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Cote: Don’t sleep on the Canes! No. 8 Miami’s 39-38 redeye win at Cal a comeback for the ages | Opinion

Miami Hurricanes linebacker Raul Aguirre Jr. (32) celebrates after winning his NCAA college football game against the California Golden Bears at the California Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Berkeley, Calif.

The game ended well after 2 a.m. in the morning, early Sunday back home on the East coast. Fans who went to sleep on their Miami Hurricanes could be forgiven. Maybe they gave up when UM trailed at Cal by 35-10. Or perhaps it was the 38-18 hole early in the fourth quarter when UM fans called it a night (or morning).

Those who did awakened to astonishing news, to a comeback that -- to heck with recency bias -- immediately takes its place among the greatest in school history and maybe in college football annals.

Miami 39, Cal 38.

You had to see it to believe it. Even if you didn’t see it, you better believe it.

“Best example of resiliency and toughness and no-quit mentality that I‘ve ever bee a part of,” Canes coach Mario Cristobal put ti simply, after the biggest night in Cal history had been denied, and before the redeye flight for the ages back home,

UM has a bye week next. They’ve earned the rest.

Miami had last come back from as many as 25 points down vs. the Florida Gators in 2003.

It was a Saturday in college football when a grenade was tossed into the top 10. When No. 1 Alabama lost at Vanderbilt, when No. 4 Tennessee lost at Arkansas, and when top-10 Missouri and Michigan also fell on the road.

Miami was being swallowed, too.

Instead the Canes somehow rallied to be 6-0 and sure to rise from their No. 8 poll ranking. And as Miami fortified its hopes to reign in the ACC and to be a major player in the College Football Playoff, so too did quarterback Cam Ward surely take over as the frontrunner to win the Heisman Trophy.

NFL scouts who once considered the senior QB outside of the first round are recalibrating.

Ward took the 25-point deficit on his shoulders Saturday night, and the doing something about it, too.

He would finish with 35 completions in 53 attempts for 437 yards and two touchdowns. He accounted for 277 offensive yards in the fourth quarter, the most by anybody in the sport in seven years.

For the season he leads the nation with 2,380 passing yards and 20 TDs.

And if he does end up being the third UM player to left the Heisman, Saturday night’s epic comeback will be what forged it.

Cal, 3-1 coming in, had hosted ESPN’s College GameDay for the first time Saturday and was playing its first home game since moving to the ACC. A packed stadium was full of revelry. Would they storm the field and tear down the goalposts in revelry? Up 38-18 early in the fourth the happy bedlam n the stadium was sonic-level.

And then...

Ward hit Isaiah Horton for an 18-yard score to make it 38-25 with 10:28 to play.

Ward scrambled for a 28-yard TD run to make it 38-32.

On the winning drive a 77-yard pass to Xavier Restrepo was followed by a personal foul penalty. Miami coverted a 3rd-and-20. Then Ward found Elijah Arroyo for a 3-yard scoring pass 26 seconds left on the clock.

The stadium was stunned silent. Well, but for the many Canes fans who made the trip, now animated.

Ward, who wears uniform number 1, came from Washington State as a transfer, a one-year godsend for Miami and Cristobal.

“When 1 has the ball in his hands, the game is never over,” said Restrepo. “We have extreme confidence in that guy.”

Ward, typically, was self-critical as much as celebrating, saying, “We just can’t put ourselves in these situations to come back. That’s two games straight we had to do that. We have to lock in. But it’s good to get a win. We’re not going to complain. An ugly win is better than a good loss.”

UM had three times rallied from 10 down including in the fourth quarter a week earlier at home vs. Virginia Tech, when it took a last-second overturned Tech TD catch to salvage the Miami win.

Down 35-10 Saturday, “We were doing a lot of routine things wrong,” Cristobal said. “Dropping routine passes...”

Then, The Comeback at Cal in Miami’s first trip to Berkeley since 1990.

“Football’s a humbling game,” said Golden Bears coach Justin Wilcox. “We had every opportunity to win that game, obviously. We didn’t get it done, so every individual has to own it.”

Cristobal, sitting beside Nick Saban on the College GameDay set earlier Saturday, had said, “There’s trust and belief. There’s no injury or situation we cant overcome. We approached that (Virginia Tech) film and we studied it with humility. We’re not where we wanna be yet, but the progress has been tremendous.”

The words rang true well past midnight.

Up next, after the bye week, the Canes make another challenging road trip to face No. 22 Louisville, another ranked team that fell on a bloody Saturday in college football.

The Hurricanes looked every bit a part of that poll chaos, but somehow survived it.

So good morning, indeed, Miami.