Mario Cristobal will gladly take the win over Florida State, but he knows Miami has plenty to clean up.
The Hurricanes entered their Week 7 rivalry game as 21.5-point favorites and still found themselves in a fight. At the start of the fourth quarter, Miami was trailing 21-14 and needed two overtimes to finish off the Seminoles from Tallahassee.
Up to that point, Florida State had been the sharper team, making fewer mental mistakes and, for long stretches, outplaying Miami. That is a hard thing to wrap your head around for a program that has not won a road game in almost three years.
Cristobal, though, did see one thing he can build on: his team kept coming.
"I could sit here and rattle off a million mistakes and errors that we need to correct, but we just kept playing. We just kept battling and finding a way until we got the momentum. Then, we made a couple of plays that were the difference in the game," he said.
Cristobal also opened his press conference, as always, by thanking the fans for the atmosphere at Hard Rock, and he singled out Bryce Fitzgerald’s interception by saying, "He found a way to get that ball…lots of love for Bryce Fitzgerald."
Saturday night had every chance to turn into one of those losses that lingers. Florida State showed up ready to play, and Miami had to absorb that before it could take control.
For fans, the game may have brought back the memory of last year’s late collapse, when the upset loss to Louisville on Friday night was followed by another loss to SMU the next week. That stretch nearly knocked Miami out of the CFP, just as two losses in its final three games did in 2024 and kept the Hurricanes out of the 12-team playoff.
Instead, this team answered. Over the past calendar year, toughness has become part of Miami’s identity, and that showed again here. The Hurricanes ripped off eight straight wins last season to reach the CFP championship, and even with the sloppy execution and the game management questions hanging over this one, they survived.
Still, the bigger picture is clear. This was not close to a clean performance, and Miami will need to be much better with Duke, Virginia Tech, Pitt and Notre Dame still left on the schedule. But a rivalry win is a rivalry win, and for the third straight year, Miami knows how that feels.
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Florida State never got the finish it wanted, and the debate around the calls is likely to linger long after the scoreboard is filed away. On the next play, the Seminoles' Hail Mary was ruled an interception after review, a decision ESPN rules analyst Steve Shaw backed, giving Miami a disputed but official edge in a game that figures to fuel this rivalry for a while. [Read more 🡒]
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Miami Faces One Huge O-Line Decision Before Florida State
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Sophomores Seuseu Alofaituli and Jackson Cantwell are in the mix, along with redshirt junior Jamal Meriweather, giving Miami a blend of upside and experience to weigh at a critical moment. The staff still has time to settle on a starter before the rivalry game, but this is the kind of late-week decision that can shape everything from protection to run-game rhythm. [Read more 🡒]