Game Recap: Hurricanes defense saves stagnant offense in 17-12 win over Central Michigan

Miami has to be grateful that they got out of this game alive. A lot of upsets happen in this crazy sport of college football and Miami was able to avoid one with a 17-12 win over Central Michigan and moved to 2-2 on the year.

It wasn't pretty though. You couldn't script a worse game for the Hurricanes against a Central Michigan team that won just one game in 2018. This was a team that Miami should politely beat the crap out of and move on to the next one.

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Instead, Miami found themselves in a 7-2 battle through a half with the Chippewas.

The defense, apart from three penalties that extended CMU drives and giving up five third down conversions, did their job in the first half. Greg Rousseau’s third sack of the year forced a fumble that he was also able to recover that halted a Chippewas drive. Jonathan Garvin also had a sack that forced a fumble that gave the Hurricanes possession.

Photo by Mark Brown/Getty Images

Overall, four sacks and seven tackles for loss at the halfway point seems like a dominant enough performance to have your team in a successful position.

Wrong.

The Hurricanes offense looked stagnant, to put it nicely. Through two quarters of football, Canes backs averaged 1.6 yards per carry on 17 attempts.

Jarren Williams was sacked three times, one of which resulted in a safety, and CMU had five total tackles for loss

Miami also converted just a single third down on six attempts.

And after hitting tight ends Brevin Jordan and Will Mallory for a combined 86 yards on three catches throughout the first two drives of the game, the first of which resulted in a one-yard Deejay Dallas touchdown, they failed to get the ball back in the hands of either of those two until the third quarter.

You have to question that. The only two guys that are making things happen did not get the ball after displaying that they were CLEARLY the mismatches in this ball game.

That changed for a moment in the first drive of the second half. After Williams hit Mike Harley for 22-yards to spark the drive, he found his tight end Jordan for 27-yards, which led to a six-yard touchdown to redshirt senior K.J. Osborn, his third of the year.

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The Hurricanes punted on their following two drives in the third after failing to get anything going. If not for this Hurricanes defense being rock solid, this would have been much more of a game up to this point.

But the Hurricanes finally broke through the drought and put together a 9 play 73 yard drive that resulted in a field goal to give the Hurricanes a 17-5 lead early in the fourth.

And Central Michigan responded with a touchdown for the first time in this game.

A would-be Hurricanes goal-line stand (or three) wound up resulting in two pass interferences, an unnecessary roughness penalty on defensive end Scott Patchan, and an offsides call on lineman Pat Bethel, which basically rolled out the red carpet for the Chippewas offense that eventually punched in a one-yard touchdown by quarterback David Moore.

It was a 17 play 55 yard drive that took up 8:25 of time that brought the game within five points.

And after draining down much of the clock on the ensuing drive, the Hurricanes pinned the Chippewas too deep in their own territory with too little time and an Al Blades Jr. interception sealed the game.

Notes

• The Hurricanes averaged just 1.6 yards per carry against what was the 85th ranked rushing defense in the country.
• They were 1-10 on third down.
• They were sacked four times and tackled behind the line of scrimmage nine times.
• The defense played extremely well, allowing just 1.1 yards per carry themselves and collected four sacks and nine sacks as well.
• Shaq Quarterman had a career-high 14 tackles in today’s win