I will say that was probably one of the more important drives of season and was disappointed we went Lyle, Mccormick, Brown sequence for three and out. I was interested to see why we have 2nd qtr lulls and we did not go to the guys who were cooking 1st qtr. Tha wasnt the time to get guys reps. I dont think martinez touched ball in 2nd, George had like 100 yards in 1st, stick to gameplan! Ride Restrepo, George, Arroyo, this was our season!
This I can agree with. Although, remember, exactly one week prior, this entire board was saying Lyle was our best back, he's "got the juice", Martinez and Fletcher are too slow, we need to get Lyle more touches in the first half, etc. etc. The coaches agreed. He played the 4th and 5th drives of the game.
At that point:
Martinez had 4 carries for 36 yards
Fletcher had 7 for 28 yards and a TD
And let's not pretend like we went away from Restrepo.
Again, on the 4th drive, we did go 3 and out.
But on the 5th drive, Restrepo caught a 25 yard pass on the first play. And we went to him on 3rd down before the punt.
If you want to nitpick anything, maybe it's Lyle in the game for those 2 drives. We only ran 7 total plays on those 2 drives, and Lyle got 2 carries to Fletcher & Martinez's zero. The game went from 21-0 to 21-14. But we had 5 drives, and we scored 21 points. That's 4.2 points per drive. Right now, Miami is #1 in the entire country in points per drive for the season, at 3.84. So we're #1 in America, and the first half was BETTER than our season average. Yeah, I'm not gonna nitpick the offense. The problem was, as usual, the defense was atrocious, and of course we fumbled AND they return it for a touchdown. We have now allowed at least 4 non-offensive touchdowns that I can remember (kick returns against Louisville and Wake, pick 6 against Cal, fumble for a TD against Syracuse). I think we've scored one (Louisville fumble in the endzone).
But again, in the 2nd half, Cuse got the ball 5 times, and scored 3 touchdowns....and really the last drive they weren't even trying to score. So they put up the same numbers in the second half that we did in the first half, which is 21 points on 5 drives, again that would be the BEST IN THE COUNTRY for a season. And one of those drives, they weren't even trying, they were just bleeding clock.
You score 38 points and gain 500+ yards of offense on the road, you expect to win a football game. Period.
And all of this to say, yes, if we want to nitpick Lyle in the game or maybe a Sam Brown target, OK. But what we're not gonna do is come here and say we should have gone up 21-0 and tried to bleed clock and run the ball and shorten the game, etc. That's insanity. We're not Georgia Tech or a service academy. Our quarterback is a Heisman finalist. If anything, we should have been MORE aggressive and known our defense was a sieve, so just go fast and tell Dawson you have to score on every single drive or we're gonna lose.
