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CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- "Tom Brady. Tom
Brady."
Those were the words Miami offensive coordinator James Coley
kept saying to his senior quarterback, Stephen Morris, as he prepared to
take the field for Miami's last chance at staying
undefeated.
Weird, right? After all, Morris had looked nothing like Tom
Brady through much of Thursday night's game at North Carolina. He was
wildly inaccurate and he threw four interceptions. It got so bad that
former Hurricane Jonathan Vilma even
tweeted that Miami needed to stop calling pass
plays.
And Miami didn't look much like the No. 10 team in the
country, either.
Ultimately, though, both Morris and his team were able to do
what good teams do: win games they have no business
winning.
Morris didn't have to do much on the final drive anyway. It
was 13 plays and running backs Dallas Crawford and Eduardo Clements
combined for 56 yards on 10 carries, including the go-ahead touchdown by
Crawford with 16 seconds left.
Morris wasn't asked to throw until the seventh play of the
drive. His last three passes had gone incomplete (including his fourth
interception). And still he kept hearing "Tom Brady. Tom
Brady."
"Meaning of that was a lot of things weren't going (Brady's)
way when he was playing his game (against the Saints) and somehow, he
just pulled it out on that last drive to lead his team down and get a
touchdown and score. So that was my mentality," Morris said.
"Obviously everything went terribly wrong for me offensively.
Our biggest focus was let's try to just put that behind us and focus on
this last drive, really."
His three attempts on the drive were all completions, for 34
yards. He did just what he had to, and he was on target. And he was the
one his teammates were looking toward, even with all the mistakes he had
made.
And the drive might not have happened without former Miami
star Clinton Portis, either. He pulled Crawford, who was in for an
injured Duke Johnson, aside before the 90-yard, game-winning march
began.
"Any time you can get a pep talk from a great like Clinton
Portis, it calmed me down," Crawford said. "He told me, 'This is your
moment. This is what you’ve been waiting on.' It paid off."
With starters and key contributors going down left and right,
starting with star tailback Johnson and then wideout Phillip Dorsett
and a number of others getting banged up, things looked dire for the
Hurricanes as they trailed 17-13 at halftime.
And actually, Vilma's tweet was right on the
money. Miami changed its approach when the second half
started.
Miami's offensive line, which had been pushed around in the
first half, asserted itself in the second. The Hurricanes ran the ball
at will.
"What clicked was at halftime when we were in the locker
room, we were just going over things -- it was really just the offensive
line and me just sitting down, and we were just talking," Morris said.
"We just had to start running the ball on first down. We had too many
negative plays on first down, allowing us to get in terrible
third-and-long situations, allowing the (UNC) defense to go into all
their crazy coverages. I really wanted to put that on the offensive
line’s shoulders -- let’s run the ball."
They did. And it's probably not a coincidence that Miami
didn't face a third down longer than 2 yards on its final
drive.
Miami head coach Al Golden seemed like he was still in a
state of shock after the game. He was too exhausted to even give an
opening statement. After losing the turnover and time of possession
battles on the road, not to mention trailing by double digits, the
Hurricanes were more than fortunate to win, and he knew
that.
But for this team to be special, it has to find a way to win
games like that. And that's precisely what this team did.
"We have four interceptions. We lose pivotal players. And
everybody just rallies," Golden said.
"It just says a lot about the guys, man. There's no turning
back for this group right now. They're not turning back. There's no
finger-pointing. They're too invested in each other and what they've
given and what they sacrificed to turn back. I told them all week, we're
going to have to win this game by playing till there’s four zeroes and
man, it was right to the very end."
In the past, Golden pointed out, Miami has lost games like
this. Too many times, the Canes have come out on the wrong end of a
close game.
You have to be lucky and good, but Golden said there’s
something else at play, too. Belief.
And Miami believes again.
"All I can say is we've lost a bunch of those. Sometimes you
lose those because you don't believe that you're going to win or you
start thinking about the outcome and you don't execute, or you really
didn't pay the price all year long and you can't finish with the other
team from a conditioning standpoint or a mental toughness
standpoint," Golden said.
"None of that was the case in this game."
