"Complete ownership" was the phrase of the day in Coral Gables on Monday, two days after one of the most mind boggling losses in major college football history.
Leading Georgia Tech 20-17 with 33 seconds to play, Miami could have taken a knee and ended the game. Instead, Miami called for a handoff to running back Donald Chaney, Jr., Chaney fumbled, Tech recovered, and then moved 74 yards in 26 seconds to complete an astonishing comeback, turning a 20-17 Canes triumph into a 23-20 Jackets stunner.
"I made the wrong call and I take complete ownership for it," Cristobal said Monday.
Cristobal told the media that he addressed the decision with the team, and he took "accountability" for a call that defied all logic and reason.
"We always talk openly and honestly," he said. "I think our team understands that and appreciates that, I think our team also takes accountability as a whole and as a team. Just like we ask our players, we also ask our coaches to do the same, and that's what I do. And that's what I did."
Cristobal wasn't the only coach to take the blame for the debacle.
“What we did at the end was the wrong decision,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said. “I called it, it is what it is. I wish we would have done something different but we didn’t. So gotta live with it. It was the wrong thing to do.”
After recovering the fumble, the Tech offense still had to go 74 yards in 26 seconds to win the game.
“I knew that they needed a field goal to tie and the touchdown to win so you can’t get too soft,” defensive coordinator Lance Guidry said. “I really wanted to pressure (GT QB Haynes King) because I thought they had two plays left. If he throws an out route or anything like that, they can kick the field goal. It’s all on me. My job as a defensive coordinator is to get a stop at the end. That’s what I’m hired to do. I’ve talked to the players and told them the same thing. It’s not on them. It’s on me.”
Perhaps the most difficult thing for Miami coaches was addressing all the other things that went wrong on Saturday.
Canes coaches had to address the things that inevitably went wrong over the first 59 minutes and 27 seconds and make the necessary corrections. Except they had to do so while everyone in the building knew such corrections would've been made with an at-least-we-won-the-game tone, except they didn't, because of the head coach's entirely avoidable mistake.
"We owe it to ourselves and our players, our entire organization, like we do our own families, to look each other right in the eye and demand the best, the absolute truth from each other. And that's what we do," Cristobal said. "The way that we train our players, the type that we bring in and the type that we recruit, we expected a good response today, and that's what we got. The guys are very eager to get back to work and prepare for this weekend's opportunity."
No. 25 Miami visits No. 12 North Carolina on Saturday night (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC).
As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.