After bye week, Miami Hurricanes shift attention to ACC schedule. First up: FSU
The Miami Hurricanes’ non-conference schedule is over.
Their first of two bye weeks has come and gone.
Now, here comes conference play.
The Hurricanes have staked their claim as one of the country’s top teams through the first third of the season. They’re 4-0 and the No. 3 team in the AP top 25 poll with wins over Notre Dame (27-24), Bethune-Cookman (45-3), USF (49-12) and Florida (26-7).
But their eight-game Atlantic Coast Conference schedule, starting Saturday at the Florida State Seminoles (7:30 p.m., ABC), will play a defining role in Miami’s quest to be a College Football Playoff contender in coach Mario Cristobal’s fourth season leading his alma mater.
“We just stay on the aggressive,” Cristobal said Monday on WQAM’s The Joe Rose Show. “Right away we are attacking it from top to bottom. The biggest fight always is against human nature and complacency.”
The Hurricanes dropped one spot in the AP poll this week, from No. 2 to No. 3, despite being idle because they were jumped by the Oregon Ducks, who beat then-No. 3 Penn State on Saturday. Miami’s No. 2 ranking entering the bye week was its highest in four years under Cristobal and the highest for the team overall since the 2017 season, the only time Miami has reached the ACC Championship Game. That team started 10-0 before dropping each of its final three games — a 24-14 road loss at Pittsburgh to end the regular season, a 38-3 beatdown by Clemson in the conference title game and a 34-24 defeat to Wisconsin in the Orange Bowl.
Cristobal all season has preached the importance of his team staying focused on the task at hand and ignoring any outside noise that comes with the team’s early success. He re-upped that directive during the bye week by having the team’s sports psychologist talk with players.
“You know how it is right now,” Cristobal said. “All of a sudden, people try to get in. It is really intrusive and they try to get in the heads of players saying you should be playing more or you should be getting the ball here or you should be doing that. You have to look that right in the eye and say BS. This is a team sport and nothing can get in the way of the team. Nothing. It has been a great start in the non-conference schedule and now the real season begins.”
That “real season,” the conference schedule, is where things have derailed the past two seasons under Cristobal.
In 2023, Miami was 4-0 after conference play and ranked No. 17 in the AP poll entering ACC play before opening league play with the infamous 23-20 loss to Georgia Tech when Miami’s decision not to kneel out the win cost them. UM finished 3-5 in conference play and then lost to Rutgers in the Pinstripe Bowl to finish the season 7-6.
In 2024, the Hurricanes started 9-0, including overcoming double-digit deficits against Virginia Tech, California and Duke in the early portion of its conference schedule. Miami then lost two of its final three games against Georgia Tech and Syracuse to see its chances to play in both the ACC Championship Game and College Football Playoff slip away. A loss to Iowa State in the Pop-Tarts Bowl capped the dud on a 10-3 season.
And now in 2025, Miami once again enters conference play without a blemish but not without room to improve.
“You just don’t treat the bye like it’s a week off,” star defensive lineman Rueben Bain Jr. said. “It’s really a work week for us to look at ourselves and come in with the mindset that no matter who we play, we want to have a 1-0 mentality.”
That mentality will be tested against an FSU team that was upset in double overtime by Virginia on Friday and fell 10 spots in the AP poll, from No. 8 to No. 18, as a result. It will be the third consecutive game for Miami against an in-state FBS opponent after playing USF and Florida the two weeks before the bye.
It also comes after the Hurricanes played far from a perfect game against the Gators. The defense was stellar, holding UF to just 141 yards and 0 for 13 on third down, but the offense was stagnant most of the game until putting together two solid touchdown drives late to pull away in a game that was only 13-7 late in the third quarter.
“We’ll fix some of the issues and maybe mishaps that we had this game,” said quarterback Carson Beck, who is preparing for his first ACC slate after spending his career at Georgia before transferring to Miami. “We’ll start looking at Florida State, start preparing for them. I’m excited for that matchup. I’ve never played in that stadium. I think that’s a cool thing about being in the ACC. Now I’m heading into ACC play playing a lot of different teams that I’ve never played before and getting into play at places I’ve never played before. Really looking forward to that.”
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