Maryland Succeeds in Beating Miami, Giving Me High Blood Pressure

Well, the last two weeks Maryland's combined margin of victory has been a mean two points. However, they have been two victories. In fact, the Terps rattled off five in a row to improve to 8-2 and 5-1 in conference. The last two games haven't been pretty, but the outcomes have been tough wins and the fact they were wins at all is all that counts.

The Miami game was a huge pitfall game. Being Miami, they always have the talent and ability to come out strong every single game. The fact they were playing for a teammate that had died earlier in the week would just add to that fact. It looked like the death of defensive end Bryan Pata was weighing heavily on the players and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them just didn't want to be there. None-the-less, they played on and played hard the entire game.

Maryland's defense, although they held Miami to only 13 points, did not look as sharp as they did against Clemson. They were giving up way to many yards and won with the help of Miami. Miami's go ahead touchdown was straight up dropped when Ryan Hill was wide open in the end zone and just dropped the pass. With the way Maryland's offense was lacking in the second, as it was against Clemson, that would have been the game. I thought many times that the Bend Don't Break defense was finally going to break today. Instead, it bent to maximum capacity. When it looked like Miami was going to do it, a Miami tipped pass was picked off by Trey Covington and after Maryland punted it away, Bruce Johnson fumbled after a nasty tackle.

If you blinked, you may have missed Maryland's offense. The slow, grinding offense was once again shut down so Maryland invented a quick strike offense. Two long passes to Darrius Heyward-Bey from Sam Hollenbach was all the scoring the Maryland needed -- just barely. Those passes of 65 and 96 yards were by far Hollenbach's best throws. The quarterback who couldn't throw over 20 yards accurately passed the ball perfectly to Heyward-Bey, the former track star.

It was an ugly win. Maryland only had six first downs in the entire game, but they won anyway. Miami still totes a great defense, so I'm not too worried about Maryland's offense. Throughout the year, they've shown they can win with short passes, with just a run game, and with just a pass game. If they could put all of that together, they could be a really sick offense.

The big news out of the game is that guard Donnie Woods sustained a neck injury and had to be airlifted to Baltimore. Last I heard, he had use of his limbs, but it's still a nasty injury and hopefully, it's not too serious. When more news comes in, I'll post something about it. Hopefully, he'll have no lasting effects from such a rough injury.

After beating Miami, Maryland will have no bad losses on the year. They've beat every unranked team they played and the next two games are against ranked teams. Those games will be huge in deciding if Maryland will be fighting for the ACC title, which would be a rematch against Georgia Tech. Next week at BC will be the most important game of the year for Maryland. Until then, Maryland will still hold first place in the Atlantic Division, even if it is a tie. And as I said last week, as fans we should just enjoy that because just that idea at the beginning of the season was insane.