The Stanford primer asked Miami to feast early, break belief, and get on the plane with a boring win. Against Florida A&M, the Canes didn't break belief. They never let it form.
Final: 77-7. Two-and-oh. And the wildest part isn't the number · it's how matter-of-fact the whole thing felt.
Darian Mensah was 14-of-15 for 252 yards and three touchdowns. As a team, Miami completed 27 of 29 and averaged 14.7 yards a pass. Javian Mallory ran for 142 and two scores. Malachi Toney did Malachi Toney things. Mark Fletcher Jr. and Mallory each crossed the goal line twice on the ground, six touchdowns came through the air, and the total offense line read 856 yards to 107.
Here's the number that should scare the ACC: 42 first downs. Miami moved the chains forty-two times against a defense that knew what was coming.
The one wrinkle came the way wrinkles come in guarantee games · a sloppy series here, a defensive stretch out of sync there, Stanford... sorry, wrong opponent. That was last week's file. Against the Rattlers the only real suspense was the play count of the backups.
The facts the scoreboard will remember: 77-7. 2-0. No. 7 and holding. A passing attack at 92 percent conversion for the night and a ground game that treated the box like a suggestion. The FAMU defense finished with ten tackles from Denzel Johnson and very little else worth engraving.
The standard didn't flinch on Thursday. It didn't celebrate, either. Feast early, break belief, boring win · check, check, and the most boring 77 points this program has scored in years.
Next: the schedule gets real, and nobody in Coral Gables will say the word out loud yet. But 2-0 with 77 points of cushion is exactly the position the primer demanded. The machine doesn't do mercy. It does maintenance.