Beck takes accountability for Miami loss to Louisville. ‘I have to live with that’
Carson Beck has been in this predicament before. The Miami Hurricanes’ quarterback knows how to respond from tough games like the one he had on Friday — a four-interception outing in the Hurricanes’ 24-21 upset loss to the Louisville Cardinals for their first defeat of the season.
“It’s not the first time that I’ve taken a loss or had turnovers or didn’t play up to the standard that I want to play to each and every week,” Beck said.
But how Beck responds this time will be a driving force to how the Hurricanes power through in the second half of a season that still has College Football Playoff aspirations.
That starts when No. 9 Miami (5-1, 1-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) hosts Stanford (3-4, 2-2 ACC) on Saturday at Hard Rock Stadium (7 p.m., ESPN).
“The identity of a team is shown when you’re standing in the face of adversity,” said Beck, who has completed 73% of his passes for 1,484 yards and 11 touchdowns with seven interceptions this season. “We got knocked down, and how are we going to respond? Well, I don’t know that answer yet, until Saturday. It’s the same thing every single week, regardless of a win or a loss the week before. We’re focused on each week individually. It’s one-week seasons, especially from here on out. The prep that we’ve had this week, the intensity that we’ve had at practice, it’s what we’ve had every single week. Nothing changes. We just continue to be who we are. We just have to go out and execute on Saturday.”
Beck is also quick to admit that he didn’t execute on Friday against Louisville. He completed 25 of 35 passes for 271 yards and the four interceptions — a single-game career high — without a touchdown.
“I honestly had a terrible game,” Beck said, “and that’s a huge part of why we lost. And I have to live with that. I have to take that.”
He also took ownership for what might have been misconstrued comments during his postgame news conference.
When Beck was asked about his final interception — a game-sealing pick with 32 seconds left on a pass intended for tight end Elija Lofton — the quarterback said there was a “miscommunication with the route and what we were doing” and that “it definitely didn’t help that we ran the wrong play.”
“I was never throwing him under the bus,” Beck said. “The interception is on me, and again, I’m ultimately the guy with the ball in his hands at the end, so I have to take accountability for that. I think people can take things out of context sometimes, and that’s not at all what I was doing.”
Added coach Mario Cristobal: “There is no hint or inkling of any blame being passed around to anybody in our room, our locker room, or our building.”
The Hurricanes aren’t dwelling on the past now. They have to get ready for what’s next — in the immediate, an improved Stanford team; in the long-term, a push to make both the ACC Championship Game and 12-team College Football Playoff. They will lean on Beck’s experience as they try to accomplish both of those goals.
While playing at Georgia last season, he and the Bulldogs lost in the regular season to Alabama and to Ole Miss. Beck still managed to lead that team to the SEC Championship Game and a spot in the playoffs, although he didn’t play in the CFP because of a torn UCL in his throwing elbow sustained in the conference title game.
“He’s played enough football to have games like that,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said. “He was fine immediately after the game. He felt like we all did. He felt like we gave one away, and it sucks, but at some point you gotta shake it off and you gotta move on. You can’t go back in time. We can’t replay those plays that we missed. We have to learn from them, and when they come up again, we have to do better.”
They showed up until the Louisville loss that they can be better.
They won their first five games, which included wins over three teams that were ranked at the time in Notre Dame, USF and Florida State — with Notre Dame and USF still ranked teams entering this week.
Now, it’s a matter of getting back to that form.
“Just because of one shortcoming, it doesn’t take away everything else that we’ve done this season,” Beck said, “and it doesn’t take anything away of what we still can continue to do.”
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