MIAMI GARDENS, FL — He’ll never say it because no matter the explanation, there are no winners in a blame game.
Only a loser who complains.
So I’ll do it for Carson Beck: the problem at Georgia last season wasn’t Beck. He’s going to spend the next four months at Miami proving it.
‘It’s not about me, it’s about this team,’ Beck said after a thrilling 27-24 victory over Notre Dame, Miami’s first Top 10 win since 2017.
And that’s about as much complaining as you’ll get from Beck.
But paint it any way you want, reality bleeds through. Georgia dropped 36 passes last season with Beck as quarterback. Thirty-six.
I’ll give you three guesses who looked like an All-America quarterback Sunday night in suburban Miami. And the first two don’t count.
Beck’s redemption season kicked off here with a big game, and a bigger performance. With a late, game-winning drive, and a statement made.
Even if ever-conservative Miami coach Mario Cristobal nearly swallowed the game whole.
But understand this: if Beck plays like this the remainder of the season – and if Cristobal let’s go of the reins – Beck and the Hurricanes will give the storied program a breakthrough season for the first time in two decades.
The same thing he felt when he first walked into the Greentree football facility in Coral Gables in January, and sat down with offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and transfer wideout CJ Daniels.
He was a few weeks removed from season-ending elbow surgery that forced him to miss the second half of the SEC championship game, and Georgia’s College Football Playoff quarterfinal loss to Notre Dame.
The same two games that ignited the social media-fueled lunacy among Georgia fans, who fell in love with try-hard backup Gunner Stockton and blamed Beck for the program’s postseason slippage.
As he sat there with Dawson and Daniels and talked ball, he knew something was different. It all played out months later against Notre Dame and one of the nation’s best defenses.
‘I tried to tell everyone that it was different here,’ Beck said. ‘But actions speak louder than words.’
After the last-minute win over Notre Dame – where both the offense and defense closed out a critical win – those actions underscored another reality bleeding through. This team will go as far as Beck takes it.
No matter what Georgia fans think.
While those same fans were dogpiling Beck and extolling the virtues of Stockton, Georgia coach Kirby Smart was the first to call Beck – and wanted him back in Athens – when he realized Beck was returning to college football in 2025. The best coach in the game wanted Beck back in Athens, unreasonable fans wanted him gone.
You do the math.
All it took was one game at Miami to show what Smart knew all along, and what Beck has been eager to prove since his Georgia career ended on the turf in the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, on the last play of the first half of the SEC championship game.
Throws are easier when receivers aren’t constantly dropping passes. The offense flows, it’s structurally operational, and it’s balanced.
If you’re dropping passes, you’re not setting up throws with the run game. If you’re dropping passes, you’re guessing when calling plays, unsure of what pays to call — much less setting up one play with another.
There’s is no plan or propose when you can’t consistently catch the ball. But when you can, when the quarterback can confidently step Ito throws, you get what played out against Notre Dame.
Smart throws, key throws, game-changing throws. Like Beck extending a play and throwing a touchdown pass to Malachi Toney in the first quarter. Or the final drive of the game, after Miami’s four previous possessions were all three-and-outs (with one ending in a field goal).
Before Cristobal got conservative and settled for a field goal, Beck hit Daniels with a 9-yard curl, and threw a perfect deep ball to Keelan Marlon — one where Irish cornerback Christian Gray had no alternative but to interfere with what looked like a certain touchdown pass.
Miami eventually got the game-winning points, but the statement had been made over and over during Beck’s first game with his new team. He wasn’t the problem last year at Georgia.
‘He’s our general,’ said Miami running back Marty Brown. ‘He’s our leader in practice, and our leader in games. We follow him.’
That’s not to say Georgia didn’t, but there were more levels to the regression in 2024. To be fair to the Georgia receivers, the pass game is a three-pronged attacked. It’s protection, it’s receivers getting open and catching the ball, and the quarterback throwing on time and with anticipation.
If any of those three doesn’t happen, opportunity for success is significantly decreased. When two of the three have problems, it’s near impossible to have a functional pass game.
The Georgia offensive line had problems all season. It couldn’t stay healthy, guys were playing out of position and and some were underachieving. Now add those 36 drops to the equation.
Beck struggled last season, his interceptions doubled (to 12), his completion percentage dropped eight points (to 64 percent) and his yards per attempt fell to a mundane 7.8 (from 9.5), because the pass game process was a mess.
By midseason, when it was clear Beck didn’t or couldn’t trust his receivers, he started pressing. Started trying to make perfect throws to circumvent the two stragglers in the three-pronged pass game attack.
Not because Beck regressed, or because ehe got a big head with a reported $3 million NIL deal. Or because he drove around a Lamborghini.
All nonsense, but all fan angst fuel for Georgia missing the CFP in 2023, and losing in the quarterfinals in 2024.
Fast forward to Sunday night: so many easy throws, so many usable pass concepts.
He threw for 205 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions ― against a defense that, by the end of the season, may be the best in college football. Seven different receivers caught passes, and the pass game was an operational symphony.
Hours before the game, on the hourlong bus ride to Hard Rock Stadium, Beck said it felt like the big games he played in at Georgia. Months of thinking it was just another game in a different uniform quickly changed.
Until he got to the stadium, put on the jersey and started pre-game preparation.
‘I got out there and felt surprisingly comfortable,’ Beck said. ‘I’m not in this alone. I have teammates around me that makes plays. I just have to get them the ball.’
Now that’s nothing to complain about.
Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on X at @MattHayesCFB.
