At around half past five this morning, I finally got into bed.
Three hours later, I was back up, cup of tea in hand, rewatching the extended highlights and trying to work out whether what I’d watched through increasingly tired eyes at 4am had actually happened.
It had.
Miami 45. Stanford 6.
Not a bad reward for a 2am UK kickoff.
Before the game, I went for 35-17 Canes in my pre game prediction. I thought Stanford’s previous game experience would help them hang around, particularly early, before Miami’s depth eventually took over.
So, yes, the prediction was wrong.
I’m quite happy to take that one.
Because the reality was significantly better.
A Statement to Start the Season
Season openers are supposed to come with a bit of rust.
A new quarterback normally needs time to settle. A rebuilt offensive line has to find its feet. New combinations on defence need a few drives before everything starts looking comfortable.
Miami apparently didn’t get the memo.
The No. 7 Hurricanes went into Stanford Stadium and produced a 45-6 win, scoring 14 points in each of the opening three quarters before adding a fourth-quarter field goal. Stanford managed just two field goals and never reached the end zone.
Miami finished with 549 yards of offence and converted eight of 11 third downs, but even those numbers don’t quite capture how comfortable this became.
The biggest questions heading into the game were how quickly Darian Mensah would settle into Shannon Dawson’s offence and whether Miami could replace the stars who left after last season’s National Championship run.
We didn’t have to wait long for an answer to the first one.
Darian Mensah Could Hardly Have Started Better
In the preview, I wrote that Mensah didn’t need to throw for 400 yards and five touchdowns.
Apparently Darian disagreed.
The Duke transfer completed 27 of 30 passes for 401 yards and five touchdowns, without throwing an interception. Miami also kept him clean, with Stanford failing to register a sack.
That’s a fairly ridiculous Miami debut.
What impressed me most wasn’t simply the numbers, though. Mensah looked comfortable.
There was very little of the hesitation you sometimes see from a transfer quarterback making his first start in a new offence. The ball came out quickly, he repeatedly found the correct matchup and Miami consistently stayed ahead of the chains.
His accuracy was outstanding too. Completing 27 of 30 passes works out at a 90 per cent completion rate, and this wasn’t built entirely on screens and safe throws around the line of scrimmage.
Mensah pushed the ball downfield and repeatedly punished Stanford for leaving Miami’s receivers in favourable matchups.
Most notably, he kept finding one particular bloke wearing No. 1.
Malachi Toney Was Ridiculous
I feel as though we’ve spent the last year running out of sensible things to say about Malachi Toney.
This doesn’t make the job any easier.
Toney caught 12 passes for 234 yards and three touchdowns, breaking Miami’s single-game receiving-yardage record that had stood since Eddie Brown set the previous mark in 1984.
Think about some of the receivers who have come through this programme since then.
Michael Irvin. Andre Johnson. Santana Moss. Reggie Wayne.
And it was Toney, at the beginning of his sophomore season, who finally broke the record.
He did it in essentially three quarters.
One of the defining moments came in the third when Mensah found him for a 47-yard touchdown, taking Miami out to 42-6 and effectively ending whatever remained of the contest.
At that stage, I think most of us watching had moved beyond wondering whether Miami would win and had started wondering just how ridiculous Toney’s final numbers were going to become.
Stanford seemed determined to make stopping Miami’s running game its priority.
Fair enough.
The downside of that plan was repeatedly leaving one of the best receivers in college football in situations where Mensah could simply throw him the football.
Miami gladly accepted the invitation.
If this was the start of Toney’s Heisman campaign, he hasn’t exactly eased himself into it.
Mensah Has More Than One Target
Perhaps the most encouraging thing about the passing game was that it wasn’t entirely dependent on Toney.
Cooper Barkate’s first Miami game produced 67 receiving yards and a touchdown, including a 34-yard scoring connection with his former Duke quarterback in the third quarter. Daylyn Upshaw also found the end zone on a five-yard Mensah touchdown pass before half-time.
That’s important for what comes next.
Everybody on Miami’s schedule already knew Toney was the player they had to stop. After Stanford, they’ll probably devote even more attention to him.
If Barkate, Upshaw, Joshua Moore and the rest of this receiver room consistently punish that attention, Shannon Dawson is going to have an awful lot of fun calling this offence.
The Mensah-Toney connection will understandably dominate the headlines.
The depth around it might eventually be what makes Miami so difficult to defend.
One Area That Still Needs Work
For all the brilliance through the air, Miami didn’t dominate in every area.
The running game was fairly ordinary.
Mark Fletcher Jr. led Miami with only 40 rushing yards, and the run blocking was one of the main areas where the new offensive line still looked like a work in progress.
That shouldn’t be turned into a crisis after one game.
Stanford clearly wanted to take away the run and committed numbers to doing it. Miami’s response was perfectly reasonable: if you’re going to load the box, we’ll throw the ball for 400 yards instead.
I’d take that trade every week.
There were still positive moments on the ground, including CharMar Brown’s five-yard touchdown in the second quarter, but the bigger tests for this offensive line are coming.
We already knew this unit wasn’t going to be the finished article in September.
The encouraging part is that Miami didn’t need it to be.
Mensah wasn’t sacked and the passing game operated almost however it wanted.
Now Cristobal and Alex Mirabal have another week to work on the run blocking.
That’s not a bad position to be in after winning by 39.
The Defence Did Its Job Quietly
When your quarterback throws five touchdowns and your receiver breaks a 42-year-old school record, the defence isn’t getting much attention.
Corey Hetherman’s group deserves some.
Stanford had scored 37 points against Hawai’i a week earlier and quarterback Davis Warren entered the game after throwing for 310 yards in that opener.
Against Miami, Stanford managed six points.
Both came from field goals.
Warren finished with 214 passing yards, while Miami forced Stanford to punt seven times.
There were moments where the Cardinal found some success underneath, particularly through intermediate areas of the field, and the pass rush wasn’t dominant on every series. Those are things Hetherman will undoubtedly pick apart on film.
But that’s nit-picking slightly when the scoreboard says six.
Armondo Blount was one of the more noticeable players up front, recording a sack and creating further pressure on Warren. Omar Thornton also impressed in coverage, while Xavier Lucas stepped up in the secondary.
The question entering the season was never whether one player could become Rueben Bain Jr. overnight.
It was whether Miami could replace that lost production collectively.
One game isn’t enough to answer that completely.
Holding a Power Four opponent without a touchdown is a pretty decent start.
Miami Never Let Stanford Believe
This might have been my favourite part of the performance.
There wasn’t really a wobble.
Stanford kicked a field goal to make it 7-3 in the first quarter, but Miami immediately responded with a long touchdown drive and never allowed the Cardinal to turn the game into the awkward opener I feared beforehand.
By half-time it was 28-6.
By the end of the third it was 42-6.
Done.
That’s what elite teams are supposed to do when they have a significant talent advantage.
Don’t give the opponent cheap turnovers. Don’t allow the crowd to believe. Don’t spend three quarters messing around before finally putting the game away.
Take control and stay in control.
Last season’s Miami team learned how to survive huge games.
The first glimpse of the 2026 version suggested it might also have learned how to put lesser opponents away without unnecessary drama.
My sleep schedule is very grateful.
Three Things I’m Taking From Stanford
The first is obvious: Darian Mensah looks ready. There will be significantly harder games than Stanford, but you couldn’t realistically ask for much more from his debut. Twenty-seven completions from 30 attempts, five touchdowns and no interceptions is about as clean as it gets.
The second is that Malachi Toney might somehow be getting better. That’s a slightly terrifying thought for everybody else. We knew the talent. What we saw in Palo Alto was Toney completely taking over a game despite Stanford knowing he was Miami’s primary weapon.
The third is that there is still work to do up front. The lack of rushing production gives Cristobal and Mirabal something tangible to attack before Florida A&M and, more importantly, before the tougher ACC games arrive.
That’s almost the ideal opener.
Plenty to be excited about.
Enough to work on that nobody should get comfortable.
And a 39-point win.
What Comes Next?
Miami doesn’t have long to enjoy this one.
The Hurricanes return home to face Florida A&M on Thursday night, meaning another short week before the Hard Rock Stadium opener.
The objective doesn’t change.
Get to 2-0. Continue developing the offensive line. Give Mensah more time with this receiver group. And, preferably, get Toney off the field slightly earlier before he breaks another school record.
From there, Wake Forest and the first real run of ACC tests begin to appear.
But that’s for next week.
For now, Miami is 1-0.
The Last Word from Across the Pond
When the alarm goes off for a 2am kickoff, you always have that little moment where you question your life choices.
By 5:30am, when I finally got into bed, there wasn’t much questioning left.
That was worth staying up for.
I predicted 35-17 Miami.
Wrong.
Instead, I watched Darian Mensah throw five touchdowns in his first game as a Hurricane, Malachi Toney break a Miami receiving record that had stood since 1984 and Corey Hetherman’s defence stop Stanford from scoring a touchdown.
Now, after about three hours of sleep, I’m sitting here with a cup of tea and watching the extended highlights again.
Apparently once wasn’t enough.
There will be tougher nights ahead. Clemson won’t defend Miami like Stanford did. Notre Dame won’t. The offensive line will be tested far more severely and nobody should start planning an undefeated season on the basis of one September game.
Although, admittedly, the bloke who predicted 12-0 before the season isn’t exactly going to tell you to calm down too much.
For one night, though, Miami looked every bit like a team that expects to be back in the national conversation at the end of the season.
Miami 45, Stanford 6.
1-0.
And now I probably need another cup of tea.
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