With a will and determination not matched on The Flats in some time, Georgia Tech wrecked Miami’s perfect season with a 28-23 victory in front of 47,358 mostly delirious fans.
Tech started a clearly injured Haynes King, a quarterback who barely could throw the ball but could put his head down and run with the football without fear. Backup quarterback Aaron Philo, a freshman, could throw it, and made big completion after big completion.
And the Tech defense, needing one more stop against arguably the nation’s best offense, got it with a strip and fumble recovery with less than two minutes to go to seal the victory.
“I stood in front of the team on Sunday night after practice. Everyone took a knee in front of me and talked about the capacity, ‘What is your max capacity? Can you increase your capacity? Can we make a 10% increase in our capacity of doing over the week and then in the way we play?’” Tech coach Brent Key said. “There was a look in their eye. Behind the doors we talked about a quiet confidence all week.”
King rushed for 93 yards on 20 carries, guarding against a sore right shoulder along the way. Philo threw for 67 yards and a touchdown.
The Hurricanes, ranked No. 4, got 348 yards passing and three touchdown passes from Heisman Trophy candidate Cam Ward. But Miami went 1-for-4 on fourth downs and did next to nothing to stop Tech’s ground game, which totaled 271 yards.
Tech (6-4, 4-3 ACC), bowl eligible in consecutive seasons for the first time since 2013-14, is now off until hosting North Carolina State on Nov. 21.
The win was Tech’s first over a top-five ranked team since Oct. 17, 2009, when it beat Virginia Tech 28-23.
“Kids played their absolute tails off,” Key said. “Hit with some adversity with some injuries, it’s like I said before, you get hit with injuries and adversity like that, no one really cares. They really don’t. When that happens, the standard of how you play and the standard to win doesn’t change. I think they’re understanding that now. They played that way.”
Leading 21-16 to start the fourth quarter Saturday, Tech got a huge play when Philo connected with former high school teammate Bailey Stockton for 27 yards on a third-and-17. Two plays later, King kept a read option and sprinted right for a 5-yard touchdown run, making the score 28-16.
“He’s special in a lot of ways, guys,” Key said of King.
Miami (9-1, 5-1) wasn’t rattled and cut the score to 28-23 with 6:07 left on Ward’s 38-yard touchdown throw down the left side to a streaking Xavier Restrepo.
The Hurricanes got the ball back one last time with 1:52 to play. After an incompletion, Ward was pressured on second down and hit from behind by defensive end Romello Height. The ball popped free, and defensive tackle Jordan van den Berg fell on it to clinch the upset victory.
Ninety-six seconds later, Tech students poured onto the field in unfathomable jubilation.
“Man, it was like a dream come true,” Height said of his strip sack. “You play college ball and live for moments like this. It’s a dream come true. Literally. That play, man, I’m gonna forever look back on it. Forever.”
Tech took the opening kickoff Saturday and wasted no time asserting itself. Haynes broke a 65-yard run up the gut on the game’s second play, then scored on a 16-yard run making the score 7-0 at the 12:49 mark.
Miami took only 50 seconds of playing time to answer with Ward’s 74-yard touchdown pass to Elijah Arroyo – a ball thrown on a slant route that Arroyo caught in stride and took to the house.
Andres Borregales kicked a 40-yard field goal for the Hurricanes midway through the first quarter to give the visitors a 10-7 lead.
The Jackets trailed by that score going into the second quarter, but were also in the midst of their longest drive of the season both in terms of play clock and number of plays. When King found Malik Rutherford on what turned into a 5-yard touchdown pass on a screen out to the left flat, the score completed a 17-play drive (the longest of the season for Tech) over 10 minutes and 45 seconds and gave Tech a 14-10 lead.
Tech held that lead over the final 12:02 of the first half and went into the locker room up four. The Jackets had 189 rushing yards at the half, while the Hurricanes totaled only 89 yards the rest of the second quarter while being shut out.
“Came back in at halftime and really reset it like it was a new football game. We knew we had to play 60 minutes,” Key said. “Our guys played. They played. They didn’t bat an eye. They didn’t blink. They didn’t flinch. The game plan was executed. They believed in the plan, and they were able to execute it.”
Miami started the third quarter with the ball and drove to the Tech 39, but on fourth down from there, needing only a yard, Ward rolled left and threw an incomplete pass. Tech took the ball the other way and went 61 yards in right plays to score on Philo’s 15-yard touchdown pass to a diving Chase Lane in the right side of the end zone.
The Hurricanes responded with an 83-yard drive that ended with Ward’s 8-yard fade pass to Isaiah Horton into the left corner of the end zone. Miami went for two after the touchdown, but Tech linebacker Kyle Efford chased down Ward for a sack, keeping the score at 21-16.
That’s how the scoreboard read as the teams stared up at the start of the fourth quarter, a 15 minutes that won’t be long forgotten in Atlanta.
“Shoutout to the offensive line. We definitely wouldn’t have had this game, being that successful running the football, operating our offense, if it wasn’t for them,” King said afterward. “Those five guys up front did a helluva job. They do it every week, preparing, doing whatever it takes. I kept looking at each one of ‘em in the eyes. I was like, ‘Let’s find a way. There’s no more excuses. We’re gonna find a way to win this one.’”
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