Miami laments mistake-filled opener

Posted 8:09PM on Tuesday 6th September 2005 ( 19 years ago )

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) Opening night was a dud for Miami, which squandered away whatever chance it had at extending its dominance over Florida State. Still, strange as it may sound, the loss left Hurricanes coach Larry Coker liking his team more than ever. The Hurricanes were awful in every special-teams aspect in Monday's 10-7 loss; they botched snaps, missed field goals, made questionable return choices and blocked dismally. The offensive line allowed nine sacks a season's worth for some Miami teams. Wide receivers dropped a number of potentially big passes. Yet Coker saw tons of promise and potential, and believes Miami can still be an elite team in 2005. ``We're a better team at 0-1 than we were at 1-0 a year ago,'' Coker said Tuesday, seven hours after Miami's flight home landed. ``I can assure you of that. This is one, in my opinion, maybe we shouldn't have lost. Maybe we won one last year we shouldn't have won. But that's football. That's the way things go sometimes.'' Kyle Wright may be Coker's biggest reason for optimism. His first start at 'Quarterback U' was shaky at first, scintillating at the end. Wright was sacked often, hit hard on plenty of other occasions but completed 16 of 28 passes for 232 yards and nearly pulled off a drive that would have immediately become part of the fabled FSU-Miami series lore. ``He stood in there and really was a man the entire night,'' said Coker, whose team fell five spots to 14th in the AP Top 25 poll on Tuesday. ``I really was impressed. I think we answered all the questions about him.'' Said Florida State coach Bobby Bowden: ``Their kid did a great job. He's going to be a great one.'' Miami took over on its own 3 with 12:01 left, and the din of the record crowd of 84,347 inside the stadium was deafening. Wright, though, never heard any of it, and went coolly about his work. ``I was thinking, 'This is our time. We're driving 95 yards on FSU's defense,''' Wright said afterward in the somber Miami locker room. ``And they were sucking wind. They didn't win because they were in better shape than us. I thought we were going to win. We just didn't get it done.'' Wright completed 8 of 10 passes for 98 yards on the drive; penalties and sacks knocked Miami back on that late march, allowing him to finish the possession with the unusually high number of yards. He got his team all the way to the Florida State 2, but a sack and a stuffed pass play brought the field goal unit on the field. And that's when the dream of a seventh straight win over the Seminoles ended. John Rochford's snap was low, holder Brian Monroe failed to handle it cleanly and kicker Jon Peattie who'd already missed two kicks, in some part because of other mistakes in the snap and hold departments never got the tying boot away. ``The game shouldn't have come down to a field goal,'' Peattie said. ``I think we pretty much dominated in on yardage and the way we played.'' Florida State felt the same way last year, when it blew a 10-0 fourth-quarter lead and lost 16-10 in overtime. This time, the Seminoles were the team cashing in the breaks. ``Football is a tremendously humbling game and can shake you back into reality in a hurry,'' Coker said. ``I think that's where we are. ... I read in a magazine that we had the best special teams in the country. Well, we didn't have the best special teams in the country last night. I don't know what magazine that was, but I'm canceling my subscription.'' What he isn't canceling is his plans for this team, which entered the year with national-title dreams and Coker, while acknowledging that the road just got much harder, says there's no reason to abandon them now. ``We've got a lot of football left,'' Coker said. ``We've got a lot of great opportunities left. There's been teams playing for national championships that lost one game. ... That's the path we'd love to take.'' (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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