Miami football’s Mario Cristobal points finger at himself after ‘brutally difficult’ Syracuse loss

There is no doubt that Ward has been building a Heisman-type campaign, but he is solely focused on a potential run that could win them a national championship, which isn’t certain. Cristobal would speak about how the defense let up 479 yards of offense for the Orange, per The Miami Herald.

“We thought we lined up well,” Cristobal said. “They made the contested catch just about 80, 90 percent of the time. We had difficult time covering them. The ball was out quick. We affected the quarterback early. We were up by a good chunk, and that didn’t affect them as much as it went on. … They were executing a little bit better than we were. We were trying to play some man [and] we played some zone. We mixed it up as much as we could. I don’t know. We did not have much success. We blew a couple of assignments back there, too.”

With the regular season over, the Hurricanes now have the painful job of just waiting to see what happens with the conference championships and what their postseason looks like. Cristobal takes the good with the bad in their season and what they can control.

“You re-emphasize reality,” Cristobal said. “This team won 10 football games against some really good opponents, and this last game came all the way down to the wire. Our two losses are one-possession losses, less than a touchdown. That makes us one of the better teams in the country. We can control what we can control, so we have to wait and see. But certainly, this team is has really worked hard and busted its butt to put its best foot forward.”

The Hurricanes finished with a 10-2 record.