N’Kosi Perry played with separated shoulder for Miami football

N’Kosi Perry gained a lot of admiration from the Dan Enos and likely from his Miami football teammates in Saturday’s loss to Georgia Tech by finishing the game playing with a separated shoulder.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback N’Kosi Perry has shown a lot of improvement for the Miami football team in 2019. Perry has shown leadership and toughness by sticking with Miami after being beaten out to be the Hurricanes first-team signal-caller in training camp in August. Perry’s toughness showed against Georgia Tech.

The Ocala, Florida native played against the Yellow Jackets with a separation to his non-throwing left shoulder according to Miami offensive coordinator Dan Enos. Perry led the Miami football team to their only ACC victory this season over Virginia last week. He played well enough to lead Miami to a win against Georgia Tech.

The admiration that Enos had for Perry being courageous and displaying toughness will earn him a lot of credence with the Hurricanes QB coach and likely with his teammates. In addition to the notable performances against Virginia and Georgia Tech, Perry nearly brought Miami back from a 28 point deficit against Virginia Tech.

Enos stated in his words “the admiration” that he has for Perry’s “courage and toughness.” The tolerance of pain that Perry had tolerated on Saturday to try and help Miami overcome an abundance of adversity was admirable. With five games left in what has thus far been a lost season, Miami can rally around Perry.

"“I can’t express enough the admiration I have for his courage and toughness. I have not seen that much in my career, a guy that went through the hit that he went to and with the injury he had to come back and play and he took off and scrambled one time.He was playing with an extreme amount of pain and trying to win a game for his team. That type of courage and that type of competitiveness, I have the utmost respect for guys like that. That is big stuff right there in my opinion. He played a good game. He was solid. He was watching the rush a couple times.We had some open plays to the receivers and he was watching the rush a little too much, but it is hard to criticize a guy with a separated shoulder.”"

Perry missed the end of Miami’s opening drive of the second half but played the remainder of the game. Miami was shutout in the second half because of the offense’s inability to finish drives and missed chipshot field goals from Bubba Baxa and Turner Davidson.

Davidson also missed a field goal in the first half. As head coach Manny Diaz discussed in the postgame if the Miami football team makes those three field goals the offense scores 30 points and the mood after the game from the team and fanbase would have been very different. Still, the offense and team share the loss.

Perry was potentially injured on the opening drive of the game after a strip-sack that Georgia Tech recovered in the Miami end zone for a touchdown to take a 7-0 lead. The Hurricanes were trying to set up a screen to get more room for punter Louis Hedley. It was a risky play call deep in Miami territory.

"“The right tackle was supposed to block the edge blitzer, but N’Kosi was startled that the guy was free and he froze for a second. We would have had a big play to DeeJay, but N’Kosi froze and instead of scrambling and trying to buy another tick or two, he made a huge mistake in not protecting the football.He was not expecting the blitzer to be free and he was free and that is one of those moments when you need to have a plan as a quarterback. He didn’t have a plan and he put us in a hole early.”"

Enos has likely already gone through the play with Perry, Jarren Williams and the other Miami QBs as he explained above. It was a devastating moment in the game, but one that can be used as a teaching moment. Perry finished the game with 94 yards in each half and all of his second-half attempts happened after the injury.