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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/Honestly_ on 2026-01-22 16:59:25+00:00.
by Bobak Ha’Eri
The Indiana Hoosiers placed a crown on their undefeated, 16-0 season, defeating the Miami Hurricanes, 27-21, to win the College Football Playoff National Championship in Hard Rock Stadium.
It was the culmination of an exciting season, another demonstration of how the expanded playoff—along with the transfer portal and NIL—have made it possible for expectations to completely flip in college football over a short period of time.
This is going to be a longer write-up, with a brief discussion on the nature of “Cinderella” teams, talking through each team’s strategies for the game using quotes from the various media days leading up to the game from head coaches and coordinators (gleaned from live interviews and over 100 pages of two-column transcripts), and post-game interviews, and a look at the state of each team at the end of the season.
Who is Cinderella?
What is a Cinderella team, and did this game have one?
The traditional definition would place that designation on Miami. They were the 10-seed, controversially getting in the last available spot over Notre Dame or some other SEC squad. They were infamously locked out of the ACC conference championship game. They proceeded to reel-off playoff wins over higher-seeded No. 7 Texas A&M (on the road), No. 2 Ohio State, and No. 6 Ole Miss.
No one outside Coral Gables expected them to make it all the way to the title game. But they’d been there before – yes it was over 20 years ago – but sportswriters are older and many of us remember those teams.
Indiana came into this season hot off its best season ever, an 11-2 run with their losses to the two teams that played for that season’s national championship. There had been some player losses and portal replacements (notably at quarterback and center), but if the logo on the side of their helmet been different they may have been ranked higher in the preseason than AP No. 20.
After all, this is “Indiana”: the basketball school, the school whose rival Purdue would’ve historically seemed more plausible to reach the championship. The Hoosiers only handed-off the title of “most FBS losses” to Northwestern earlier this season. The changes under Cignetti have been so abrupt that it seemed like the college football world still wasn’t entirely believing what was happening in Bloomington.
The Hoosiers’ claim to Cinderella status was on a deeper level: this is a lifetime achievement Cinderella. This was the team that was shattering what seemed like insurmountable odds for all the teams, including those at the Power-4, that were long-seen as "have nots."
Preparing for the Game
Regardless of who was wearing glass slippers, the Hurricanes were the 8½-point underdog heading into the game—how did they plan for Indiana?
Miami defensive coordinator, Corey Hetherman, had a good idea of not only the Indiana offense but how Curt Cignetti likes to run an offense from his years coaching under him at James Madison. He defined his own defense as “bend but not break”, “an attacking style defense” that works to dictate tempo.
The Hurricanes’ defensive line had been ferocious all year, thanks especially to Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor. Cristobal knew they needed to be relentless, because Fernando Mendoza is very tough to rattle:
“Sometimes you hit quarterbacks and they get fazed; they get knocked around a little bit. There’s no fazing him. The more he gets hit, the tougher he gets, and it’s something that’s very admirable because a lot of quarterbacks can’t do that”
Hetherman also noted his sense of the pocket and his surroundings:
“The quarterback does a really good job moving around the pocket. He’s a really good athlete. There are times you think, all right, here it comes, he’s going to take the sack. All of a sudden he slides out of the pocket and extends the play. Moving the pocket, keeping his eyes down the field or extending the play with his feet and breaking the play and getting a run.”
To get to Mendoza, Hetherman had his defense prepare by working on attacking a 7-man pass protection and working slots:
“Our guys have to be able to handle slots and understand the motions are and how to counter back through it, understand how to handle it out with our simulators and our pressures. We have to stay on track and stay ahead of the sticks and force them to be in situations where they have to drop back pass. We have to change it up.”
Indiana’s turnover margin was remarkable this season, as Cignetti noted: “We’re No. 1 in the country in turnover ratio. That’s discipline.” Even more so that the Hoosiers ultimately did not lose a fumble over its final 1,047 offensive plays and 15 games. This was not lost on Cristobal heading into the game: “They chase and finish, which I think is really important. The ball doesn’t get turned over. If a ball does come out, there’s 10 hats there, 11 hats there ready to jump on it.”
[Fun Fact: the last time Indiana lost a fumble was the first quarter of its season opener against Old Dominion, a 27-14 win over a Monarchs team that ended up finishing 10-3 and received votes in the final AP poll for the first time in program history.]
On preparing for the Hoosiers’ defense, Cristobal noted “Schematically they’re challenging because of what they do to stop the run.”
Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson explained, from reviewing film, he saw Indiana possessed the hallmarks of a top defense—limiting explosive plays and making it hard to run the ball—which he credited as much to their collective experience:
“They’ve assembled a bunch of older players that really know that system really well, and they’re very seldom out of position. And I think they know it so well that it allows them to dissect what you’re doing pretty quickly. Like their eyes can kind of be more on you than if they had a bunch of players that’s more thinking about what they gotta do, where they’re maybe not focused on the offense, the set, you know, whether the guards are a little deep or whatever, right? So they can really focus on a lot of things that are like tipping point things for them that allows them to react the way they react. And I think that has a lot to do with just having older kids that really understand the system. And they can just get things lined up quick and dissect it quick.”
Indiana defensive coordinator Bryant Haines is known for his “Illusion Defense” because what they show before pre-snap may be different afterward. Dawson noted their approach reminded him of an older style of defense largely supplanted by more man coverage and Cover 3 Match in modern defenses, and one that required a level of preparation he compared to how defenses need to prepare for options teams:
“They’re kind of like preparing for an option offense. You don’t see it a lot, so when you do see it, it’s a little different, right? So just the way they play coverage is a little different than everybody else’s zone coverage, which I think those guys do a really good job.”
Dawson explained why he thought it worked well for Indiana, and how Miami’s approach to offense could successfully challenge it:
"In my opinion within defense, the reason they’re successful is because they make you play quarterback after the snap, if that makes sense? And so, a lot of times, especially with the way offensive football in general is today, with a lot of RPOs – and we’re not a huge RPO offense – but a lot of times quarterbacks are strictly coached, and they like have like this thing in mind before the snap. But with them you better be able to play quarterback after the snap. And so I do think that we’re programmed the right way, because our offense is a very reactive offense as far as like our pass game goes. We don’t really get obsessed with pre-snap looks. Now, we take in the data, but ultimately, we’re a progression offense. Nothing is predetermined in our offense, which I think is a reason why I feel good about having some success. Now, obviously not too many people have [against Indiana]. But we are a post-snap organization. Like our quarterback is programmed to see coverages and see space. Now, their coverages are, honestly, pretty damn elite. And they do a really good job of subtly changing coverages. Like it looks very similar to other things they do. They occupy space extremely well, and they play eyes on the quarterback coverage, which years ago that’s how defenses played.
Dawson planned to approach the Indiana defense with some caution:
“Ultimately, we want to be aggressive, but I call it cautiously aggressive. We are a team that leans on the run game. We’ve done it all year. And so it starts with that, but ultimately, we have to push the ball down the field at times, too. And I just gotta go back and forth with when to take those chances.”
Both teams are known for attacking defenses (after all, Miami’s defensive coordinator coached with Cignetti for years), which Shannon hoped helped his own offense prepare for the game:
"I go against a similar defense every day. They’re elite at gap integrity. They really are. Their whole front is – the way that their D-line and linebackers and safeties match up in the run fit is elite. They’re very seldom out of position. They can dissect things as quick as I’ve seen a defense dissect things. And if y…
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