Miami quarterback Carson Beck had three minutes to either get his team back home for a national championship game or go home wondering what could have been.
Beck delivered a game-winning drive for the No. 10 Hurricanes (13-2) with a 31-27 victory over No. 6 Ole Miss (13-2) in the College Football Playoff semifinal at the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday night. He led a 15-play, 75-yard drive in 2:55 and capped it with his own touchdown run.
“I told them, ‘We got three minutes for the rest of our life,’” Beck told ESPN afterward. “No (expletive) else matters. … Nothing else matters, we got three minutes to go through this.”
“I mean, everything we’ve worked for since January, everything we’ve been through, all the adversity that we’ve faced, all comes down to three minutes in the semifinals,” Beck added.
A transfer from Georgia, Beck had been to the College Football Playoff before with the Bulldogs, but from the sideline due to injury or not being the starter. Beck joined a Miami program that had been on the rise again after years of mediocrity, and he led them to the playoffs despite needing a low seed from the playoff committee to get in.
Miami will play in the national championship game for the first time since 2003 in its home stadium on Jan. 19.
Hurricanes Overcome Adversity Before Playoff
Miami didn’t get to play in the ACC championship game because of tiebreakers, and debate ensued about whether or not the Hurricanes should get into the playoff with two losses and no conference title. The Hurricanes have since beaten Texas A&M and last year’s national champion, Ohio State, before Thursday’s win over Ole Miss.
“It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life,” Beck said. “I’m so proud of this team. We never flinched.”
“I mean, in the face of adversity when we had to respond, we responded. We never gave up. I looked to the guys on the sideline, and you could just see it in their eyes,” he added.
Miami looked like it would just shut down Ole Miss in the first quarter, but the Rebels’ made it a shootout instead with a big second quarter and then a big fourth quarter. The Hurricanes had an answer for each Rebels score, and Beck, who had -6 yards rushing for the game, found a way in the end.
Miami’s Mario Cristobal: ‘They Know Exactly Who They Are’
Miami head coach Mario Cristobal couldn’t be happy with his team’s 10 penalties for 74 yards lost, but he was pleased with how they found a way to win despite giving up a season-high 27 points.
“Honestly, football isn’t complicated; people are,” Cristobal told reporters afterward. When you start jumping offsides and you get some of these pre-snap penalties, you complicate things for yourself.”
“I think it’s the simplicity of these guys. They know exactly who they are, and they know what it took to get us to this point and they were not settling for getting to this point just to get here. 1-0 was the objective,” Cristobal added. “They weren’t going to let anything get in the way. So all they did was do what they do every single day on the Greentree Practice Field and did it to an elite level to finish the game. Again, I can’t speak more highly or proudly enough of them and their resilience.”
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