Indiana is a college football national champion for the first time.
Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza’s incredible touchdown run in the fourth quarter provided the game-winning points for the No. 1 Hoosiers in their 27-21 win over No. 10 Miami in Monday night’s College Football Playoff national championship game.
Indiana is the first team to go 16-0 at the top level of college football in over 125 years. The sport barely existed when Yale went 16-0 in 1894.
Mendoza’s daring run came on a fourth-down quarterback draw after Indiana coach Curt Cignetti used the team’s second timeout to eschew a field goal that would put the Hoosiers up six with less than 10 minutes to go.
“The coverage before — they were in the coverage where that play would work,” Cignetti told ESPN after the game. “We put it in for this game. It’s quarterback draw but it was blocked differently. And we rolled the dice and said they’re going to be in it again and they were and we blocked it well and he broke a tackle or two and got in the end zone.”
It turned out to be the right decision. Miami responded with an eight-play, 91-yard drive capped off by a 22-yard catch-and-run by star freshman receiver Malachi Toney to cut Indiana’s lead back to three.
Toney scored with 6:37 to go. And Indiana came oh-so-close to preventing Miami from not getting the ball back. A false start on 2nd-and-1 with less than two minutes to go gave Miami the opportunity to get the ball back with 1:42 remaining and no timeouts while trailing by six.
But the Hurricanes’ chances of a miracle win were short-lived. Just after Miami got to midfield, Jamari Sharpe intercepted Carson Beck on a deep throw to seal the win.
Beck’s interception was the first turnover of the game for either team.
Indiana’s blocked punt was massive
The Hoosiers blocked a punt for the second straight playoff game on Monday night. And it put them up 10 in the third quarter.
Edge rusher Mikail Kamara got his arm out to block Dylan Jones’ kick and Isaiah Jones recovered the ball in the end zone. The TD gave Indiana a 17-7 lead after Miami running back Mark Fletcher had broken a 57-yard TD run earlier in the third quarter to get the Hurricanes on the board.
However, Miami didn’t disappear. A punt on the next possession could have been devastating for the Hurricanes. Instead, Miami marched 81 yards in 10 plays as Fletcher scored his second TD of the game to cut the lead back to three points.
But that was the theme of the game for Miami. The Hurricanes were always chasing. Despite averaging over two yards a play more than Indiana did, Miami had more penalties and was worse on third down (3-of-11 compared to Indiana’s 6-of-15) along with the special teams blunder.
Mendoza’s relatively pedestrian stat line
Mendoza finished the game 16-of-27 passing for 186 yards and failed to throw a touchdown pass. It was just the second time all season he didn’t throw a TD pass. The first came in his first game at Indiana, when he was 18-of-31 passing for 193 yards in a Week 1 win over Old Dominion.
He had a rushing TD in that game, though. And his run for the touchdown on Monday night is immediately the biggest play in Indiana football history.
The likely No. 1 pick in the 2026 NFL Draft had an incredible season in Bloomington. He finishes with 41 TD passes, 48 total touchdowns and just six interceptions while completing over 70% of his throws.
In Indiana’s first two playoff games, Mendoza had thrown eight touchdowns with just five incompletions.
Mendoza hasn’t officially declared for the draft, but that’s likely a formality as Indiana has already signed former TCU QB Josh Hoover in the the transfer portal. With Oregon’s Dante Moore coming back to school in 2026, the odds are overwhelming that Mendoza will be the Las Vegas Raiders’ choice to start the draft in April.
No comments:
Post a Comment