Alex Donno breaks down what was missing from the Miami Hurricanes in their 31-24 loss to Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl
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00:00 I'm not going to come out here and pretend that yesterday's game wasn't important, even though it
00:07 wasn't obviously a major bowl game. It was the pinstripe bowl. And yes, Miami did have about a
00:13 dozen players who either opted out or transferred. But I'm not going to lean on any excuses today,
00:19 guys, because the entire idea of what Mario Cristobal is trying to establish in Miami
00:28 is the principle that every game matters and every play matters. So I'm not going to sit
00:33 here and tell you, well, it was just the pinstripe bowl and it was a decimated roster.
00:37 Every game matters. Every play matters. That's the culture that they're trying to establish there.
00:42 And if that's the culture that you're building, you simply cannot hit that field yesterday after
00:47 a month off and begin that game like you didn't want to be there. Because that's what it looked
00:53 like in the first quarter. Miami didn't start tackling until the second quarter, and then they
00:58 kind of stopped in the fourth quarter, but they didn't start tackling until the second quarter.
01:03 The offense didn't wake up until the second quarter. And you allowed specifically one player
01:10 on the entire team to just demolish you. Rutgers star running back Kyle Mnangai, I didn't talk
01:18 about him enough pregame because quite frankly, I didn't expect him to do what he did. I know he's
01:22 a good player, but he turned Miami's defense into Swiss cheese yesterday. Rutgers won the game
01:29 only throwing for 84 yards because they didn't have to throw. And here's a stat that really
01:36 makes me sad about what Kyle Mnangai did to Miami's defense yesterday. According to Pro Football Focus,
01:42 he forced 14 missed tackles from Miami's defense. That's the most for any running back in bowl
01:51 season so far this year. I felt like I was watching the 2018 or 2019 Miami defense again,
01:58 where it was missed tackle after missed tackle. We turned back the clock to that era. And again,
02:03 guys, this is a Miami Hurricanes team that hasn't won a bowl game since 2016. Prior to that,
02:10 they hadn't won a bowl game since 2006. They're 1-12 in their last 13 bowl games.
02:17 It's just the same old broken record. And based on the effort, obviously, I will still take Mario
02:24 Cristobal over any of these recent previous coaches. I've not completely jumped ship. I'm
02:30 not going rats off a ship on this. But when it comes to the bowl game effort, it doesn't seem
02:34 to matter if it's Manny Diaz or Mark Richt or Randy Shannon or Al Golden or whoever. It's just
02:43 the same old thing come bowl season. And it gets really, really frustrating. There was zero effort
02:50 to block on that Dylan Joyce punt that was one of the turning points in the football game. Miami
02:56 had scored 17 unanswered points before that. They were up 17-14. They had a lot of life at that
03:02 point in the third quarter. And it was Jake Lichtenstein who just completely missed or didn't
03:08 even try to block. That ended up being a blocked punt and a Rutgers touchdown on that play. That
03:13 was a turning point. Miami never had another lead after that. And folks, for all of my negative
03:21 takeaways from the game yesterday, the biggest one that I have, and this one to me, and again,
03:29 I know you didn't have a lot of depth because of players who have transferred out or opted out,
03:34 and there were still some guys injured yesterday. However, tough love was still needed when it came
03:40 to the Jacoby George situation. When you think about any of the plays that were missed, any of
03:46 the blocks that were missed, any of the mistakes that were made, nobody on that roster yesterday
03:53 did more to single-handedly sabotage that game than number three on offense. That was an absolute
04:00 disaster class on the field and with the extracurriculars. I mean, Ja'Kari Brown hit him
04:07 in stride first pass of the game on a deep ball that should have been, would have been a 75-yard
04:12 touchdown. He dropped it, didn't even really look like he tried. And then repeatedly, three times,
04:18 three times this dude gets flagged for unsportsmanlike personal fouls. And those are
04:22 obviously the most costly penalties out there because those aren't football plays, right?
04:26 That's not being too aggressive in a tackle. That's not lowering your head too much by accident.
04:31 That's not being a half-second late, pushing a guy out of bounds. You're talking about taunting.
04:37 You're talking about allowing yourself to get provoked by the other team. That's just selfish.