Going into the 2025 season, Mario Cristobal’s roster looks jacked up, with Carson Beck headlining the transfers. There is another side to the story as well. Cam Ward is gone. Of course, landing the former Georgia quarterback with a whopping $4 million has been a major recruiting win, but his health remains a questionable factor. And even if Beck starts throwing shortly, you can’t bet a dime on him to bring that Cam Ward effect back at Miami. Without their ace QB, who helped them clinch some close games in 2024, can they reach the ACC championship game, ending a two-decade drought?

ON3 journalist JD PicKell keeps the bar lower than many might have dwelt on. Last year, with a 42-38 comeback victory over No. 6 Miami, Syracuse forced the Hurricanes out of the ACC Championship Game. The main reason for their drop-off was how they came up short in stopping the electrifying offense of the Orange. The combination of poor run and pass defense led to a total collapse in a last-minute touchdown score. If they could have completely stopped the run on the first down or so, the story could have been different.

Cristobal made a clean confession: “They ran the ball more effectively than we should allow.” Exactly the case! Now, the question is how far they have to go to fill that gap. ON3’s JD PicKell said, “Defensively, you don’t need to be reinvented, necessarily. You have a new defensive staff, Cory Heatherman, coming over from Minnesota [as a] defensive coordinator. Miami, statistically speaking, allowed 26 points last year, a game right, Clemson won the conference. They allowed 24 points a game.

Cristobal knows that last year, they gave up on a top-tier offense just because they couldn’t match it up with a tottering defense. It stings pretty badly. Running up to a new chance, they focus fully on the defense. He brought Heatherman in an attempt to fix the issues at the core. The new DC came with a lot of backend knowledge and the ability to read between the players’ strengths and weaknesses. But it seems he didn’t aim for the stars in his first year with the Canes.

“But my point [is that] Miami doesn’t have worlds to go on defense. They don’t have to totally be the 85 Bears if you will, they just have to be better. If you’re better on defense and your offense is maybe a step back from what they were last year, Miami is going to be in that conversation to win the ACC” PicKell gave a simple rulebook to achieve the ACC dream. You might argue that it’s not that cakewalk. Of course, it’s not. But in ACC, no single team is free from its hitches. Clemson snuck into the ACC title last season over SMU. Quite clearly, they sit atop the betting odds for 2025, and Miami comes down next.

With a revamped defense and a better secondary, if Cristobal’s high-risk Carson Beck formula ends up delivering, too, there will be no going back.

Carson Beck has to carry the torch of Cam Ward 

Carson Beck can move the world if he wants to. No doubt about that. He is an extremely talented dude with stats under his belt in his productive four years at Georgia. Cristobal seems already blown away by Beck’s size, accuracy, robust arm, and continuous Spring game involvement. That’s all good. But what seems a bit over the top was the coach comparing him to Cam Ward, a Heisman trophy finalist in 2024 and a projected top NFL draft pick in the trenches.

JD PicKell once again recapitulated why Cam remains a gem for Miami, saying, “What elevated Miami as a team was Cam Ward… was a freaking alpha dude, and that was something every single person, whether it was someone that was a fan, whether it was someone that was in the building, whether it was a coach, liked. What that did was it set the temperature for the entire locker room. The entire team. This is the confidence… the swag. This is how we do things because Cam Ward said so. Because Cam Ward does it this way. 

PicKell, however, didn’t pose a question about Carson Beck’s ability to step up. He quite agrees with Cristobal, deeming Beck a must-win man for the Miami offense. He set the scale high for the former Georgia guy, saying he doesn’t need to. Rather, he has to tick that spot (Cam Ward’s) going forward.