Urban Meyer weighs in on Mario Cristobal, decision to not kneel down to end game

Urban Meyer isn’t seeking to pile on Mario Cristobal and Miami after the Hurricanes managed to snatch a defeat from the jaws of certain victory last Saturday. But he still can’t quite believe the Hurricanes didn’t have the late-game situation better-rehearsed.

On “Urban’s Take with Tim May,” the long-time head coach shared how he and his staffs would avoid similar blunders. It falls to the head coach, but it takes a whole staff being on the same and correct page.

“But there’s someone up in the press box in a controlled environment. That means, on the sideline it’s loud, it’s chaotic. And mine was Tom Herman, Ed Warinner and Ryan Day, at Florida it was Dan Mullen, and we would rehearse that. And you simply look at that sheet and there’s no one else talking. It’s called four-minute offense. Four-minute offense, the rules are don’t you ever go out of bounds, you take care of that football, you snap the ball with two seconds left. You have a series of rules and don’t fumble. They fumbled,” Meyer said.

But that wasn’t even the biggest sin.

“But there’s also the coordinators saying, ‘OK, it’s over.’ And that’s when you would see us go victory, two tight ends come in the game, a tailback and a receiver and you kneel out the ball and you go sing the fight song afterwards. So, I don’t — you don’t want to beat up people, but that was a tough one. And what’s even tougher is the next day standing in front of your team,” Meyer said.

And for Meyer, he couldn’t imagine a worse feeling than having to go and face a team after making a decision that let them down.

It brought him back to a 17-14 loss to Michigan State in 2015 when he was coaching Ohio State. Meyer felt he and his staff had let the players down in a rain-soaked home loss.

“Well that’s one that as a coach, your heart hurts. Because that one will follow him the rest of his career. That was — I remember having to stand up in front of a team after the Michigan State loss and I just didn’t think our staff did good job. We — it was raining and obviously, you know, what happened, happened. It took me, that’s 10 years ago I think, I’m still not over that loss. That eats away at you.”