Carson Beck’s performance against Louisville on Friday — the worst game of his career — confirmed his flaws to his detractors who were watching No. 9 Miami’s first loss of the year.

When required to put the offense on his back as the Hurricanes’ running game faltered, Beck made several mistakes. He threw a career-high four interceptions, including a game-sealing pick on UM’s last play of the game. After the loss, pundits on social media criticized Beck not only for his errant throws but for the way he answered a question in his postgame press conference.

But Beck is not bothered by the outside noise, at least not openly. He dealt with outside criticism at Georgia, so it is nothing new to him. He is just focused on righting the ship against Stanford on Saturday night.

“It’s not the first time that, obviously, 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. “And again, sometimes you get out-executed; sometimes you don’t execute the plan. And again, there’s plays that you wish you could have back. But again, we come back into the week, you continue to prep the same way you have the whole entire year. I don’t think there’s ever a prep issue. It was never something that we were doing throughout the week or something that we didn’t do. I think it all, ultimately, came down to execution and, again, I have to be better and that’s hand-up accountability for me.”

Beck’s coaches, UM head coach Mario Cristobal and offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson, said the veteran quarterback has handled his struggles well over the last week.

“He’s fine,” Dawson said. “He’s played enough football to have games like that. And so 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’ve got to shake it off and you’ve got to 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.”

Beck’s poor play against Louisville largely came when throwing down the field. He threw four deep passes and three of them were picked off. He was 24 of 28 on short and medium passes, and only one of those passes — the final offensive play of the game — was picked off. Beck said there was a miscommunication on what route to run on that play.

Beck has typically done well at checking down when he needs to. He has 26 deep-pass attempts, which is tied for 60th in the nation. The veteran signal-caller has not been awful this year when going deep, but it is not his strength. Beck’s 64.4 passing grade on those throws is 61st out of 75 quarterbacks with 25 or more deep attempts, according to Pro Football Focus.

Beck’s 88.9 percent completion percentage on short passes (defined by PFF as 0-9 yards) is third in the nation among quarterbacks with 50 or more attempts. His 93.8 percent completion percentage on passes behind the line of scrimmage is tied for 24th nationally among those with 30 or more attempts.

“Nobody shies away from what they need to do better, including myself,” Dawson said. “Carson’s done a great job of checking it down. Probably the best I’ve had at checking it down. And so in that particular game, in those couple spots, we went a tempo play that we thought would trigger Cover 2, and it did. And we had (Malachi Toney) running down the middle and obviously, we had some underneath stuff that could have checked it down. I think (Louisville linebacker Antonio Watts) made a pretty damn good play on the ball, to be quite honest with you. But I know it is what it is.

“And the other one was a one-on-one ball. That needs to be us catching it or nobody does. That’s the reality of that play. But ultimately, we do want to throw the ball down the field when we have it. And so there has to be a level of: they’re backing up; we need to dump it down. Absolutely. And so were those things reinforced? Yes, they were.”

Beck also drew criticism when addressing his last interception, saying that the receiver, tight end Elija Lofton, ran the incorrect route. Pundits like former Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel, commentator Emmanuel Acho and former FSU quarterback and podcaster Danny Kannell accused Beck of throwing his teammate under the bus and deflecting blame — even though during his press conference, he took the blame for his performance multiple times.

Cristobal said there is no blame and that “every coach, every player, everybody takes every win, takes every loss together. There is no exception.”

On Wednesday, Beck said he was not trying to put any blame on anyone else.

“I was never throwing him under the bus,” Beck said. “And when asked the question, I was asked what happened on the last play, and I think if you go watch the whole clip of what happened, you can go look at what I said. But again, the interception is on me, and 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. I’ve never been that type of person. I’ve never been that type of way, and I’ve always taken accountability for my mistakes.

“Again, I didn’t play my best. I honestly had a terrible game, and that’s a huge part of why we lost. And I have to live with that. I have to take that. But again, it’s going to be how I respond and what I’m able to do in the weeks moving forward.”

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2025/10/22/hurricanes-beck-criticism/