Cam Ward’s drive for Miami Hurricanes success extends beyond what he does on the field

Cam Ward’s competitive nature doesn’t stop when he’s on the sideline. His resolve to make the Miami Hurricanes the best team they can be is paramount even when he’s not on the field.

That has been evident through each of No. 8 Miami’s first three games — blowout wins against the Florida Gators (41-17), Florida A&M Rattlers (56-9) and Ball State Cardinals (62-0) — when Miami had built enough of a lead that it could put its backups into the game and give them valuable playing time.

Ward might not have been playing late, but his night certainly wasn’t over. He was still there doing whatever he could to make sure the quarterback who replaced him — whether it was Albany transfer Reese Poffenbarger or sophomore Emory Williams — was in the best position to succeed.

“I’m just constantly motivating them,” Ward said postgame Saturday, “the same as they do [for] me.”

It’s just another layer of Ward’s dynamic in the Hurricanes’ offense. What’s seen on the field is only one element of Ward’s commitment to helping Miami get back to its winning ways in his lone season there.

“It’s vital,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said Monday. “From the first practice, from the first meeting, it is stated very clearly that you support whoever’s in the game. Yeah, we’re competitive. Everybody competes to a point, and then when the starter is named, then that’s the guy who supported. It’s easy with those guys, because they like each other. It’s very organic with those guys. I mean, their banter and interaction on a daily basis is comical most of the time, but you can tell those guys really respect and like each other. I like to see that. If you watch the game and at the end, whenever people were making plays, one of the things that sticks out to me is, looking on the video, and our starters are on the sideline, they’re the ones cheering the hardest for those guys.”

That said, there’s no mistaking that this is Ward’s team, and he has done everything right on the field so far.

Ward has completed 73 percent of his passes (65 for 89) for 1,035 yards and 11 touchdowns against just one interception through the first three games of the season.

His 11 touchdowns and 24 completions of at least 20 yards lead the country, while his 1,035 passing yards are the second most nationally (behind only Ole Miss’ Jaxson Dart, with 1,172) and the second most in UM history through three games, according to the Associated Press, trailing only Craig Erickson’s 1,126 passing yards through three games in 1990.

Since the Hurricanes joined the Atlantic Coast Conference ahead of the 2004 season, Ward is the first ACC player with at least 300 passing yards and three passing touchdowns in each of his first three games of a season.

His five-touchdown performance Saturday against Ball State marked the 10th time in Hurricanes history a player threw for at least five touchdowns. Jarren Williams has the single-game school record with six touchdown passes, done on Nov. 9, 2019, in a 52-27 win against Louisville.

He is also 94 passing yards from 15,000 for his college career after throwing for 6,908 in two seasons at Incarnate Word and another 6,963 yards in his two seasons at Washington State before transferring to Miami.

“It almost seems like the great ones, they’re just restless,” Hurricanes coach Mario Cristobal said. “They’re almost like grouchy. They’re never comfortable. They’re uncomfortable in the right kind of way, and they make people uncomfortable in the right kind of way to keep everybody on edge — and [Ward’s] restless.”

But Ward isn’t wrapped up in the numbers — Dawson even quipped that he would be surprised if Ward knew about any of these milestones because “he’s got blinders on and he thinks about the next play, thinks about the next game.”

His focus is on what comes next.

“If it doesn’t have much to do with us winning and getting better, I don’t think he has any interest in it, quite frankly,” Cristobal said. “It’s the right mentality. He’s got this window to play college football, and he came to Miami for a lot of reasons, and one of them is winning and proving also that he can help a program be a winner. He’s laser focused, and when he’s that, well, we’re seeing what it is when he is that.”

Added Dawson: “You just keep playing ball. If you have that mentality that’s tough like that, I think you block everything out. ... Those guys that are resilient tend to not care about those things.”

That includes making sure things are still running smoothly when he’s not playing. Ward sat out the entire fourth quarter against FAMU and all but one drive of the second half against Ball State after the Hurricanes built sizable leads against both teams.

Poffenbarger completed 6 of 7 passes against FAMU for 20 yards. Williams completed 11 of 12 passes for 161 yards and a touchdown against Ball State — with his lone incompletion being a dropped pass.

“It’s good for everybody,” Ward said, “especially with how well we want to play this year, how deep of a room we’re trying to get. It’s good to know that we can allow the backups [into the game]. You see Emory out there. He throwing seeds. That boy played good. ... It’s smooth to see him playing out there, especially nobody went through the past. He’s there for me every day. Reese is there for me every day. We watch tape on the sidelines every drive. We all motivate each other, so it’s good to see him out there.”