No. 3 Miami Beats Florida State 43-35 in Double Overtime at Hard Rock Stadium

College Football

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — This is the kind of game the Miami-Florida State rivalry is supposed to produce, and for once in recent years, it delivered every bit of it. No. 3 Miami beat Florida State 43-35 in double overtime Saturday night at Hard Rock Stadium, surviving a 75-yard tying touchdown in the final minutes of regulation, trading touchdowns in the first overtime, and then watching a Florida State Hail Mary that appeared to tie the game again get wiped away by a holding penalty before the final play was settled in the review booth.

According to NBC Sports, Miami quarterback Darian Mensah passed for 326 yards and three touchdowns. The Associated Press, in its account carried by the Atlantic Coast Conference, reported the same line — Mensah completed 23 of 34 passes — and noted that his last touchdown was the 3-yarder to Malachi Toney in the second overtime that ultimately won the game. USA Today reported that officials had to get two late calls right to get there, and both reviews and flags became part of the story of the night.

Mensah said after the game, in comments reported by NBC Sports: "This is what great teams do, find a way to win." That is easy to say after a win. It was harder to live through, because for long stretches Saturday night Miami did not look like a team in control of its own stadium.

Toney Does Everything in the Second Overtime

Malachi Toney was the best player on the field when the game was decided. He finished with 11 catches for 154 yards and two touchdowns, according to NBC Sports and the Associated Press. In the second overtime, Mensah found him from 3 yards out for the go-ahead touchdown. Then Miami kept Toney on the field for the conversion in a different role.

Toney, who played quarterback in high school, took the ball and threw the two-point conversion pass to Cooper Barkate, according to the Palm Beach Post, which noted it was Toney's first pass attempt this season. The trick — if a former high school quarterback throwing a short conversion can be called a trick — worked perfectly, and it pushed the lead to eight points, 43-35, forcing Florida State to score a touchdown and a two-point conversion of its own just to extend the game.

Toney said, in comments reported by NBC Sports, that his motivation reached beyond the box score. "This rivalry is bigger than me," he said. "I haven't been alive for half of it, but I'm still playing for the standard that the generations before me created." It was a fitting line for a series that Miami now leads 38-33 all-time, according to the rivalry history summarized on Wikipedia, and in which Miami has now won three straight meetings.

Mallory and the Freshman Moment in the First Overtime

Before Toney won it, true freshman running back Javian Mallory kept Miami alive. Mallory carried 13 times for 108 yards and two touchdowns. The Associated Press reported, via the ACC account, that all of Mallory's rushing yardage came after halftime, a detail that explains how Miami's offense changed as the night wore on.

Florida State opened the first overtime with a 20-yard touchdown catch by Duce Robinson from Ashton Daniels, taking a 35-28 lead. Miami answered immediately on a 25-yard touchdown run by Mallory on the Hurricanes' first overtime possession. Head coach Mario Cristobal then chose the conservative and, in context, correct path: he kicked the extra point to tie the game at 35-35 and send it to a second overtime, rather than gambling on a two-point conversion to end it there. With Mensah, Toney and Mallory all rolling, betting on another possession was betting on his best players.

Mallory had earlier scored on a short touchdown run in the fourth quarter as Miami rallied from a third-quarter deficit, part of a closing stretch in which neither defense could get the one stop that would end the argument in regulation.

Florida State Refuses to Go Away

Florida State quarterback Ashton Daniels threw four touchdown passes, according to NBC Sports, and the Associated Press reported he finished with 298 passing yards for the Seminoles, who fell to 3-4 and 1-3 in the ACC. His connection with Duce Robinson nearly beat Miami outright.

With 2:39 left in regulation — the scoring summary and the AP account put the play at 2:49 on the clock, amid a frantic final sequence — Daniels hit Robinson for a 75-yard touchdown that tied the game 28-28. The Tallahassee Democrat and other Florida State outlets had tracked a Seminoles team that had already taken its first lead of the night in the third quarter, and Robinson's explosion suggested they might take the last lead too.

Robinson then opened overtime scoring with that 20-yard touchdown catch for a 35-28 Florida State lead. For a Miami team that, according to 247Sports, had spent only four minutes trailing in its first five games combined, this was unfamiliar territory — and Florida State kept pushing the Hurricanes deeper into it.

The Seminoles had taken that first lead, 21-14, in the third quarter on a 28-yard screen touchdown from Daniels to Quintrevion Wisner, listed in the scoring summary as Wisner. That play flipped a game Miami had led early, after Mark Fletcher Jr. opened the scoring with a 7-yard rushing touchdown in the first quarter and Mensah found Toney from 14 yards in the second.

Miami also played much of the night short-handed in the secondary after safety Zechariah Poyser was ejected for targeting in the first quarter, a loss that mattered more with every Daniels throw downfield in the second half.

The Two Calls That Ended It

The second overtime will be argued about in Tallahassee for a long time, and USA Today reported that it examined whether officials got both decisive calls right. First, facing fourth-and-21, Daniels launched a Hail Mary toward Micahi Danzy, who caught it for an apparent touchdown that would have pulled Florida State within 43-41, pending the conversion. The play was called back for holding on offensive lineman Xavier Chaplin against Miami's Damon Wilson II.

That penalty pushed Florida State to fourth-and-31. Daniels heaved the ball toward Robinson in a crowded end zone. Miami safety Bryce Fitzgerald, who had returned after an earlier injury, was ruled to have intercepted it. The play went to review, and the interception was upheld. Game over. The Associated Press account described Fitzgerald sealing the win with that interception on the final play, and 247Sports reported the same sequence: the Danzy touchdown negated by holding, then the jump ball to Robinson ruled a Fitzgerald interception and confirmed on review.

Whether Florida State fans accept both calls will not change the record book. Miami stormed the field, and Florida State was left with a 43-35 loss, its effort led by Daniels and Robinson and a defense that had Miami on the ropes into the second extra period.

What It Means for the Rankings and the Playoff Picture

The stakes grew while Miami was still playing. According to NBC Sports, No. 1 Georgia and No. 2 Notre Dame also lost on Saturday — Georgia falling to Auburn in a result covered elsewhere on Previously — leaving Miami as the highest-ranked remaining unbeaten team and poised to claim the No. 1 ranking when the new poll appears. The Associated Press made the same point in its lede coverage: Miami had beaten its archrival and staked a claim to moving atop the AP Top 25 for the first time since 2002, with Saturday marking a rare day in which the nation's top two teams both fell.

Cristobal said, in comments reported by NBC Sports, refusing to chase that conversation, that rankings have "no value to our processes," adding that he would take the "1" that matters: the 1-0 for the week. Coaches say versions of that after every big win. After a double-overtime rivalry win in which his freshman running back, his star receiver playing quarterback for one snap, and an injured safety returning to make the final play all decided the outcome, it sounded less like a cliché and more like a description of how Miami actually survived.

Next up, Miami hosts Pittsburgh (5-2, 2-2 ACC) next Saturday. Florida State, now 3-4, has to recover from a loss in which it did almost everything required to pull the upset except secure the final eight points. For readers following the wider chaos, Previously's College Football Playoff picture after Week 7 breaks down what Saturday's upsets mean nationally, our coverage of Auburn's upset of Georgia covers the result that helped clear Miami's path to No. 1, and the Previously sports section has the full Saturday scoreboard and follow-up coverage.

For one night, at least, the oldest argument in Florida football produced a classic worthy of its history — 78 combined points, two overtimes, a negated Hail Mary, a reviewed interception, and a receiver throwing for the final points. Miami found a way to win. Florida State found almost every way to make them prove it.