This game confirmed many things for me that I had already been guessing, but seeing it all in person just reinforced my beliefs. The first is that Miami has the best defense in college football, without exception. No Michigan, no Texas, Miami, the best defense in college football today.

Some of the numbers may not reflect it at first, but dig deeper, as I did after watching this game, and you'll see most of them are misleading. For instance, you may think that Miami's defense gave up 17 points, and lost 17-10, but you'd dead wrong. The two touchdowns were scored on short field (36 yards and in) opportunities garnered from two interceptions. The field goal was a fumble where the defense then allowed a short drive, and VaTech kicked a field goal.

I won't go into all the details of other games (like the turnovers and poor special teams against Duke, or more turnovers against GaTech), but needless to say, you could count up about 95 of the 136 points Miami's defense has given up this year are off of turnovers, and most of those in Miami territory. Of the remaining another 20 were on drives that were sustained from penalties (be them right or wrong calls a mistake was made that shouldn't have allowed the drive to continue). To be frank, Miami could have at least 3-4 shutouts, and possibly no score more then 10.

Although it was quite possibly the ugliest game I've ever seen in person (besides a few games way back when we had our last losing season), there is no reason Miami should have lost it, and absolutely no reason to place the blame on the defense.

It's also difficult to put it completely on the offense though. It is their fault mostly, but struggling in a new system is natural, Miami fans are just unused to it. Face it people, we're in the midst of a damn bumpy year, and we'll be lucky to get to a bowl game with only games against Maryland and BC remaining.

Without further ado, here's the stat box: