Miami’s smoke-and-mirrors routine gets another act against Florida State

For all the hue and cry of any given Saturday afternoon, every reasonably close football game hinges on about four or five plays. Suppose a big third-down completion had floated just out of the receiver’s reach. Suppose a crucial fourth-quarter fumble ended up back in the offense’s hands. Suppose a go-ahead field goal doinked off the upright. These hinge points aren’t hard to find.

Miami has spent the last two months on the high side of every one of those hinge points. In the Squid Game that is the 2024 college football season, Miami (7-0) has kept its head down and put one foot in front of the other, watching as other top-10 teams — Clemson, Alabama, Tennessee and so on — fell and fell behind.

It’s a sound strategy, keep your head while everyone around you is losing theirs. But Miami hasn’t quite buttoned up its business in the last few weeks. Sure, the Hurricanes began 2024 by blowing out its first four opponents by an average of nearly 40 points. But ever since Miami got to the meat — such as it is — of the ACC conference schedule, matters have tightened considerably.

Start with one of the year’s wildest plays, a would-be Hail Mary touchdown that would have given Virginia Tech a no-time-left upset victory:

The ruling: Receiver out of bounds, game over, 38-34 Miami. About as close as you can get to victory and still lose.

Next up: a visit to Cal, complete with "College GameDay" pageantry. The Golden Bears put Miami in a chokehold and threw the ‘Canes in a ditch, taking a 25-point third-quarter lead. Miami quarterback Cam Ward then went crazy, rallying the ‘Canes to a massive 39-38 victory. You could view that as proof of the team’s resiliency, but you could also question how exactly it is that a top-10 team fell 25 points behind a team that’s now 3-4 in the first place.

And then came Louisville, where the ‘Canes benefitted from two significant calls, starting with an uncalled holding penalty that allowed Ward to sling a 63-yard pass that led to a go-ahead touchdown:

Later, Ward lost control of the football and Louisville returned it for what appeared to be a touchdown:

Further review declared that Ward’s arm was moving forward, making it an incomplete pass rather than a fumble.

You get the idea. If the Hurricanes were a cat, they’d already have burned through most of their lives. Every team gets the benefit of calls over the course of a season, but when multiple crucial calls (or non-calls) break your way, over and over again, you’re living a charmed existence.

Perhaps this is all karmic scale-balancing for last year, when Miami suffered one of the most humiliating losses in recent college football history, fumbling and later surrendering a touchdown on what should have been a game-ending kneeldown:

Or maybe Miami is just a team that exists in constant chaos. Who’s to say?

To hear third-year head coach Mario Cristobal tell it, this is all part of the plan. “People always talk about how in stage one of a program, or Year One typically, if you have to redo things, it's a year where you take some really hard losses,” he said earlier this week. “And then your second year, you're more competitive, and some of them are close, and you win some and you lose a couple. And then after that, you start winning, sometimes by a little bit. And then eventually, as you go on, you become a more sustainable perennial type of program, right?”

So far, 2024’s knife-edge living hasn’t hurt Miami. The ‘Canes play in the ACC, a remarkable facsimile of a Power Four conference where it’s possible to thread your way through an entire season’s schedule without once playing a ranked team. So far, that’s exactly what Miami has enjoyed — no Clemson, no Pitt, no SMU, just a long run of mid- to lower-tier teams.

This weekend, Miami faces the zombified corpse of Florida State, shambling into Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday a desiccated husk of the team that posted an undefeated regular season and won the ACC championship last year. The Noles are 1-6, showing absolutely no signs of life … but a season-derailing victory over Miami could ease a little of the sting in Tallahassee.

"I don't think, and I can say this as a player, we never looked at the record of anyone we were playing,” Cristobal said of the Florida State-Miami rivalry. “Whatever the record is of any team in this rivalry, you're going to get the best version of them and they're going to get the best version of you, and that's what makes the game so incredibly intense and physical, and that's why so many players come here to play in that game."

Certainly, Miami faces possibilities for a greater challenge later in the season; “also receiving votes” schools like Duke and Syracuse still loom. And then there’s the ACC championship, where No. 9 Clemson potentially awaits.

Pollsters are already baking in the weakness of Miami’s schedule; two one-loss teams are already ahead of the ‘Canes, and more could follow. A one-loss Miami ought to sneak into the lower edge of the playoff, but two losses? Probably not.

The magic act continues this weekend for Miami. ‘Canes fans need to hope for a little more margin-of-victory, a little less Twitter-highlight drama. It’s the best way forward.