The one thing that couldn’t happen for Miami, happened for Miami. The No. 6 Hurricanes will miss the ACC Championship Game and could potentially miss out on the College Football Playoff, all following a 9-0 start, after a 42-38 loss to Syracuse. SMU will play Clemson in Charlotte instead.
The Hurricanes’ CFP fate is entirely out of its control. A win over the Orange would have put them in a more comfortable position for the 12-team field, even with the ACC title game still to go. As it is now, they have the 18th-best odds (+25000) to win the national championship, per FanDuel, and they may be outside the CFP bubble as well.
The Hurricanes don’t have a win against a ranked opponent on their résumé, and they’ve been playing with fire all season. From Sept. 27 to Oct. 19, Miami beat three unranked opponents in games that either came down to the final possession or the final play.
Miami also doesn’t get to play another game between now and Dec. 8, when the final set of College Football Playoff Rankings are released, and the Hurricanes haven’t exactly left the best impression on the selection committee. Two of their last three regular-season games resulted in losses to unranked opponents. It’s possible Miami is bounced from the field for a team like South Carolina which, in spite of its three losses, has four wins against ranked teams this year. Even Alabama could sneak in over Miami now given the fact that it has strong victories against Georgia and Missouri to tout.
The selection committee would need to find seven at-large teams more deserving, in their eyes, than Miami. That might not happen, but it’s undeniably disappointing for Miami that it has no say in its own fate at this point — this in a year when the Hurricanes have arguably the best quarterback-wide receiver duo in program history with record-shattering stars Cam Ward and Xavier Restrepo leading the way. Those two connected for 1,127 of Ward’s 4,123 yards and 11 of his 36 touchdowns through the air this season.
Miami’s season came down to coaching blunder
Down 42-35 and facing fourth-and-goal from the 10 in a must-win game, Miami coach Mario Cristobal elected to kick a field goal instead of taking a chance at a touchdown. With 3:42 left on the clock and two timeouts plus the two-minute timeout to work with, taking the points is normally a sound strategy. Essentially, Crisotbal, instead of trying to tie the game, put the finale outcome in the hands of his defense.
The only problem in this scenario? Miami’s defense hadn’t forced a punt since the second quarter amid a 42-10 scoring run from Syracuse that allowed the Orange to take a late, and ultimately decisive, lead.
Miami made the field goal and cut Syracuse’s lead to four points, but predictably, the defense was unable to answer the bell. The Orange ran for 11 yards on the first play of their ensuing drive and set the tone as they ground the clock down in a 42-38 win. To make matters worse, Syracuse was gifted one of its game-winning first downs when Miami jumped offside on second-and-4.