Inexplicable. Inacceptable. Incomprehensible.
The “U” is infuriatingly back.
Back like no one wanted. Back to its frustrating football of recent decades.
Back again with step-on-the-rake mistakes and self-inflicted pain in Saturday’s 26-20 loss at Southern Methodist that takes big-picture ideas like the ACC Championship Game and College Football Playoff off the table.
Lose once like this to No. 16 Louisville, as Miami did a couple of weeks ago, and you get your seasonal mulligan.
Lose again to an unranked SMU program that hadn’t beaten a Top-10 team in more than four decades and it doesn’t just lead to wading through an opposing crowd tearing down goalposts and celebrating like it’s 1983.
It also defines your season. Splat. Saturday was a second-guesser smorgasbord and everything Miami fans feared starting right at the top with coach Mario Cristobal.
Yes, he can recruit like few others. Yes, he can build like only the best coaches in college sports do. Yes, yes, he had Miami on the edge of something special with a No. 2 ranking that dropped to a still-worthy No. 10 before Saturday.
The lingering question, the one Cristobal has to answer for another winter, is whether he has the in-game imagination to deliver what a moment needs and the creative flair to inspire the needed confidence in a close finish.
Tie game. One timeout. Twenty-five seconds left, meaning four plays are possible.. Ball at the Miami 25-yard line right after SMU tied it with a savage drive.
Miami can win the game here if all goes right. It can at the very least pressure a SMU defense that doesn’t always react to pressure well. You can even play it conservative by calling a screen pass to the most dynamic player in every game, Malachi Toney.
What you shouldn’t have it quarterback Carson Beck take a knee, run out the clock and take your chances in overtime.
Miami didn’t lose because of that. Not at all. But that tells of a team missing mindset, the arrogant gear of its great program predecessors. Can you imagine Jimmy Johnson going quietly into overtime like that? Butch Davis?
Miami lost because of something more fundamental in football. It lost because of its two turnovers to SMU’s none and because it had 12 penalties for 96 yards to SMU’s four penalties.
You can question some of those penalties. None was more questionable or costly than a fourth-and-9 SMU faced on its game-tying drive in the final minutes. The play could end the game if Miami stops it.
Cristobal called a late timeout just before the snap — so close the center still snapped the ball. A rushing Marquise Lightfoot slammed into SMU quarterback Kevin Jennings for a personal foul penalty.
“He didn’t hear the whistle!” Cristobal yelled to officials.
One play doesn’t lose a game like this. Miami’s defense held SMU to 23 yards rushing on 25 carries in regulation. By comparison it ran 40 times for 159 yards — and only one rush was for negative yardage.
Of course, that one negative rush was a costly one. On fourth-and-1 at the SMU 29 late in the third quarter, Mark Fletcher was stopped up the middle. It happened again a few minutes later on third-and-1 from the SMU 26 and Miami settled for a field goal.
Beck threw the interception at the goal line in overtime that led to SMU’s winning possession. But this wasn’t a game the quarterback lost. There was plenty of blame to spread around all the way to the top.
Emotional? You bet. There was Cristobal and offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson trading heated, headphones-coming-off words on the sideline in the fourth quarter in the manner you don’t expect from coaches.
There was Miami players walking off as SMU fans covered the field.
There was another disheartening day for Miami fans ending a season’s big hopes.
“When you make that many mistakes as an organization, you allow yourself to be put in a position where you can get beat,’’ Cristobal said. “And that’s what happened today.
All credit it to SMU. All questions to Miami.