Cote: Miami Hurricanes bank on QB Carson Beck to lead ‘monster jump’ to 6th national title | Opinion

Progress, improvement. In sports that has always been a coach’s sturdiest, most reliable shield against criticism. Being better than last year was always enough. So it is understandable this is what Mario Cristobal touts as he excavates from the rubble of what became of this Miami Hurricanes football season.

His three seasons at UM have gone from 5-7 to 7-6 to 10-3, and no rational fan (or media curmudgeon) wouldn’t bless the arc of that. The thing about bottom lines, though, is they don’t bother with details, such as that 10-3 season once being 9-0 before the wheels fell off and the ACC Championship Game and College Football Playoff both ran away from the Canes.

So it was that Cam Ward broke Miami season passing records for the No. 1-ranked offense in the nation and somehow the season ended with a desultory loss in, cruelly fitting, the Pop-Tarts Bowl.

Incremental progress is not enough now, too slow, in the modern age of college football, where the gorged transfer portal and the NIL spigot flowing with cash makes instant turnarounds possible.

Nobody knows it better than Cristobal.

Enter Carson Beck, Miami’s new starting quarterback by way of the Georgia Bulldogs.

And with his arrival, new expectations that UM in 2025 might finally claim the school’s elusive sixth national championship and first since 2001.

Canes fans have spent the past quarter century wondering when The U will be “back.”

Now needs to be the answer.

As Stugotz said Tuesday on the Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz:

“The U is Beck!”

Cristobal this week also introduced his new defensive coordinator, Corey Hetherman, hired from the University of Minnesota.

Miami will need hugely improved defense and Beck duplicating the impact of Ward, augmented by gains via the portal and traditional recruiting, to take the next step.

Cristobal said these few words that summarize it all:

“We gotta take another monster jump.”

What is a “monster jump” from 10-3, from very narrowly missing the 12-team CFP?

That is not a rhetorical question. The monster jump is being the boss champ of the ACC. The monster jump is making the playoff and winning in it. The monster jump is having a season still vitally alive in January, like Notre Dame and Penn State still are as they prepare for the Jan. 20 national championship game.

Landing Beck, the No. 1-ranked portal get, means 2025 must finally deliver the big payoff to Cristobal’s steady progress.

That Miami’s ‘25 season opens at home vs. the Fighting Irish seems almost too good to be true. Beck in his Canes debut with a chance to beat maybe the national champs? Stuff like that is why we love sports.

And that opener will christen a season in which disappointment or regression may find the seat under Cristobal’s job security heating up. Because another reality in the new win-now age of college football is that patience has become a quaint notion.

The Canes are paying Beck big to be The Answer. Reports are a $3.4 million NIL payout, double the $1.6 million that lured Ward from Washington State a year earlier.

Beck’s NIL rep Dan Everett, in his best corporate speak: “As one of the premier faces of college football NIL, we expect [Beck’s] brand portfolio to continue expanding with premium and national brands. Carson will prioritize teammate-inclusive partnerships that include charitable components.”

The glitz of the Miami stage will help foster the star-making of Beck. (Don’t take that personally, Athens, Georgia) Beck already has the girlfriend for a ready-made star couple in Hurricanes women’s basketball player Hanna Cavinder, whose best assist of the season by far was convincing the BF to sign with Miami.

Cavinder is a pretty good player (7.3 points, 4.1 assists) but a social media star. She and twin sister Haley (UM’s leading scorer) have 4.5 million followers on TikTok and a combined 2.3 million on Instagram. A TikTok video of a dancing Hanna with Beck has 1.5 million views. This, too, gives Beck a new platform to be the biggest star he has ever been.

Beck was part of two national titles at Georgia but both as a backup. He fell short as a starter. Georgia lost in the 2023 SEC Championship Game and this season he was injured in the conference title game and missed the Dawgs’ playoff run.

Beck injured his right elbow and had surgery to repair his torn ulnar collateral ligament, missing the Sugar Bowl quarterfinal of the CFP. When he first met Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson recently, Beck shook with his left hand. As a two-year starter at Georgia he threw for almost 8,000 yards. But he also had 12 interceptions this season and fell out of favor with many Bulldogs fans.

There are doubts Beck’s arm injury will be recovered by spring practice, but “by summer time everything is scheduled to be full throttle,” Cristobal said.

Of Beck, the coach says: “Elite year in ‘23 and a very good year in ‘24. Athletic, smart. Superior arm talent. He’s accurate and can extend lays. Can sit n the pocket but also runs well. A great human being. Has leadership qualities. And he wanted to be in Miami. You gotta have guys that want to be a Miami Hurricane.”

Like Ward, Beck arrives in Miami for his final season of eligibility. Like Ward, he arrives with two years’ starting experience. But Ward was 12-13 as a starter for a second-tier Pac-12 team. Beck was 24-3 and steeled by the competition in the mighty SEC.

If Dawson’s offensive system was the palette for Ward to blossom into a Heisman Trophy finalist and possibly the No. 1 overall pick in NFL Draft, might Beck be even better?

Hope is the drug that isn’t illegal but is intoxicating. It can lift you so high; it can let you down so hard.

Carson Beck is that new drug now in Miami.

And he is Mario Cristobal’s greatest hope for that “monster jump” to where Hurricanes fans have ached to be again.