Miami’s undefeated season is no more. The Hurricanes laid an egg in the regular season finale, losing to a bad Pittsburgh Panthers team 24-14. This was pretty much a Murphy’s Law game, where everything that could go wrong, did.

Here’s our game recap by Stefan Adams

Here are our 3 stars from this game by Matt Washington

And with that, I present you with The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly:

The Good

• Miami fans traveled well! There was plenty of orange and green in the stands, and they were loud enough to be heard through the TV broadcast (for a while, at least). Bravo to all who went. Good stuff.
• Ahmmon Richards’ touchdown to open the scoring. MAN, that was a great play.

• Sheldrick Redwine laying the BOOM to cause a fumble.

• Braxton Berrios’ TD. Double move, wide open, and Rosier hit him in stride for 6. Great play (but I hate it came at such an inconsequential time).
• Miami got 2 turnovers so we saw the chain twice.
• Tackling (wrapping up) was better than last week.
• Sheldrick Redwine. He played one hell of a game today, with beautiful coverage to break-up a potential TD pass, and several big hits, including the one I included above. 12 tackles, a forced fumble, and a PBU. Yeoman’s work.
• Zach McCloud. He wasn’t perfect, but his 10 tackles were big, and he was seen running from sideline to sideline making plays. Improvement over recent games. Good job, 53.
• Michael Pinckney had 2 TFLs.
• RJ McIntosh. Was disruptive for most of the day, and had 2 TFLs himself.
• Receivers routinely got open. Very open. WIDE open. Great job by them winning on nearly every route.

The Bad

• Losing. Losing is bad. Losing is always bad.
• Blowing the chance to finish the regular season undefeated. Need I say more?
• Injuries to Christopher Herndon IV and Ahmmon Richards. They got hurt and weren’t seen on the field again. Richards was a recurring thing. Losing Herndon in the 2nd half was a big loss.
• Jaquan Johnson also got dinged up, but he came back in the game later so that was only partially bad.
• OL run blocking. Pitt sold out to stop the run, and Miami’s OL wasn’t able to do anything about it.
• Following that, the run game was bad. 23 carries for 45 yards. 1.96 yards per carry. oof
• Allowed Pitt to convert 8-17 on 3rd down and 1-1 on 4th down. 9-18 on money downs. Baaaaaaaad.
• Allowing Pitt to go 2-2 in the red zone.
• Gave up 20 first downs to Pitt, including several on Pitt’s final TD drive.
• Another sub-50% passing day for Rosier (15/34 = 44.1%). Gotta tighten that up.
• 6 penalties for 52 yards.
• Only 14 first downs on offense
• Only 5 TFL
• Only 1 sack

The Ugly

• The way we lost. Losing is bad, losing LIKE THIS is ugly.
• Yet again, Miami allowed a freshman QB to do numbers against them. Pitt’s QB went 18/29 for 193 yards and a TD. He also ran for 60 yards and 2 TDs. Terrible.
• Malik Rosier. Absolutely terrible today. Miami had receivers running WIDE OPEN all day long, and Pitt dared Rosier to hit them, and he couldn’t. In specific, he missed Thomas (2x), Berrios, and Richards who were all wide open and could have scored. He also missed a wide open Berrios on a corner route that would have been a big first down when the score was 10-7.
• To be specific on Rosier, he went 15-34 for 187 yards and 2 TDs but threw 5 interceptable passes (at least) that Pitt didn’t catch, and was all over the place.
• Rosier was so bad today that he got benched for a series.
• That benching decision was terrible as well because MIAMI HAD A CHANCE AT THAT TIME!!!!! But Richt wanted to prove a point (he told Rosier “I expect more from you” when he made the benching decision) and did just that.....by putting in an overmatched QB to go 3 and out when Miami could have made it a game. Atrocious.
• Evan Shirreffs’ one drive in the game. 0-2 with 2 batted passes and a sack. Just when you thought things couldn’t have gotten worse than what Rosier was doing to that point, Shirreffs proved that to be false.
• Did I mention the run game had 45 yards on 23 carries? Because that’s uuuuugly
• Offensive Line play. They got straight dominated all day long, and the QB situation didn’t help them at all, but still, not good enough.
• A 74-59 offensive play disparity in favor of Pitt. Giving up that many plays to an objectively bad team drops this to the Ugly this week.
• 4-15 on 3rd down conversions. Woof. Such garbage.
• Allowing Pitt to hold the ball for 36:30. Missing receivers for short drives and some atrocious 3rd down numbers left the defense on the field for far too long. Terrible.
• Stale offense. I know it’s hard to be diverse and dynamic when not executing, but this was some rudimentary stuff today. Just terrible all around.
• Punting. Zach Feagles seems to be getting worse. A 13 yard punt? Bruh. Come on. That’s horrible.
• Miami receivers were held and interfered with SEVERAL TIMES with no calls.
• On the other side, Pitt got the benefit of the exact same play, called a penalty on Miami, on each of the ensuing drives. For shame, ACC Refs.
• At halftime, when Pitt was up 10-7 and numerous holds went uncalled, this stat was circulated. And it’s atrocious. When we say Miami has to beat the other team and the refs, this is what we’re talking about.

• Which means things like this went uncalled for holding (look at Trent Harris, top of the line)

• Pitt wasn’t called for holding at all today, so add however many plays they ran in the 2nd half to that total of plays-since-an-opponent-was-called-for-offensive-holding-against-miami
• Pitt player rocking a homemade turnover chain (given to him by a fan as he exited the field) in post-game interviews. I get it. We’ve been stunting on teams all season and now are the team getting stunted on. I just don’t like it.

• I feel like I could go on and on, but you’ll add plenty in the comments section, I’m sure.

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Team Grades

Offense: F

232 yards of total offense. 14 points. 3.9 yards per play. All season lows. BY FAR. Receivers running free all damn day and the only 1 that got hit with the ball was Berrios on his TD. Run game with 45 yards and 2.0 yards per carry. Deplorable performance all around. I’d give this lower than an F if I could. Disgusting. Atrocious.

Defense: B-

Got 2 early turnovers. Held Pitt in check for most of the day. Yeah, they broke down at the end, after bring on the field FOREVER that was bound to happen. Missed a couple INTs, but tackled well for the most part. Got bullied a bit when Pitt runners would ALWAYS fall forward, but until that last 4th down conversion (for a TD), they’d given up 17 points under tough circumstances all day. SHOULD have been enough to get a win, but with the offense non-existent, that didn’t happen. Details to fix, but a yeoman’s effort by the defense today.

Special Teams: D-

Berrios had 1 nice PR. Thomas had some okay KRs (but had to do that too many times). Badgley was 2-2 on XPs. The issue today was Feagles’ punting. Several shanks and short punts put the defense in tough spots to defend short fields. Simply put: he has to be better.

Coaching: F

A total letdown. Out schemed. Out motivated. No adjustments. No execution from the team. Just bad all around. In a spot like this, for a staff of this quality, I expect more. Monumental failure today.

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That’s it for another week of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Hop in the comments and keep the conversation going.

Losing sucks, but I’m here for my school and this team no matter what.

Go Canes