Why Miami wanted a late touchdown instead of playing for a walk-off field goal to beat Texas A&M

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — A team can’t score if it doesn’t possess the ball.

It’s one of the oldest adages in football, and it might have been the reason you screamed at your television Saturday as Miami freshman Malachi Toney crossed the goal line with 1:44 remaining in a tight College Football Playoff clash at Texas A&M.

The conventional football wisdom is that if a team can run the clock down and score as time expires, it’s the lowest risk way to win the game. That’s why you’ll occasionally see a player slide at the 1-yard line in a tied game. If a team is out of timeouts — as Texas A&M was at the time — the opponent can run out the rest of the clock and then kick a walk-off, chip-shot field goal.

Toney didn’t make a freshman mistake when he took a touch pass around the right side for an 11-yard touchdown, though. Miami coaches had told their players going into the Hurricanes’ final offensive possession that if they had a chance to score, don’t hesitate. So Toney scampered into the end zone and then watched as Miami’s defense held on a white-knuckle drive that ended with freshman Bryce Fitzgerald intercepting Aggies quarterback Marcel Reed in the opposite end zone to seal a 10-3 win.

Afterward, Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson explained the reasoning behind telling his offense to attack the end zone. “It was one of those situations where we needed to score [a touchdown],” Dawson said. “I didn’t feel comfortable personally being up three.”

Plus, Dawson said, the way the game had gone to that point made him uncomfortable with the idea of kicking to win. The Hurricanes and Aggies had played a scoreless first half and traded short field goals in the second half. Kicking into a fierce wind, Miami’s Carter Davis had missed kicks from 47, 40 and 35 yards. A kick in the fourth quarter would have come with the wind at Carter’s back, but in the second quarter, Miami’s Rueben Bain Jr. had blocked a Texas A&M field goal attempt from pretty much the precise spot where the game-winner would have been spotted. After seeing every example of what could go wrong — save for an errant snap, which might have seemed par for the course Saturday — Hurricanes coaches decided a touchdown and a frantic minute of defense might be safer.

“Being up seven with no time-outs against those guys, I’d feel a lot more comfortable,” Dawson said. “Now, you could technically go down at the 1- or 2-[yard line] and drain it down, and if something happened on the field goal…”

Dawson didn’t need to finish the sentence. We’d have crushed Dawson and Miami coach Mario Cristobal if the Hurricanes had botched a field goal in that situation and Texas A&M had driven for a game-winner. We probably also would have crushed the coaches had Texas A&M scored after the touchdown and forced overtime, but it’s understandable that the Hurricanes would feel safer defending 75 yards of field for 104 seconds against an offense that hadn’t found the end zone all game.

Cristobal’s reputation for time-management issues was earned when he refused to take knees in 2023 against Georgia Tech and the Yellow Jackets recovered a fumble and then threw for a game-winning touchdown. But this was not one of those situations. The Hurricanes were battering the Aggies with Mark Fletcher Jr. runs and milking clock. But they needed points.

And, as Dawson noted, the circumstances had not been ideal for kicking. ESPN commentator Cole Cubelic stood on the sideline Saturday with former Texas A&M and Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher and current SMU coach Rhett Lashlee. After the touchdown, Cubelic asked the coaches whether they would have ordered their ballcarriers to slide at the 1-yard line. Both told Cubelic they’d have told their players to cross the goal line if they could. Their reasons were similar to the ones Dawson would give a few minutes later.

Besides, Dawson and Cristobal trusted first-year coordinator Corey Heatherman’s defense to get the job done. After more than 58 minutes without letting the Aggies sniff the goal line, that seemed a safe bet. 

But then it only took the Aggies seven plays and 54 seconds to reach the red zone. With 39 seconds remaining, Texas A&M faced first-and-goal from the 5-yard line. The Aggies could take four shots at the end zone provided they didn’t allow a sack.

In the Miami secondary, Keionte Scott felt grateful for Hurricanes quarterback Carson Beck. “We get in that situation a lot in practice every Wednesday, and he stresses us out in that situation,” Scott said. “So we’ve been there before. Carson Beck has been driving it in practice and gets to the red zone. So we’ve been through that process so many times.”

Reed, who had struggled for most of the game, locked in on that drive. But on third-and-goal, two Miami rushers beared down. Texas A&M’s protection held but wouldn’t hold long, so Reed rushed his throw to tight end Theo Melin Ohrstrom. It flew behind the intended target, and Fitzgerald jumped in front to intercept the pass with 24 seconds remaining.

The next clock management decision was an easy one. Miami took a knee and celebrated a win.