Miami football team showed most explosive offense of 2019
Several big plays on offense led to the Miami football team’s 27-10 victory at Florida State on Saturday afternoon. Hurricanes quarterback Jarren Williams had his second 300 yard game of his career.
Jarren Williams got the Miami offense running early. On the Hurricanes’ second drive of the game, two 40 plus yard pass plays led to the first touchdown in the 64th Florida State Miami football game. Junior running back DeeJay Dallas took a screen pass 42 yards to set up the Hurricanes first touchdown of the game.
Two plays after Dallas’ gallop into Florida State territory, Williams connected with Jeff Thomas for a 39-yard touchdown to give the Hurricanes a 6-0 lead. Camden Price added an extra point to make it 7-0 Miami. The Hurricanes connected on another long play on their next TD drive. Williams and Mike Harley had a 34-yard play.
Dallas ran it in from the six on the next play to put Miami up 14-3. A 29-yard Price field goal on the last play of the first half gave the Hurricanes a 17-3 lead heading to halftime. Miami had only 30 yards in the third quarter before more big plays put the game away. A Cam Akers TD for Florida State in the third cut the score to 17-10.
Williams created some distance between Miami and Florida State in the fourth quarter when he hit sophomore Dee Wiggins in stride on the first play of the drive for a 56-yard TD to push the Hurricanes margin to 24-10 with 12:05 remaining in the game. Williams added a 26-yard completion to Thomas on the next drive.
Price made a 32-yard field goal to conclude the drive the close out the scoring to give Miami a 27-10 victory. Miami was missing Dallas and Thomas last week. The juniors returned as did senior linebacker, Michael Pinckney. Miami head coach Manny Diaz spoke about Dallas and Thomas’ returns on Saturday and the big plays.
"“DeeJay is the heart and soul of our team. His ability to finish runs and make big plays—like the screen on the first drive. To have Jeff, they came up and pressed us even though they had not shown a lot of press coverage this year, and we ran two posts and it was one-on-one and Jeff just ran by the guy.That is a dynamic you need in your offense. It was similar with Dee Wiggins in the fourth quarter. We knew that Jarren could hit shots down the field. There was a myth that he was not capable of doing that and I think he dispelled that today.”"
At least four plays by the Miami offense of 30 or more yards was critical. The Hurricanes were 63rd in FBS with 17 plays of 30 or more yards through their first eight games of the season. Their three plays of 30 plus yards against Florida State was nearly one more than their per game average for the season.
Williams getting healthy made a big difference in the passing game. The redshirt freshman’s 313 passing yards were the most for the Hurricanes since Williams and N’Kosi Perry combined for 469 in a 42-35 loss to Virginia Tech last month. The Miami passing offense that was anemic in 2018 has four 300 yard games this season.