Why 2 things can be true with Carson Beck and his Heisman Trophy start at Miami
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The more I scrolled, the more annoyed I got.
Carson Beck looked excellent in his Miami debut in a primetime spot against reigning runner-up Notre Dame. In a highly anticipated top-10 showdown, the Georgia transfer played every bit like the guy who entered 2024 as the Heisman Trophy favorite. That continued in blowout victories in Week 2 and Week 3 for the Hurricanes, which is why Beck is back atop the Heisman odds heading into a Week 4 matchup as a touchdown favorite against familiar Florida.
But back to that Week 1 Notre Dame-Miami showdown. My annoyance wasn’t with Beck playing well. Good for him. He might be a villain for plenty of college football fans, but I’ve got no reason to be annoyed with him proving my skepticism wrong and playing like the best version himself in his new surroundings.
My annoyance was with the revisionist history takes about Beck that I saw on social media as that game played out.
“Beck wasn’t the problem at Georgia last year” was the most shortsighted, “1 + 1 = 3” reaction possible to that performance. It ignored the fact that 2 things can be true at the same time.
And to be clear, that doesn’t mean I’m arguing that Beck was the entire problem at Georgia last year. Lord knows the Dawgs had an atypical issue stopping the run. Plus, and I’m not sure if you heard this, but Georgia’s receivers led the nation in drops last year. That was a problem.
Beck was part of the problem, though. It’s revisionist history to use Week 1 in new surroundings to ignore that.
How do we know that Beck was part of the problem at Georgia?
Like, besides having 2 eyeballs that watched him play football last year?
Well, the data backs up what your eyeballs told you. Beck made some baffling decisions that proved costly. From that disastrous start at Alabama (which included a much better second half) through the dreadful showing at Ole Miss, Beck had 16 turnover-worthy plays in that 6-game stretch (via PFF). In 2023 when Beck led UGA to a 13-1 record as a Year 1 starter, he had just 11 turnover-worthy plays in 14 games. Turnover-worthy plays account for when a quarterback is unlucky. In other words, Beck isn’t being tagged with a turnover-worthy play when a receiver drops the football.
In 2024, the only Power Conference quarterbacks with more turnover-worthy plays than Beck (20) were Kyle McCord, who threw the ball 592 times (67 more attempts than any other FBS quarterback) and Quinn Ewers, who played through a torn oblique for the majority of the season.
Yes, Beck’s pass-catchers had multiple drops in 10 of 13 games that he played in. He also had 5 games with multiple turnover-worthy plays, including 6 against Alabama and 4 against the Florida defense that he’ll see on Saturday. Hence, why he had 3 interceptions in a Cocktail Party matchup that turned into a surprising dog fight for Georgia, even after DJ Lagway left the game with a hamstring injury.
If Beck wasn’t at least part of the problem for Georgia, I suppose a quarterback with a clean pocket who throws off his back foot into triple coverage over the middle is just normal stuff. Those things happened, and while Georgia didn’t do a good enough job of helping him, we can’t pretend that Beck was purely a victim of his surroundings.
Too often in 2024, Beck stared down double coverage over the middle of the field and took unnecessary risks that proved costly. Seven of his turnover-worthy plays were on intermediate passes (10-19 yards) in the middle of the field.
In 2024, Beck had 15 turnover-worthy plays when he wasn’t blitzed, which was nearly twice as many (8) as he had in 2023. That total was nearly as many as then-Appalachian State quarterback Joey Aguilar, who led the nation in interceptions in 2024 and had 17 turnover-worthy plays when he wasn’t blitzed. Now at Tennessee, UGA fans saw first-hand that Aguilar looks like the best version of himself. He’s done a remarkable job of writing a new chapter in his story.
Why can’t the same be true for Beck?
All signs point to Beck continuing this impressive start in his final year of eligibility
Whether that’s because he’s got new pass catchers, an elite offensive line or an exceptional play caller that he’s on the same page with, it wouldn’t be shocking if he played at a high level for the rest of 2025. Perhaps both Beck and Georgia will embrace the fresh start they got and meet in an all-time matchup in the postseason.
If that happens, it would be a total 180 from Beck’s 2024 postseason. Just go back to how things played out down the stretch when he suffered that season-ending elbow injury in the SEC Championship Game. Seemingly all the conversations with Georgia players and coaches shifted to how Gunner Stockton had the blue-collar mindset that UGA needed, and it became clear that Beck hadn’t been the leader that Kirby Smart hoped he would be. Beck might not have been the problem, but that certainly was a problem. The irony is that even after that played out, it was apparently Beck who walked away from Georgia, and not the other way around.
In the coming weeks, some could spin the Beck narrative by claiming that “Georgia told him he wasn’t good enough,” which wasn’t true. Smart never benched Beck amid his struggles, much to the chagrin of plenty of anxious UGA fans.
Beck could prove to have the Heisman-worthy season many thought that he’d have in 2024, especially if he continues his remarkable 1.1% turnover-worthy play rate. Time will tell. He’s got a major opportunity to show that year-to-year improvement against a Florida team who forced him to rally late to pull out a victory in Jacksonville. A flashback or 2 could be in store against a Gator defense that only allowed 2 offensive touchdowns through the first 3 games.
If Beck delivers a poised showing on Saturday night, he’ll deserve praise. But he won’t deserve to have his 2024 story rewritten.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
