Miami Hurricanes Football: Thoughts From the Morning After: Florida State

It’s been almost twelve hours since the game ended and I’m still ridiculously sad. The Miami Hurricanes led for 49 minutes last night and trailed for 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Unfortunately, those were the last few minutes of the game and it gave the Florida State Seminoles the 30-26 win.

Before I talk about the game, I just want to say this: I was in the stands last night (Shoutout to section 153) and the fans were amazing. I’ve never seen Sun Life Stadium like that and it definitely was NOT “Doak South” like some FSU people like to claim. It was a predominantly orange crowd and that’s a really good thing. The atmosphere was unreal and players and recruits notice all that stuff.

Now, let’s try and talk some football without crying.

How good is Brad Kaaya? I still don’t believe that he’s a true freshman and that he was graduating in May of this year. For a large portion of the game, Kaaya was the best quarterback on the field. And that’s a Heisman trophy winner on the other side. The play-calling was conservative in the second half (although this is NOT why Miami lost) and Kaaya still threw for 316 yards, 2 touchdowns and the game-ending interception to Jalen Ramsey at the end.

Duke Johnson was dealing with some cramp and leg issues throughout the game but he had a good game with 130 yards and a touchdown. He got a heavy workload in the second half, but credit the FSU defense. They did a nice job on him. Johnson is the first Canes player to eclipse the 5,000 total yard mark, that’s remarkable.

If you’re not completely excited about Brad Kaaya’s future, you need to go ahead and check yourself.

A lot of people are blaming the coaches and the play-calling in the second half for the loss. I didn’t like the conservative approach, but I’m not blinded enough to say that was the reason Miami lost. The Hurricanes left 4 points on the board from missed kicks and had 2 fumbles right around the 50-yard line. If Clive Walford and Standish Dobard don’t fumble those, who knows? Also, Braxton Berrios dropped a ball in the end zone that would’ve put the Canes up 30-10. Against a team as good as the Seminoles, you have to play close to perfect ball. The Hurricanes had mistakes, yet the only lost by 4.

The defense played really well early on. They were getting to Jameis Winston and they were playing both the run and the pass well. As the game wore on, there was no pressure on Winston and he started to pick them apart on crossing routes down the middle. That opened up the running game and we saw Dalvin Cook run for the game-winning touchdown. Which sucked. A lot.

I know this is a really hard thing to do right now, but we should all be extremely excited about the future of this program. I saw Tracy Howard post a “#InKaayaWeTrust” post on Instagram and that shows how much this team rallies around their quarterback. When did we see that for Stephen Morris or Jacory Harris? The answer is never.

Now, some bad news: Deon Bush seem to have tweaked his hamstring but he was available to come back, so we’ll see how his availability goes this week. Anthony Chickillo went down in the fourth quarter and Chad Thomas tweeted to pray for Chickillo, which is never a good sign. Chickillo has been a warrior for Miami and it would suck to see him go down for the rest of the year.

Hopefully we find out more on Chickillo later today.

The Canes can’t win the Coastal after the Georgia Tech win over Clemson, but they can show the fans what they’re made of by winning at Virginia and against Pittsburgh. Add in a bowl game win, and the Canes will have a lot to look forward to as they get ready for spring ball.

The end result of last night’s game absolutely sucked, and I hate having to rely on moral victories, but the Canes hung in for 60 minutes against the reigning national champions, and that’s something to be proud of.

Oh and, those uniforms were *insert multiple flame emojis here*