Mario Cristobal’s late-game decision is peak insanity in key ACC game

The best formation in football is “victory formation”. With a lead at the end of the game, taking a knee, especially with a one-possession lead is a no-brainer. Well, for everyone except Mario Cristobal.

The University of Miami held a 20-17 lead over visiting Georgia Tech Saturday night at home and had a third down with less than 40 seconds left. All that was needed was one final snap, a kneel-down and the Hurricanes would be 5-0 heading into next weekend’s ACC showdown at North Carolina in a battle of two undefeated teams.

As Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend.”

Mario Cristobal makes as bad a decision as college football has seen

For some reason, Cristobal decided to hand the ball off to running back Don Chaney, Jr. and he fumbled the ball inside the Yellow Jackets 30-yard line. Again, all that was needed was to take a knee. Georgia Tech recovered the fumble and a 30-yard pass from Tech QB Haynes King to Malik Rutherford, which set up a King to Christian Leary touchdown pass with two seconds left sealed the upset of the No. 17 Hurricanes.

https://twitter.com/espn/status/1710870119558033415

Now this isn’t Cristobal’s first rodeo with losing a game like this. When he was head coach at Oregon in 2018, his Ducks led Standofrd 31-28 and instead of running the clock down to the final seconds and punting, he handed off to CJ Verdell who fumbled and the Cardinals rallied to tie the game with a late field goal before winning 38-31 in overtime.

Cristobal was hired to bring Miami back to relevance in college football and he was doing that and had his team in a position to head to Chapel Hill next week for an ACC showdown at 7:30 p.m. on ABC in the national spotlight undefeated, but now I think I know what the will be brought up on the broadcast as the game goes along.

Yes, things are not good in Blacksburg for Virginia Tech right now with the Hokies at 2-4, but even Brent Pry would have taken a knee, you’d think.