Indiana coach Curt Cignetti made a crucial decision to go for it on fourth down late in the College Football Playoff championship game.
Quarterback Fernando Mendoza scored a 12-yard rushing touchdown on a quarterback draw to give Indiana a 24-14 lead.
The play call gave Mendoza, the Heisman winner, the option to either run or pass based on the defensive alignment.
MIAMI GARDENS, FL — Curt Cignetti faced the toughest coaching decision of his career.
Indiana led Miami 17-14 with 9:27 to play in the College Football Playoff championship game but faced fourth-and-4 from the Hurricanes’ 12-yard line, with two options at Cignetti’s disposal:
To attempt a 29-yard field goal that would push the Hoosiers ahead 20-14 but leave Miami’s rejuvenated offense with a chance to take a narrow lead. An extended scoring drive in response might leave IU with little time to mount a potential game-winning response.
Or to go for it on fourth down, something the offense had done just three plays earlier. Lined up on fourth-and-5 from the Miami 37, quarterback Fernando Mendoza found wide receiver Charlie Becker for a 19-yard gain to extend the drive.
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At first, the offense stayed on the field after Mendoza’s third-down pass to receiver E.J. Williams fell incomplete. With about 24 seconds left on the play clock, the offense came off the field, replaced by the field-goal unit.
“So much going on there,” said special teams and tight ends coach Grant Cain. “What personnel do you want to be in? What do you think they’re going to be in?”
Then Cignetti called timeout. The Hoosiers came to the sideline.
“I didn’t know what we wanted to do, if we wanted to kick it or go for it,” said wide receiver Elijah Sarratt.
Offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan thought about Cignetti’s message to his staff during the pregame meal earlier that afternoon: I want to be aggressive, he had said, and I want to play to win.
The offense went back on the field. Cignetti called Mendoza’s number, handing him a play designed to be a quarterback draw but with the built-in option to shift into a pass based on the alignment of Miami’s defense.
“I don’t think there was any doubt in coach’s mind he was going to go for it,” said Cain. “He’s an offensive guy and he believes in putting our players in position to make plays. And that’s what he did. He put the ball in the Heisman winner’s hands and spread them out.”
While he could’ve shifted to a pass and had routes on the outside heading toward the corners of the end zone, Mendoza stayed in the original call.
In shotgun, he took the snap and took two steps back, as if to pass, with his heels landing on the 20-yard line. He then tucked the ball in his left arm, cut back to his right at the line of scrimmage and crossed the 7-yard line to get the first down.
Mendoza bulldozed into two would-be Miami tacklers and pulled off a slow-motion spin move 2 yards shy of the goal line — “All of a sudden he has a spin move, you know, a suspect spin move, obviously,” tight end Riley Nowakowski said — and leaped: Mendoza turned horizontally, stretched out his arms and flopped toward the end zone as three Miami defenders simultaneously converged, one drilling him in the back as he crossed the plane.
Indiana pushed its lead to 10 and would secure its first football national title with a 27-21 victory
“He keeps the ball, dives for the end zone and does what the Heisman does,” said Nowakowski. “Obviously, any time you put the ball in Fernando’s hands it’s not a gamble. It seems more like a guarantee at this point.”
Forget just Indiana history; the touchdown run was maybe the deciding play in the Hoosiers’ first national title, and is guaranteed to last forever in the program’s highlight reel.
“Fernando didn’t throw a dime,” Sarratt said. “He ran. He ran. He did a great job running. That boy’s a dog, and he made a place for us when we needed it.”
Mendoza’s run, put into place by Cignetti’s gutsy decision on the play call shared with Shanahan, stands out as one of the most indelible moments in playoff history.
“Let me tell you, Fernando,” Cignetti said, “I know he’s great in interviews and comes off as the All-American guy, but he has the heart of a lion when it comes to competition. That guy competes like a warrior.”
This isn’t the first time IU has used this play in a key moment. Earlier this year, the Hoosiers made the same call to notch a road win against Oregon, using a slightly different alignment, in a game that was then tied 20-20 with 6:30 left to play.
That time, Mendoza switched to the pass and found Sarratt from 8 yards out for the go-ahead score. It’s a design the Hoosiers like to use in the red zone, where there are tighter windows amid the more condensed space for their passing tree.
“That was just an instance where we had a good play in mind and trusted our guys to get it done,” Shanahan said. “The cool thing about that one is you put the ball in your best player’s hands and let him make a play.”
On Monday night, Mendoza saw the picture clearly: Miami wasn’t bunched at the line of scrimmage and rushed just four. On the snap, the second level of the defense inched back toward the first-down stripe, clearly anticipating a pass and looking to keep the Hoosiers short of the line to convert.
And he had the numbers. Miami dropped seven defenders. With four players spread out wide, Indiana had five linemen — one, left guard Drew Evans, raced up to help block linebacker Wesley Bissainthe — and an extra blocker in running back Kaelon Black, who helped blaze a trail for Mendoza once he reached the line of scrimmage.
He saw it all, and then got it done. One play sums up how Indiana went from the basement to the penthouse of college football: Coaching, talent, execution and toughness were the hallmarks of this play and of the most unexpected title run in FBS history.
“It wasn’t the perfect coverage for it, but I trust my linemen,” Mendoza said. “And everybody in that entire offense, that entire team had a gritty performance today. And we were all putting our bodies on the line, so it was the least I could do for my brothers.”
