Opportunity Beckons: Carson Beck, Miami Hurricanes looking for breakthrough 2025
New Miami Hurricanes quarterback Carson Beck has his share of tattoos covering both of his arms and his left leg. Two in particular stand out to him.
The first is a quote on his right elbow: “Why do we fall?” It comes from the movie “Batman Begins.” The answer to that question, as Thomas Wayne says to his son Bruce: “So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
The second, right next to it and covering up most of his bicep, is a phoenix. Beck is a Harry Potter fan, and the phoenix is an integral figure in a couple of the books in the series. A phoenix is also a mythical symbol of resilience, as bird is said to be reborn from its ashes when it dies.
The scar that runs through them — a visual reminder of the UCL revision surgery he had in December after he injured his elbow in the SEC Championship Game with the Georgia Bulldogs — now gives the artwork a little extra meaning.
“The incision goes through it,” Beck said. “I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not, with the meaning of the tattoos, but that’s pretty poetic.”
Beck dealt with a lot of falling over the past year. His draft stock tumbled from the first-round projection he had heading into the season. The injury provided an additional setback.
But Beck is picking himself back up again and hoping for a rebirth with the Hurricanes, the team he transferred to in January for one final chance to prove his worth before going pro.
He knows it can be done because it has been done. Beck’s predecessor at UM in Cam Ward turned himself from a Day 3 draft prospect into a Heisman Trophy finalist and the No. 1 overall pick after just one season in Coral Gables.
Beck will now try to achieve similar individual success while also taking the Hurricanes a step further than Ward did.
Miami, like its new quarterback, has an opportunity in front of it for the taking but needs to pick itself up in order to make it happen. The Hurricanes went 10-3 last season despite a 9-0 start to the season and the offense rewriting UM’s record book because the defense faltered down the stretch. The chase for championships — Miami should once again be in play for its first Atlantic Coast Conference title and eyes its first national title since 2001 — continues as the Mario Cristobal era enters its fourth season.
A marquee matchup between a pair of top-10 teams in No. 10 Miami and the No. 6 Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Aug. 31 will set the stage.
And eyes will be on Beck to see if that can become reality.
“The goal is to win championships,” Beck said. “That’s always the goal going into the season. I think we have a really good team. I think we have a lot of work to do in just making sure that our attention to detail is super locked in, super focused, making sure that we’re the best team that we can possibly be when we walk out there on Week 1. I think if we can do that, then the sky’s the limit for us.”
Getting acclimated at Miami
But before any thoughts of expectations could be pondered, Beck had to deal with all sorts of limitations when he first arrived on campus in January.
Chief among them: He couldn’t throw. Beck didn’t get fully cleared for football activities until after spring practices ended, so he had to use his first three months getting acclimated with his new team and teammates in other ways.
He was a constant figure at practice, even if it was just observing from behind the play or on the sidelines. He communicated constantly with teammates and coaches, pointing out what he saw as a spectator and giving suggestions as to how he might have run plays.
“He’s an educator of football,” running back Mark Fletcher Jr. said. “That’s what I call him. He just knows a lot of football. He’s played a lot of football and anytime he sees something, he just tries to give back. That’s not only to me, that’s to anybody.”
He dove into the playbook. During Beck’s first week on campus, he would get to the practice facility early and walk through the entire offense with offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson and offensive analyst Max Drisko.
“Every single day for I think it was like, seven, eight, nine days in a row,” Beck said. “We were meeting for an hour, two hours, just going over the entire offense, the installs and whatnot.”
He hosted a Super Bowl party at his house. He spent one day with each receiver during spring ball to better build personal relationships with the teammates he would eventually be throwing passes to. He spent extra time in film and meeting rooms.
Beck didn’t have a lot of time to make an impression on his new team. This is his first season at Miami and final season of college football. His rehab delayed his chance to show them in person what he could do on the field. So he knew he was going to have to do more off the field to gain their trust.
“Leadership is earned, not given, and respect is also earned,” Beck said. “I feel like to earn the respect of the guys around me, I had to put in work, and that was how I was able to put in work. Obviously, since I couldn’t do anything physically at the time because of the injury, being able to use my experiences and what I know and what I’ve learned and help everyone around me, I feel like I was able to build rapport and respect with the guys.”
So far so good by the looks of things over the past three weeks since he became a full participant in camp.
“Not going through spring, you’re waiting to see [what he looks like] when camp starts,” Dawson said. “When you get out there, when it’s truly 11 on 11, not the player-led stuff that we do in the summer, you’re very curious in how that’s going to go and the rapport of him with the receivers. It really didn’t miss a beat. Look, he can throw the football at an elite level. His mentality of the game is different because of how much he’s played and how much he’s been around the game and how much he’s seen. The way he goes about things is very professional and he really takes ownership of the details of playing quarterback. It’s been good to have him.”
‘This is my future’
Dawson and the Hurricanes can smile about having Beck now because they almost assuredly wouldn’t have had him on the roster if not for his injury in the SEC Championship Game.
Even with a relatively down year at Georgia in 2024, Beck had his sights set on the NFL Draft. The injury, the surgery and the timetable for recovery coupled with the diminished draft stock had Beck reconsider his plans.
So on Jan. 9, Beck withdrew his name from the NFL draft and entered the transfer portal. One day later, he committed to Miami.
“This is my future,” Beck said, “and I think that this decision is one of the better decisions I’ve made.”
You can sense there’s a fire burning inside. Beck knows what he’s capable of doing. He knows his pedigree. But despite all that, Beck still has a chip on his shoulder.
“Wouldn’t you?” Dawson quipped at UM’s media day ahead of fall camp. “I think he does. I mean, I would. I look at Carson and I look at a guy that for probably eight or nine weeks of the season last year was the preseason No. 1 pick overall in all the people’s little fake boards that they do. ... If I was him, yeah, it would probably strike me a certain way.”
Beck has long been a highly touted player.
It began in the high school ranks at Jacksonville Mandarin, where he played his final two prep seasons.
Bobby Ramsay, Beck’s high school coach those two seasons, saw Beck’s initial development spurt firsthand. Ramsay said it wasn’t until late in Beck’s junior season that “the play had caught up to the hype.” Beck ultimately led Mandarin to an 11-4 record and a Class 8A state championship over Miami Columbus — which happens to be Cristobal’s alma mater. Beck completed 25 of 36 passes for 330 yards and five touchdowns in that state title game to cap a year in which he threw for 3,546 yards and 39 touchdowns overall.
“You’re going to see a guy who can make all the throws,” Ramsay told the Miami Herald in January. “There’s not a throw he can’t make.”
One of the big things that stood out to Ramsay about Beck: How he “loves what goes into being a quarterback.” That’s highlighted in his commitment to film study, the mental aspect of succeeding at the position and the understanding that the onus will be on him to rally his teammates together.
“He’s a kid who is going to come in every day, and he’s going to have an expectation level for what he’s going to expect from the guys around him,” Ramsay said. “He has to set the standard himself for what he does and how he goes about his business.”
That continued at Georgia, where he had to bide his time for three years — including the final two watching Stetson Bennett lead the Bulldogs to back-to-back national championships — before finally getting his chance to be a starter.
Beck was dominant in his first season as a starter in 2023. He completed 72.4 percent of his passes for 3,941 yards and 24 touchdowns with just six interceptions as UGA went 13-1, with its only defeat being in the SEC Championship Game to Alabama.
His production took a dip in 2024. Beck completed 65 percent of his passes for 3,485 yards and 28 touchdowns but also threw 12 interceptions — tied for the most among quarterbacks at Power 4 schools this season — and then also sustained the elbow injury that sidelined him during Georgia’s brief College Football Playoff run. His production dropoff was at least somewhat impacted by those around him. According to Pro Football Focus, Georgia receivers dropped 30 passes in 2024 compared to 18 in 2023. Beck also dealt with more pressure — 105 pressures on 494 dropbacks (21.3 percent) in 2024 compared to 87 on 458 (19 percent) in 2023 — in the pocket as well.
But Beck still went 24-3 in his two years as a starter, including 9-3 against ranked opponents.
Now, he takes that knowledge into his sixth season of college football and his first at Miami.
“The experience that I’ve had being on teams like that and knowing what it takes to actually get to [championship] games helps,” Beck said. “It takes a lot.”
High expectations
And there are expectations that come with it.
Beck knows a standard has been set at the quarterback position at Miami after what Ward did last year. Ward last season set the Hurricanes’ single-season school records for completions (305), passing yards (4,313), passing touchdowns (39) and completion percentage (67.2 percent). The Hurricanes as a whole led the country in scoring (43.9 points per game), yards per game (537.2), yards per play (7.57) and third-down success rate (56.25 percent).
Does Beck feel any pressure having to follow that? Not really.
“Obviously his success is undeniable,” Beck said of Ward.
But...
“It’s a game,” Beck said. “I’ve played football my whole life. I’ve played quarterback since I was 7 years old, and it’s something that I love to do. I’ve got a lot of good talent around me and really good coaches in position to not only help me not only achieve my goals but be really successful.”
Beck is internally driven. Anything less than perfection is unacceptable.
“He’s probably harder on himself than anything,” Dawson said. “He’ll beat himself up over a throw he missed or whatever. But that’s his way. The more I get to know him, that’s just his way of motivating himself and his way of auto-correcting himself.”
Beck’s personal drive will be critical to Miami’s success as a whole. The Hurricanes have taken strides every season under Cristobal — going from 5-7 in Year 1 to 7-6 in Year 2 to 10-3 in Year 3 — but there’s still another step for the group as a whole. It still hasn’t won a conference championship. It still hasn’t made it to the College Football Playoff.
Both of those are fully in play this year, with Beck’s performance likely serving as a focal point for the team’s success or demise.
Will Beck fall or rise from the ashes? It’s in his hands.
“That’s how I want it,” Beck said. “That’s how it should be. That’s how I’ve always wanted it my whole life. I feel like in those pressure moments, I thrive. That’s what I look for.”
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