Miami Set a School Record for Yards. The Real Test Starts Next Week
The Hurricanes put up 856 yards and 77 points on Florida A&M, but the story worth watching is how deep this offense goes, not how good it looked against an FCS opponent.
No. 7 Miami beat Florida A&M 77-7 on Thursday night at Hard Rock Stadium, and by the time it ended, the box score looked like a typo.
The Hurricanes finished with 856 yards, breaking the mark of 750 against Ball State in 2024. The Hurricanes finished with 42 first downs — another school record. The Hurricanes had 16 players catch at least one pass, the first time an FBS school has done that since Penn State had 17 pass-catchers against Ohio in 2022. The game got so lopsided that the teams agreed to shave five minutes off the fourth quarter, setting the clock for 10 minutes instead of the standard 15. By then, it was 77-0.
None of that is a knock on Miami. FCS opponents exist so power programs can find out things about their rosters they can’t learn against Stanford or Wake Forest. What Miami found out is that its depth chart might be as scary as its starting lineup.
Two Quarterbacks, Zero Incompletions Between Them for a Half
Mensah completed 14 of 15 passes for 252 yards and three first-half touchdowns, making him 41 of 45 for 653 yards and eight touchdowns in his first two games as a Hurricane. He didn’t play the second half. He didn’t need to.
Backup Luke Nickel came in and was, if anything, more efficient. Luke Nickel replaced Mensah in the third quarter and completed all eight of his pass attempts for 144 yards and three TDs. Mensah and Nickel became the first power-conference teammates to have three TD passes in the same game since Patrick Mahomes and Nic Shimonek did it for Texas Tech against Kansas in 2016. True freshman Dereon Coleman got mop-up snaps too, and completed five passes in six attempts for 30 yards and had four carries for 25 yards, cementing his status as third-team Miami QB.
The backfield told a similar story. Javian Mallory, not a name most Miami fans would have picked out of a lineup in August, rushed for 142 yards and two scores while starters Mark Fletcher Jr. and others got their work in earlier. Malachi Toney, who set Miami’s single-game receiving record the week before, added another big night, and one of six Miami receivers with a touchdown catch, had four grabs for 96 yards.
Defensively, the Hurricanes did what a ranked team is supposed to do against an FCS opponent. Miami held Florida A&M to 107 yards of total offense, four first downs, and the Rattlers converted one of their 14 third-down attempts. Florida A&M’s only points came on a 72-yard fumble return by Caleb McKenzie with 6:40 left — the defense never actually allowed a touchdown.
Why the Score Doesn’t Tell You Much
Cristobal was careful not to oversell it. Miami opened its season with a 45-6 win at Stanford, and Cristobal said he saw improvement from Week 1 to Week 2, telling reporters, “We did a lot.” That’s coach-speak for: good, now let’s see it against someone who can actually make us work.
Mensah, for his part, pointed to the group that made all of it possible up front. Asked about a Miami offense that has scored 122 points in the season’s first two games, he called it “pretty ridiculous,” adding, “It’s just a testament to the guys up front.”
That’s the real evaluation point. Miami’s offensive line has now cleared paths for two different quarterbacks and a rotating cast of backs against two very different levels of competition, and the results haven’t changed. Whether that holds up against a real ACC front is the actual question, and Miami won’t have to wait long to answer it.
Wake Forest Is the First Real Data Point
Miami will play its last non-Saturday game of the season at Wake Forest on Sept. 18