Despite all the hustle and bustle of any given Saturday afternoon, any reasonably exciting football match hinges on about four or five plays. Suppose a big third-down completion had gone just out of reach of the receiver. Suppose a crucial fourth-quarter fumble ended up back in the hands of the offense. Let’s say a green field goal trickles out of the post. These hinge points are not difficult to find.

Miami has been at the high end of each of these pivot points over the past two months. In the Squid Game, the 2024 college football season, Miami (7-0) has bowed its head and put one foot in front of the other, watching other top-10 teams — Clemson, Alabama, Tennessee and so on — fall and hit on the back.

It’s a good strategy: keep your head while everyone around you loses theirs. But Miami hasn’t quite gotten its act together in recent weeks. Sure, the Hurricanes started 2024 by blowing out their first four opponents by an average of nearly 40 points. But since Miami got to the heart of the ACC conference schedule, things have tightened up considerably.

Start with one of the wildest plays of the year, a potential Hail Mary touchdown that would have given Virginia Tech an upset victory in no time:

The verdict: Receiver out of bounds, game over, 38-34 Miami. About as close as you can get to winning and still losing.

Next up: a visit to Cal, complete with “College GameDay” parade. The Golden Bears put Miami in a stranglehold and threw the ‘Canes into a ditch, taking a 25-point lead in the third quarter. Miami quarterback Cam Ward then went crazy and rallied the ‘Canes to a huge 39-38 win. You could see that as proof of the team’s resilience, but you could also wonder how exactly it is that a team from the top 10 is 25 points behind a team that is currently 3-4 in the first place.

And then came Louisville, where the ‘Canes took advantage of two key calls, starting with an uncalled holding penalty that allowed Ward to swing a 63-yard pass that led to a green-light touchdown:

Later, Ward lost control of the football and Louisville gave it back for what appeared to be a touchdown:

Further investigation revealed that Ward’s arm moved forward, making it an incomplete pass rather than a fumble.

You get the idea. If the Hurricanes were a cat, they would have been burned for most of their lives. Every team benefits from calls over the course of a season, but if multiple crucial calls (or non-calls) come your way over and over again, you’ll be living a charmed existence.

Maybe this is all a karmic balance from last year, when Miami suffered one of the most humiliating losses in recent college football history by fumbling and later giving up a touchdown on what should have been a kneeldown:

Or maybe Miami is just a team in constant chaos. Who knows?

To hear third-year head coach Mario Cristobal tell it, this is all part of the plan. “People always talk about how if you have to redo things in the first phase of a program, or usually in the first year, it’s a year where you have very heavy losses,” he said earlier this week. “And in your second year you’re more competitive, and some are close, and you win some and you lose some. And then you start winning, sometimes by a little bit. And ultimately, as you go along, you become a more sustainable, multi-year program, right?”

So far, modern life in 2024 hasn’t hurt Miami. The ‘Canes play in the ACC, a remarkable facsimile of a Power Four conference where it’s possible to play your way through an entire season’s schedule without ever playing a ranked team. So far, that’s exactly what Miami has enjoyed: no Clemson, no Pitt, no SMU, just a long string of mid- and lower-tier teams.

This weekend, Miami will face the zombified corpse of Florida State, which will stagger into Hard Rock Stadium on Saturday with a desiccated shell of the team that is coming off an undefeated regular season and won the ACC championship last year. The Noles are 1-6 and showing absolutely no signs of life… but a season-derailing win over Miami could ease the pain in Tallahassee a little.

“I don’t think, and I can say this as a player, that we never looked at the record of anyone we played against,” Cristobal said of the Florida State-Miami rivalry. “Whatever the record of any team in this rivalry, you get the best version of them and they get the best version of you, and that’s what makes the game so incredibly intense and physical, and that’s why so many players die in this to play that game.”

Miami certainly has potential for a bigger challenge later in the season; “Also receiving votes” schools like Duke and Syracuse still loom large. And then there’s the ACC Championship, where No. 9 Clemson may be waiting.

Pollsters are already working on the weakness of Miami’s program; two one-loss teams are already ahead of the ‘Canes, and more could follow. A one-loss Miami should sneak to the bottom of the playoffs, but two losses? Probably not.

The magic act continues this weekend for Miami. ‘Canes fans should hope for a little more margin of victory and a little less drama on Twitter. It’s the best way forward.