re playing man coverage.
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This just makes my stomach hurt to watch on 4th and 17 from their own 40-yard line. No idea why we are so bunched up at the LOS here and it creates confusion for our defense, not the offense, who knows they have to get downfield. We get no pressure on the QB and just allow the WR to run down and catch an easy pass. It was just a busted coverage and was a bad defensive play call. Let your guys get back to the sticks, force a short completion, come up and make the tackle. Game over.
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Now, on the next play we call a coverage that we should’ve had on the 4th down play and just bail out with soft coverage and it’s an easy 1st down.
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Miami jumps offsides, the defensive player quits on the play. Howell floats one and Blades jumps too early (should’ve been picked). WR drops it, though looking back we wish he had caught it to give more time. (Not pictured)
We sent Bandy on another CB blitz (I strongly dislike those as a staple of the defense). Garvin rushes himself off the edge, UNC expected him to and hits a run right behind it. Bandy misses the tackle and it’s a big run. (Not pictured)
Gurvan Hall was completely lost on this play in coverage. Why he bit up so hard I do not know. The coverage technique is stay square, knees bent until the WR declares which direction he’s going and break on it. Hall did not do that at all. S play has been the biggest weakness on the defense this year.
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Jarren scrambles out to about the 45-yard line with :53 seconds remaining and Miami with three timeouts. That should’ve been a timeout right there.
Miami then completes a pass for eight yards. By the time they snapped the ball on 2nd down, there are now :31 seconds remaining in the game. They still have all three timeouts and have absolutely given away almost half of the remaining time in the game. It is utter madness. (Not pictured)
A pass to Harley gets you to the 32-yard line with :26 seconds remaining and Miami still has all three timeouts. They now have more time than they can conceivably run plays and call timeouts, so they’ve wasted at least one timeout they could’ve used.
Miami throws a bomb on 1st down and it’s incomplete. If Jarren sees that UNC has man coverage to the side of the receiver who ran the fly route, he’d see he has 20 yards of green grass to run to.
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Huge missed opportunity there.
Jarren then tries to scramble on this play on 2nd down and misses his checkdown standing right in front of him. Gets tackled on the FG line here.
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Miami never really advanced the ball with pretty easy chances to do so, but Baxa hooked the kick so badly I’m not sure that it would’ve mattered where they got the ball to and I don’t have a huge problem with Miami being more focused on a TD rather than a closer FG. I DO have a problem with Miami leaving two timeouts in their back pocket and not having a better understanding of clock management in this game.
Overall
I’ve watched the game a few times and still expect that Miami wins the game in the end each time. It’s pretty unbelievable that Miami could dominate the game the way that they did and lose. They played completely undisciplined at key moments on defense. They failed to execute in the red zone. They failed to make proper defensive calls in certain situations. They failed to understand time and score.
The talent difference between UNC and Miami was cavernous. To lose that game falls on pretty much everyone. For not being ready to play at the start of the game. For not staying disciplined. For not putting the team in a position to succeed.
It’s not time to hit the panic button, as Miami was clearly better than UNC, but it is time to worry if the growing pains many feared with a coaching staff so new in so many places are going to last longer than hoped and cost us a chance at the Coastal.