Tyler Van Dykes takes blame for turnovers, putting Miami in bad position at end of game

Miami lost to Georgia Tech thanks to one truly terrible coaching decision, but quarterback Tyler Van Dyke stepped up and shouldered plenty of the blame as well.

After the game, Van Dyke fielded questions and was asked right off the bat about the decision to run the ball rather than kneel it out at the very end. The Hurricane QB refused to throw his coaches underneath the bus and explained that his own turnover issues were the only reason Georgia Tech was even in striking distance to begin with.

“I mean, from my viewpoint, I can’t put us in those situations,” said Van Dyke. “Three interceptions, you know, giving them those close fields and them able to capitalize on it. I mean, I put us in the situation. I got to be better. I can’t force the ball, make dumb decisions. I just got to be better.”

After that answer, Van Dyke was asked what the Georgia Tech defense did to him that forced some uncharacteristically bad mistakes. His response:

“I mean, yeah, they had a new defensive coordinator, maybe a few looks different. I mean, it’s football, so one-high, two-high, zone, man, like it’s not too complicated. Just can’t force it into tight coverage and, you know, got to go watch the film and get better.”

No matter what topics were brought up in the postgame, the conversations with every coach and player who spoke after the loss all came back to that fateful late-fourth-quarter fumble. So, before he finished up at the podium, Van Dyke was asked one more time about the decision to run the ball rather than have him take a knee.

But once again, Tyler Van Dyke took the high road and reflected on the errors he made to make the game closer down the stretch rather than place blame solely on his coaches.

“I mean, at the end of the day, I got to put us in a better situation. I don’t want to speak on that, but got to put us in the better situations,” Van Dyke said. “We shouldn’t have even had that situation where we had to run the clock out, take a knee. We turned the ball over three times, my fault, so we got to be better.”

Mature answers from the senior leader after a loss that’s impossibly tough to swallow. Van Dyke easily could have let his emotions get the best of him, but instead, he stayed calm and admitted he could have been better to help avoid the loss.