The Hurricanes just needed to win out.

Miami had its mulligan loss against Louisville two weeks ago, but it bounced back with a blowout win against Stanford. If the Hurricanes could pick up wins in their last five games, they would almost certainly secure a spot in the College Football Playoff, even without an ACC title.

But UM lost to Southern Methodist on the road on Saturday. At best, the Hurricanes will finish 10-2, and even that may not be enough to get them into the playoffs. That record was not enough last year, when Miami finished 13th in the final rankings.

Fortunately for the Hurricanes, there is still hope they can sneak into the playoffs, but the outlook is grim. UM’s playoff odds shrunk to 15 percent in The Athletic’s playoff model and about 14 percent in ESPN’s FPI model. All Miami can do is do its best to win its last four games, and that starts with being focused and rebounding against Syracuse on Saturday.

“At the end of the day, we have good people, we have hard-working people, people that have a high care factor,” Miami coach Mario Cristobal said.” And also people that recognize opportunity and know that the college football landscape and this thing down the stretch is as unpredictable as it gets, and that we will be one of a dozen or so teams that will have an opportunity, if you take care of business, to continue to push into the postseason now.

“All that is great, but I think we all understand that we have to take care of number one, and that’s us. We were frustrated, but we’re not helpless, if that makes sense, because all of our answers are in the room. The self-inflicted stuff, we can control and there’s a strong commitment to doing so.”

Ahead of the first College Football Playoff rankings release on Tuesday night, Miami quarterback Carson Beck said the team just has to focus on controlling what is in their grasp. He said he focuses on that by remembering to be grateful that he can still play at all after suffering an elbow injury in the SEC title game last year.

“For me, personally, I’m just blessed and thankful to have the opportunity to be able to come out here every single day, practice, have energy, be with these guys and still have four guaranteed games left to go play and give everything I have and give everything to this team and for these guys,” Beck said. “So, again, it’s just having gratitude, I think, is the most important thing. And understanding the position that we’re in, what’s happened has happened, and we can’t control what is going to come either.

“All we can do is just control each day, day by day, and continue to get better and then go out and execute on Saturday.”

Wide receiver Keelan Mario said players like Francis Mauigoa and Anez Cooper have been some of the team’s leaders as they look to rebound from last weekend’s road loss.

“All those guys (have) been saying, doing the same thing they’ve been doing since they’ve been here … leading this program to where we’re trying to get it to go,” Marion said.

Cristobal said he has faith in his team to band together and push to make the playoffs this year.

“I have zero doubts that this team wants to get to work and to play really, really good football because we’ve done it before,” Cristobal said. “We stubbed ourselves. So we’re going to go ahead. Ready to force forward and get to Saturday.”

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2025/11/04/hurricanes-playoff-chances-rebound/