Mario Cristobal’s big task this season: Keeping Hurricanes ‘driven and hungry’ amid success

Cam Ward watched the film, he reviewed his performance and the assessment is in.

What stood out the most to the fifth-year quarterback during his performance in the Miami Hurricanes’ 41-17, season-opening road win over the Florida Gators, one in which he threw for 385 yards and three touchdowns?

“On the positive side,” Ward said, ”we had a lot of missed plays, especially offensively.”

Wait, what?

After a performance that earned him national recognition — including Maxwell Award National Award Player of the Week, Davey O’Brien National Quarterback of the Week and ACC Offensive Player of the Week — Ward’s focus was singularly on what needs to improve.

“Even myself, I had a couple bad plays in the game,” Ward said. “I had some bad pocket movement throughout the game, so I’ve just got to get consistent at that. ... Just overall, we left a lot of plays on the field. That’s just something that we’ve got to get better at this week.”

That’s exactly the mind-set coach Mario Cristobal wants his No. 12 Hurricanes to have moving forward.

No matter who Miami (1-0) plays — whether it’s FCS opponent Florida A&M (2-0) in their home opener on Saturday, Ball State at home or USF on the road afterward to cap nonconference play, or any of their eight conference games — the goal remains the same: Never be satisfied and always find ways to get better.

“I think it’s pretty simple: Stay mad,” Cristobal said. “You should be very driven and hungry. You should be should be pissed. You should be mad. It was not our best football [against Florida]. ... They’re so I would say focused on winning, they’re so about having enough of years of Miami not reaching it’s supposed potential that it’s not hard to point out the things that have caused issues in the past at Miami and to bright to light the things that must be done to avoid any setbacks.”

The Hurricanes are at their highest point in the Cristobal era. Their No. 12 spot in the AP Top 25 poll is Miami’s highest ranking since the 2020 season, when UM peaked at No. 7 and hovered between Nos. 9 and 13 throughout the rest of the season before dropping its regular-season finale to UNC and its bowl game to Oklahoma State to finish the season ranked No. 22.

Miami didn’t finish a season ranked in a poll in the following three years, the final year under Manny Diaz and the first two under Cristobal.

Which is why the Hurricanes are saying who they face each week is irrelevant. Rather, it’s how they play each week regardless of the foe that will determine how far they go this season.

“One thing that coach tells us is play the game and not the name,” sophomore offensive lineman Francis Mauigoa said. “We play the game as it is. ... We treat everyone equally.”

Cristobal added: “We’re super excited about the progress that was made and some things that were done, but we’ve had enough experiences going the other way knowing that this is the best time to be our best.”

That said, the Hurricanes do have a lot to build on from their win over the Gators as they move forward in the season.

Offensively, the Hurricanes racked up 529 yards of offense and had just two plays go for negative yards. Ten players caught passes from Ward, who was the first Miami quarterback to throw at least 300 yards and three touchdowns in a season opener since Ken Dorsey in 2001 against Penn State.

But if you ask senior wide receiver Xavier Restrepo, who caught seven passes for 112 yards and a touchdown, it was just “a decent day” on Saturday.

“We showed a little bit of how dangerous we can be as an offense,” Restrepo said, who added the caveat that the Hurricanes are “nowhere near where we need to be. ... We have a long way to go.”

Defensively, Miami limited Florida to just 261 yards of offense — 71 of which came on one play — while logging eight tackles for loss, three sacks, five pass breakups and two interceptions in the win. This was despite the fact that two starters in defensive end Rueben Bain Jr. and cornerback Damari Brown exited early with injury. Neither is slated to play Saturday against FAMU.

“We’ve moved on from the game,” said safety Jaden Harris, who had a team-high seven tackles and recorded a fourth-quarter interception against Florida. “We know there’s another task at hand.”

Don’t expect that to change Saturday against Florida A&M. Even though it should be a one-sided affair —Miami is 10-1 all-time against FAMU, with the lone loss coming on Oct. 6, 1979, and the Hurricanes having won each of the following 10 meetings by an average of 45.2 points — the Hurricanes are admittedly hyping up their opponent, which is 2-0 to start the season and and won the Southwestern Athletic Conference championship last season.

“We treat every single game like it’s the championship,” senior linebacker Francisco Mauigoa said. “We attack FAMU like we’re playing Florida. Every game, every practice, we’re going to kick it up another notch. This whole team has the mindset to reset and get ready to go for another week. The job is not done. There’s still a lot of work to do. Everybody’s getting ready and everybody’s in the right mindset to attack this week just like it’s any other big game.”