Former UM QB Jacory Harris on Lamar Thomas Show: "I still think Tyler gives Miami the best chance to win (if it's) the Tyler that we know"

The last time the Miami Hurricanes went into Tallahassee and came out with a win against a ranked FSU team was back in 2009. In that game it was a local QB in his second year at UM – Miami Northwestern’s Jacory Harris – that led the way to victory. It was the season-opener, and Harris threw for 386 yards – including a 40-yard pass over double coverage to Travis Benjamin, setting up Graig Cooper’s 3-yard touchdown run with 1:53 left – and Miami beat No. 18 Florida State 38-34 in a wild, back-and-forth game.

FSU got to the Miami 2-yard line with 14 seconds left, but Christian Ponder threw three straight incompletions, the last coming on a ball that Jarmon Fortson nearly caught in the end zone on the game’s final play.

“He did drop the ball,” Harris reflected on CaneSport’s The Lamar Thomas Show on Wednesday night. “That’s why I didn’t celebrate at the end. I didn’t know if the review would come back that he caught the ball. I thought we lost the game, wanted to get the review over before I started celebrating.”

Just your typical Miami vs. Florida State game, right?

On Wednesday evening Harris got a chance to think back to his time at UM (Miami finished with a 9-4 record that season).

“We had Andre Johnson, Santana Moss, The Rock coming in – those are things I don’t think you ever get going to another college,” Harris said. “No one wants to go to Tally and chill in the offseason, go to Gainesville. They might come there for 2 or 3 days, but don’t have the University of Miami, the guys that played back in the days coming out playing in fatigues, don’t have the gangsters like that. That helped us, motivated us to want to do better, want to win.”

Now, of course, Miami is trying to upset FSU as a two-touchdown underdog this coming Saturday afternoon. A year ago the Canes were wiped out at home by FSU, 45-3.

And the quarterback position is very much in focus after Tyler Van Dyke threw 10 interceptions in his last four games.

“Man, look, me being a quarterback I am going to always stick up for my quarterbacks,” Harris said. “I remember watching Tyler at the Paradise Camp at UM when he was an attendee and thinking `He’s going to be special.’ I still think he has the talent and physical ability to do so. I don’t know what’s going on mentally these last couple of weeks that changed. It’s like the Texas A&M game was a big game and they went out there and really impressed me, I was excited to watch the Canes and especially him. But I heard he was playing with some injuries, I don’t know if was stuff already known or seen. But those are things you have to play through.”

Harris speculates perhaps the injury issues are part of Van Dyke’s struggles, and Harris had injury issues that affected his own play at Miami.

“I never said anything at the time, but I couldn’t grip the ball at all, had to learn to throw all over again,” Harris said. “Had surgery in January and didn’t make it back until halfway through training camp and still ended up being the starter.”

So would Harris bench Van Dyke?

“That has to be a conversation – I have to ask him `Hey, look, we still have a season, have games. Do you feel comfortable enough to lead this team if you’re that injured?’ And if you’re ready to go I expect you to give it all you’ve got. … To bench him this far in the season, I wouldn’t burn the redshirt for the Emory Williams kid. It serves no purpose. If we’re trying to make it to the national championship and this kid puts us in position to continue winning that’s a decision that would have to be made. But right now we’re just playing for a better bowl game and I don’t think a year should be wasted.”

Harris said perhaps he’d go with Jacurri Brown depending on the status of Van Dyke injury-wise or mentally.

“Jacurri can play and not burn his redshirt,” Harris said. “But I still think Tyler gives Miami the best chance to win, the Tyler that we know.”

Harris says he always relished playing in road games like this and thinks Williams or Brown would be mentally up for the challenge if called upon.

“If you know you prepared the right way, you’re ready for anything,” Harris said. He adds “No matter who they play, we’re not winning a national championship. Go out there, let these guys throw the ball down the field. We can be losing and we’re just running the ball. Let these kids open up the offense, no bubble screens, some good route concepts and try to win the game.”

Asked if it’s hard for a QB to get it “back” after struggling like Van Dyke has, Harris said, “It’s hard, you have to believe in yourself or have someone believe in you to where you don’t want to let them down. It can get done.”

Harris also says he has no issues with Van Dyke throwing so often to WR Xavier Restrepo as long as it’s man to man and that’s his go-to guy, since Restrepo can beat one-on-one. But against zone then Harris isn’t so set on Van Dyke throwing so much to just one guy.

“It is the offense where he has to read it out and then make a decision – if he’s reading it out and going to Restrepo (constantly) that’s something different, then `Hey, we have to change this,’” Harris said.

Harris also said of Van Dyke’s progressions that “You can see it in their feet, don’t even need to know what the play is. Once they start getting antsy that’s their brain telling them `You’re done with your progressions, you need to do something with the ball.’ You can see on some of his progressions that he should take the very first person he sees coming open – a hitch, quick out or something like that. But then he’ll read to the deeper route and try to take that shot. One of the picks he threw – it was a couple of guys underneath open. You can tell he got locked in, probably in practice against this coverage this guy comes open every time. But in the game (it’s not open). … (And) if his knee is hurting, you can’t step into (throws).”

Certainly Miami will need strong QB play if the team is going to go into Doak Campbell Stadium and pull off a huge upset on Saturday.

“It’s not a regular game,” Harris said. “People don’t understand, both teams can come into this game 1-9 and at the end of the day this’ll be the toughest bloodbath. Once you step on that field its gametime. My thing is, not to take away from playing at home, but playing away at Florida State and to be in that atmosphere where everybody hates you, that’s probably the best feeling in the world especially when you get a victory, walk off their field knowing something a lot of other teams, especially this year undefeated, they can go in there this year and knock them off.”

Harris hopes that at some point soon this Miami program will accomplish what he and his teammates once tried to do, as UM’s only had one 10-win season (10-3 in 2017) since 2003.

“We tried to be the ones to bring Miami back, that was something I wanted to do,” Harris said. “Unfortunately we had our ups and downs.”