Miami quarterback Tyler Van Dyke was injured in the second quarter of a 45-21 loss to Duke on Saturday and did not return to the game.
Van Dyke was hurt on a sack and immediately grabbed at his right shoulder before walking off into the locker room for X-rays.
Coach Mario Cristobal did not disclose the nature of the injury in his postgame press conference, saying only, “He was banged up enough where we did not feel comfortable putting him back in. Don’t know the severity of it. Sometime tonight or tomorrow.”
Backup Jake Garcia came on in relief but had three interceptions – including a pick-6 – part of eight total turnovers Miami had in the loss.
It was the first time an FBS team had eight turnovers in a game since 2017, and the most by a Power 5 team since Nebraska had eight in 2009, according to ESPN Stats & Information. Miami’s 8 turnovers were also the most by an ACC team since North Carolina had 9 in 2002 against Miami (Ohio).
Duke capitalized on all the mistakes, leading to its largest margin of victory ever against Miami. The Blue Devils have now won three of their last five against the Hurricanes after going 2-13 in their first 15 meetings.
Miami dropped to 3-4, including 1-2 in the ACC Coastal, after being chosen as the preseason favorite to win the division.
Asked whether the effort was lacking in the fourth quarter as the mistakes kept piling up, Cristobal said, “We’ll see on tape. If someone’s not playing hard, they have to go play somewhere else. What we have to do requires tough people. To turn a program, rebuild it, it requires tough-minded people willing to do the work. Some guys have played really well. Some guys have played hard. We’ll go from there.”
For the second time this season, Miami got blown out at home by a team it was heavily favored to beat. Middle Tennessee routed Miami 45-31, a game in which Van Dyke was benched after he threw two interceptions.
But over the last several weeks, it felt as if Van Dyke and the offense had made some progress. Cristobal called the performance against Duke “regression.”
“Ball security – huge point of emphasis. We’ve done everything we can, but we’ve got to do more, because whatever we’ve done has not worked,” Cristobal said. “We got the quarterback hit. We didn’t establish the run game. We’re not knocking people back enough, like we need to, to help the pass game. We had made some progress on offense the last couple of weeks, and it looked like we were going to get off to a strong start and we didn’t. You take complete responsibility as a head coach and as a program. I get it. You have got to be real tough. Unfortunately, you have to go through some painful steps, but we caused our own painful steps. Extra painful steps that we don’t need. Back to work.”
Cristobal said the only way to get better moving forward is to be candid and honest with his players about their effort and performance.
“When you go through something like this, and you’re rebuilding a program, and you get hit in the face like this, you have to be tough enough to look each other in the eye and stick together and go to work,” Cristobal said. “It doesn’t magically get better. You have to go to work and that’s the only focus. That’s the only thing we’re going to do.”
