By Scott Salomon
At his weekly press conference Monday afternoon, University of Miami Offensive Coordinator Shannon Dawson took ownership of the final play call Saturday night and admitted that the Canes should have just gone into victory formation and left the field with the win.
Instead, Dawson called a running play, wherein Don Chaney, Jr. fumbled and gave Georgia Tech life with 26 seconds remaining, that broke the hearts of Hurricane fans everywhere. Four plays later, Tech signal-caller Haynes King found Christian Leary, who slipped behind the secondary for the game-winning touchdown with :02 remaining in the game. Miami lost 23-20.
“What we did at the end was the wrong decision. I called it,” Dawson admitted quite candidly. “It was the wrong thing to do.”
Dawson might have accepted responsibility for the Blunder from Down Under, but the head coach, Mario Cristobal, had the chance to change the play, and did not, thus leading the Canes to their first loss of the 2023 season.
“I think any time you lose a game, it’s agonizing…to do what we do, you have to be a really tough person, and that’s what we have in this building.”
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Cristobal admitted that the buck stops with him and that he should have used one of Miami’s timeouts, regrouped, and then taken a knee.
“We should have taken a knee there at the end,” Cristobal said. “We should have taken a timeout there at the end. We thought we could get the first down, and we talked about two hands on the ball, but that isn’t good enough. That’s it. We fumbled the ball, and they went 75 yards in two plays. There is no excuse.”
Cristobal was not done yet as he added, “I should have just stepped in and said, ‘Hey, take a knee.'”
“I made the wrong call,” Cristobal said, in contradiction to what Dawson said, as Dawson said he made the call. “I take full ownership in not taking a knee and giving them the opportunity to have a couple extra plays and preventing us from sealing the win.”
On Monday morning, before the press conference, Cristobal was even more distraught on The Joe Rose Show on WQAM radio in Miami.
“There’s no way to rationalize it, Joe,” Cristobal admitted. “It’s the wrong decision. Should have kneeled it, and didn’t do it. So press, on man. Should have taken a knee and took it out of the player’s hands.
University of Miami alumnus and media mogul Dan Le Batard blasted Cristobal on his nationwide podcast, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz.
“From channel 80 to 87 on Sirius radio, on Sunday morning, every channel was speaking about this;” Le Batard said. “I thought surely it would stop if I got into NASCAR, but everyone was talking about how they lost and it was the worst loss in program’s history.”
Le Batard added, “What idiots. It was just a consensus, Everybody’s Sunday morning was ‘how can you lose that way and not take a knee.’
“Your decision has turned a season of hope into laughter in game five. And that is hard to overcome. You have a soaked depression on you. You are the reason why they lost period.”
Le Batard compared the game and the call to the “Miracle at the Meadowlands” when the Giants’ Larry Czonka fumbled in the final minute of the game when Joe Pisarcik, instead of taking a knee, handed the ball off and Czonka lost the handle. Herm Edwards of the Philadelphia Eagles picked the ball up and ran it into the opposite end zone giving the Eagles a dramatic come-from-behind 19-17 win.
“There was no clock management,” Le Batard said. “The Miracle at the Meadowlands happened because coaches did not believe in taking a knee.”
Cristobal lost two games at Oregon while serving as the Head Duck for not taking a knee and walking off with the win. In Miami’s four wins this season, they did not take a knee once.
Jon Weiner, also known as Stugotz and Le Batard’s sidekick on the podcast said that “this game will sit with Mario Cristobal for the rest of his life.”
