Florida State dragged Miami into exactly the night this desk promised on Saturday morning: uncomfortable, tied late, and decided by nerve. Miami 43, Florida State 35, two overtimes. The cleanest resume in America has a scar on it now, and the scar is the most valuable thing on it.
For five weeks the question followed the Canes around like a rumor. Stanford, Florida A&M, Wake Forest, Central Michigan and Clemson all lost by two scores or more, and nobody could say what Miami was when a game turned mean. Florida State answered it. The Seminoles led 21-14 in the third quarter, watched Miami punch back with two short touchdowns, then tied the game at 28 on a 75-yard strike from Ashton Daniels to Duce Robinson that was Miami's clearest defensive breakdown of the season. Overtime was not an accident. It was the test arriving on schedule.
The ground game kept Miami alive in it. Freshman Javian Mallory ran 13 times for 108 yards and two touchdowns, and his 25-yard score on the first snap of Miami's first overtime possession answered Florida State's opening touchdown like a reflex. Miami rushed for 257 yards as a team. When the plan wobbled, the line of scrimmage did not.
Then Malachi Toney closed the building. The sophomore caught 11 passes for 154 yards and two touchdowns, the second a 3-yarder from Darian Mensah in the second overtime. Then Toney took a snap himself and threw the two-point conversion to Cooper Barkate for 43-35. Catch the go-ahead score, throw the conversion: that is not a stat line, that is a signature. He has 50 catches, 758 yards and eight touchdowns in six games, and the Heisman conversation can stop pretending he is a footnote in it.
Mensah earned his own line in the file. He threw for 326 yards and three touchdowns, and he finally threw his first interception of the season after opening the year with 15 touchdowns and none. The perfect season is over. The unbeaten one is not, and Mensah said it plain afterward: "This is what great teams do, find a way to win."
Florida State still had one miracle left, and for about ten seconds it had it. On fourth-and-21 in the second overtime, Daniels found Micahi Danzy for an apparent 36-yard touchdown. Then the flag: holding on left tackle Xavier Chaplin, and the miracle went back on the shelf. Backed up to fourth-and-31, Daniels threw for the end zone, Duce Robinson and Bryce Fitzgerald went up together, and Fitzgerald came down with the ball. Review upheld it. Fitzgerald had left the game hurt earlier in the night. He finished it anyway.
So Miami is 6-0 and 4-0 in the ACC, and the view from here changed while the Canes were fighting. No. 1 Georgia lost to Auburn. No. 2 Notre Dame lost at BYU. The top two teams in the country fell on the same regular-season day for the first time since 2012, and the new poll lands this afternoon with Miami, the highest-ranked unbeaten still standing, in line for the top spot for the first time since 2002. Mario Cristobal can call that irrelevant all week. The rest of the country will call it what it is.
One caution travels with the crown. Pitt comes to Hard Rock next Saturday, and a team that just survived its rival in double overtime is a team begging for a flat first quarter. The Canes have now proven they can win the fight. The next proof is smaller and meaner: do not need one.