Miami Hurricanes head coach Mario Cristobal flashes the U as the fans celebrate the Canes defeating the Florida Gators in an NCAA college football game at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Florida, on Saturday, August 31,
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.
Leave a Reply