Carson Beck stood at the podium after Miami’s 26-20 overtime loss to SMU. And the narrative he was constructing was that this loss wasn’t about what he did wrong; it was about what SMU did right. 

When asked to walk through the crucial overtime throw that put the Hurricanes’ season hopes in jeopardy, Beck’s first instinct was to give credit where he felt it was due. “Yeah, I mean, he made a good play. They had a good coverage on for our play. Everyone’s inside leverage man, corners are outside, you know, trying to press everything out. We have all in breaking routes which, again they they got us and they made a great play on the ball. So props to them,” Beck said. 

He painted a picture of SMU’s defense executing a near-perfect coverage scheme. The reality, though, was a bit more complicated. Carson Beck threw for 274 yards and two touchdowns on 26-of-38 completions. But he also threw two interceptions, the second one coming on third-and-goal at the SMU 7-yard line in overtime when Ahmaad Moses stepped in front of the ball.

Miami had 415 total yards of offense, dwarfing SMU’s 363, and the Hurricanes dominated time of possession at 37:42. From an efficiency standpoint, they had no business losing this game. 

However, Carson Beck’s approach to the postgame narrative revealed something about how he was coping with the loss. It was easier to credit an opponent’s execution than to acknowledge how close he came to delivering Miami back to football contentiousness.

The really interesting part came when Beck pivoted to talking about the team’s future, and his words had an almost reflexive quality to them. “Just stay together. We can’t separate. We have to do what we’ve said that we are the entire year, right? And that’s having a connection. That’s playing as a team. That’s staying in unity regardless of what happened. So, that’s all we can do. We learn from the mistakes of what happened this game and then just continue forward and finish each week, you know, as hard as we can,” he said.

The plea for unity was touching, but the Hurricanes are now 6-2 with their College Football Playoff hopes essentially gone after two losses in three weeks.

Miami had been the preseason favorite to win the ACC. They were 5-0 with wins over Notre Dame, Florida, and USF just weeks earlier. Now they were facing the reality that one bad stretch and two interceptions thrown by their $4 million quarterback had fundamentally altered their season trajectory. 

Beck’s call for the team to learn from mistakes felt hollow when the quarterback throwing the critical interceptions seemed more interested in praising the defense that picked him off than in reckoning with his own role in Miami’s sudden collapse.

Cristobal cuts through the deflection

While Carson Beck was busy crediting SMU’s defense for making “a great play on the ball,” his head coach was taking a much different approach to the postgame narrative. Mario Cristobal wasn’t interested in accepting defeat gracefully or finding excuses. 

“We did not run the ball well. We need to do a better job at the line of scrimmage and give our guys a chance to make plays and move the sticks,” Cristobal said bluntly during his postgame press conference. “We also got ourselves off schedule several times in terms of pre-snap penalties, and it changes your play calls, so all in all, flat out not good enough. We have to score more points.” 

There was no sugar-coating it. Cristobal was saying that regardless of what SMU did right, Miami beat itself with undisciplined football. 12 penalties for 96 yards and an offensive line that couldn’t generate running lanes when it mattered most. The contrast between Carson Beck’s measured, deflective tone and Cristobal’s brutally honest assessment was stark. The quarterback was looking outward; the coach was looking inward.​

But when it came to Carson Beck’s future and his ability to bounce back, Cristobal showed the conviction that only experience at this level can provide. “I think he will respond well. There is no other way. There is no other choice. When you play really good teams and you’re playing conference teams, the margins are really small. One-possession games reign supreme at this time of year. If you give away plays, it’s going to get you. Tonight, it got us. Lessons have to be learned and we have to go do something about it. Talking about it ain’t going to do anything.” 

Cristobal wasn’t letting Beck off the hook, but he also wasn’t throwing him under the bus. What he was doing was drawing a clear line: the mistakes happened, they cost Miami the game, and now it’s time to fix them.