Cam Ward’s Hurricanes legacy will be defined by how he leads Miami the rest of the season

Cam Ward’s spot in the Miami Hurricanes’ record books is secure.

The quarterback already has the school record for single-season touchdown passes. He’s all but certain to set the school record for single-season passing yards next game.

Most 300-yard passing games in a season? Done.

Most 400-yard passing games in a season? Done.

But Ward’s legacy with the Hurricanes? That will be defined by how he leads the team through the rest of the season after Miami hit its first real hurdle of the season.

Miami enters its bye week coming off a 28-23 upset loss to Georgia Tech on Saturday, its first defeat after a 9-0 start to that included a slew of close calls in which Ward was able to bail them out with magical comebacks.

Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal all season has consistently rattled off the traits he likes about Ward, who playing in his first and only season at Miami this year after starting his college football career with two seasons at FCS Incarnate Word and then playing another two at Washington State. Chief among them is Ward being an “alpha.”

How Ward responds — and, in turn, how he gets the team to respond — will be critical for how the rest of this season unfolds as the Hurricanes attempt to hit the reset button over the bye week.

“I don’t think he changes,” Cristobal said. “He never has changed and I don’t think the result of a game can change him. If the result of a game changes you, you never were what you said you were. [We have] 100 percent belief in him and everybody the team. That’s the biggest point of emphasis.”

For his part, Ward has already begun the process of righting the ship. He came to Miami for a chance to compete for championships, something he hasn’t been able to do yet in his college career.

The Hurricanes (9-1, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) are still in position to do that. Wins in each of their final two games against Wake Forest on Nov. 23 and Syracuse on Nov. 30 get them into the ACC Championship Game. A win there secures their spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff, which gives them a chance to compete for their first national championship since 2001.

So after the loss on Saturday, Ward implored teammates in the locker room at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium to “remember this feeling,” as tight end Elijah Arroyo recalled, and rhetorically asked “Who are we going to be when we come out of this bye week?”

“Everyone’s got to lose some day,” Ward said postgame. “We end up being on the losing side of it today. But our routine isn’t going to change. My routine isn’t going to change. It’s been working for nine weeks. It didn’t work one week. Why change it? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’ve played a lot of college football. I’ve lost a lot of games. I’ve won a lot of games. [You can’t] put yourself in a position where a loss just takes everything out of you. ... At the end of day, you’ve got to wake up and do the journey all over again. Hopefully in two weeks will be on the right side of it.”

Ward will be integral in making that happen. He has saved them time and again this season while putting together a Heisman Trophy-worthy season.

Through 10 games, Ward has completed 66.8 percent of his passes (241 for 361) for 3,494 yards, 32 touchdowns and six interceptions.

His first touchdown pass on Saturday, a 74-yard touchdown to Elijah Arroyo in the first quarter, broke a tie with Steve Walsh’s mark from the 1988 season for the most in a single season in Hurricanes history. Ward then added two more touchdown passes against Georgia Tech — first an 8-yard strike to Isaiah Horton with 2:43 left in the third quarter and then a 38-yarder to Xavier Restrepo with 6:07 left — as Miami tried but failed to mount its fourth double-digit comeback in ACC play.

He needs just 22 more completions and 149 more passing yards to break Bernie Kosar’s single-season school records in both categories set in the 1984 season (262 completions, 3,642 passing yards).

But the stats and the milestones don’t interest Ward.

His focus is on the number in the win column and making sure the Hurricanes can keep adding to it.

“There’s only two outcomes: Either you win or you lose,” Ward said. “At the end of the day, tomorrow, I’ve gotta wake up, go lift and do the same process. It hurts because it was the first loss of the season, but we’re still in a position to control our destiny. We go into the bye week, get better this week and try to beat Wake Forest.”