The areas where Cam Ward wants to improve. Plus Hurricanes notes on Horton, Powell

Cam Ward has been one of the top quarterbacks in the early going of the 2024 college football season.

The stats speak for themselves: 689 passing yards (fifth in the nation), 75.4 percent completion rate (eighth nationally among quarterbacks with at least 50 pass attempts), six touchdowns (tied for sixth nationally), just one interception.

So, naturally, Ward has to be pleased with his performance so far, right?

Wrong.

The Florida game in which he threw for 385 yards and three touchdowns with one interception in a 41-17 win?

“I would say there were a minimum of 10 bad plays just from a quarterback and receiver standpoint,” Ward said.

And the Florida A&M game in which he threw for 304 yards and another three touchdowns while also running for a fourth in just three quarters of action?

“The biggest takeaway was with the fourth downs [Miami went 0 for 2 against FAMU] and that’s just us not doing the little things,” Ward said. “That’s something we’ve got to clean up. We say we want to win games, but if we don’t clean up the little stuff now, it can hurt us in the back end. We can get better at that.”

It’s that mentality that Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal is trying to establish throughout the team.

Don’t settle. Always find a way to get better. Embrace the challenge of pushing your limits.

“The exciting part about a guy like that is you find ways to challenge him,” Cristobal said, “because there is so much more that is in him and that he wants to do for the team. ... Certain guys bring a spark and it catches with everybody. He’s that guy.”

So what is Ward challenging himself to improve this week heading into No. 10 Miami’s home game against Ball State at 3:30 p.m. Saturday?

“Having urgency with every drop that I take and ball placement,” Ward said. “Being real nitpicky with myself I would say is the biggest thing and make sure the whole offense as a team has the same type of urgency. If we have urgency, that’ll take care of a lot of stuff and we just have to have the will to keep playing. The hardest days of practice are Tuesdays and Thursdays. We know that at the end of the day, nobody cares how your body feels. Nobody cares what your mind-set is like. You’ve just got to bring it every day. That’s something we’re sticking to.”

Isaiah Horton making early impact

Wide receiver Isaiah Horton had a slow start to his Hurricanes career. He played just four games as a true freshman in 2022 and was buried on the depth chart as a redshirt freshman in 2023. It looked like more of the same could have happened this year with Xavier Restrepo and Jacolby George returning and the Hurricanes adding Sam Brown in the transfer portal.

Instead, he’s already making his presence known.

Through two games this season, Horton has eight catches for 136 yards — both second on the team to Restrepo (11 catches, 216 yards). He is five catches and 32 yards away from matching his production from all of the 2023 season.

“Can’t say enough great things about that guy. That guy just worked,” Cristobal said. “And in a day and age where things are more transient or whatnot, that guy just put his head down and just kept working. And he worked through some bumps. He worked through some difficult situations on the depth chart and at the end sees himself being a significant contributor to the program. He’s another one where sky’s the limit.”

Meesh Powell’s personal assessment

Safety Mishael “Meesh” Powell immediately established himself as a leader of the Hurricanes’ defense after transferring in from Washington.

With that, he has high standards for both himself and the defense as a whole.

So how does he evaluate how the group has performed through two games?

“I think I’ve been playing pretty solid,” Powell said. “I’m just adjusting to playing more in the post. I think overall the DB group, we’ve done pretty well. We still are striving to become better and better every single day. We have a standard that we want to exceed every single day and create a new standard day by day. ... We have a lot more goals. We’ve got a lot more turnovers we want to create, and we’ve got a lot more things we want to accomplish before we say we’re doing a super phenomenal job, but I’m saying they are playing really good right now, though.”