COLLEGE STATION, Texas — The Miami Hurricanes didn’t give up on their 2025 season after a pair of losses to unranked teams in a three-game stretch of league play left them 6-2 overall.
They wound up missing out on the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, but not the College Football Playoff.
The Hurricanes also didn’t give up on freshman receiver Malachi Toney after a bad play in Saturday’s first-round game at Texas A&M.
He lost the football when Miami could hardly afford a turnover, but he made the catch in an even more crucial moment.
Toney’s tiebreaking 11-yard touchdown reception with less than two minutes left lifted No. 10 seed Miami to a 10-3 victory over No. 7 Texas A&M at Kyle Field. Each program was making it first appearance in the CFP, which became a 12-team event last season after a first decade with a four-team bracket.
Mark Fletcher Jr. rushed for a career-high 172 yards to help the Hurricanes (11-2) advance to the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal on New Year’s Eve, when they’ll face No. 2 Ohio State (12-1) at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The Buckeyes, this year’s Big Ten runners-up and the reigning national champions, received a bye as one of the top four seeds in the playoff.
It’s the end of the line for the Aggies (11-2), who finished their football year with back-to-back losses. They made the playoff after missing out on the Southeastern Conference championship game due to a 27-17 loss at rival Texas in the regular-season finale on Nov. 28.
Miami, which started the season 5-0, has won five straight games since sandwiching a 42-7 victory against Stanford on Oct. 25 with losses to visiting Louisville, 24-21 on Oct. 17, and at SMU, 26-20 in overtime on Nov. 1.
“Forty-plus days ago, we were lower than low, and found a way to just bring a different level of energy every single day and lift each other and the program up,” Miami fourth-year head coach Mario Cristobal said. “And here we are with a chance to keep playing, and that’s all that matters now: 1-0.”
Toney’s big play came a series after what looked a devastating mistake for the Miami native in the fourth quarter. Toney made a catch, but Dalton Brooks knocked the ball out and Daymion Sanford recovered it on the Texas A&M 47 with 7:11 to go.
Teammates surrounded a visibly upset Toney on the bench, encouraging him and trying to keep him positive.
“You saw the entire team just go right to him after the fumble,” Cristobal said. “Everybody trusts him. A lot of the reason why we are here today is his playmaking ability … They knew that there was going to be some more football to be played, and he was going to be a big part of the reason why we were going to have a chance to pull out the game.”
Toney and Miami’s offense got another chance when Rueben Bain Jr. sacked Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed on two of three plays on the ensuing drive to force a punt.
A career-long 56-yard run by Fletcher on the first play of the next drive got the Hurricanes to the Texas A&M 30 with 3:09 to go. Miami used four more runs by Fletcher to get into scoring position before Toney took a short toss from Carson Beck and dashed into the end zone.
The Aggies had a chance to tie it after that, getting to the Miami 5-yard line with half a minute remaining on the game clock, but Bryce Fitzgerald intercepted a pass for the second time — this time in the end zone — to seal the win for the Hurricanes.
Miami used a suffocating defensive performance to stifle Texas A&M’s powerful offense, which entered averaging 36.3 points a game. They harassed Reed into a mistake-filled performance that included a first-quarter fumble along with the interceptions. They sacked him seven times, flushed him out of the pocket when they couldn’t, and forced him to try to make tough throws again and again.
The redshirt sophomore was 25-of-39 for 257 yards, but he was unable to get the Aggies in the end zone for the first time this season.
“We thought this season obviously could have been a lot better than what it ended at, but we’re proud of what we accomplished,” Reed said. “We’re growing.”
After getting the last at-large bid in the playoff thanks to their win over Notre Dame in the opener, the Hurricanes now move on as they try to win the program’s first national championship since the 2001 season.
“Let us never, ever devalue the importance of head-to-head competition, please,” Cristobal said.
Miami kicker Carter Davis missed three field-goal attempts in gusty wind at Texas A&M he had missed only two all season before Saturday. His 21-yard kick on the first series of the third quarter got the Hurricanes on the board after the first scoreless first half in CFP history.
Randy Bond finally got the Aggies on the board when he tied it with a 35-yard field goal with 8:03 to play.
In two seasons as Texas A&M’s head coach, Mike Elko has given the Aggies the kind of hope that was missing by the end of Jimbo Fisher’s seven-year tenure in College Station, but Elko emphasized after this loss that hope is not what he’s after.
“We were not an elite program ready to compete for a national championship when we took over,” he said. “We’re still not. We’re working to become it. We’re battling to become it. I think clearly these last two games have showed there’s still room in areas that we have to continue to grow.”
On the Aggies’ first possession of the second half, Fitzgerald picked off Reed and returned the interception 36 yards. Miami came up empty after the turnover when a 35-yard field goal attempt by Davis bounced off the left upright.
Reed also turned the ball over when he fumbled late in the first quarter. On the ensuing possession, Mario Craver’s 59-yard catch got the Aggies to the 11 early in the second quarter, but they couldn’t move the ball and attempted a 22-yard field goal, which was blocked by Bain. It was Miami’s first blocked field goal since the 2022 season opener.
Toney’s 55-yard punt return got the Hurricanes to the Texas A&M 25 with less than six minutes remaining in the first half, and he would have scored if not for a shoestring tackle by Marcus Ratcliffe. Brooks sacked Beck on third down to force a 47-yard field-goal attempt by Davis, and it sailed wide right.
Tyler White’s throw on a fake punt sailed just out of reach of a diving Marcus Ratcliffe to give Miami the ball on the Texas A&M 46 with less than two minutes remaining before halftime. Davis tried a field goal from 40 as time expired, but it was wide right again.
Beck, in his first season at Miami after transferring from Georgia — where he was the starter his final two seasons after being a backup on back-to-back national championship seasons for the Bulldogs — was 14-of-20 for a season-low 103 yards.
In the end, it didn’t matter.
Said Cristobal: “The defense was off the charts the entire day.”