Miami quarterback Cam Ward wouldn’t lead the Power Four in passing yards and touchdowns through Week 9 if he were easy for defenses to slow down.
The former Washington State quarterback has averaged 343.1 passing yards per game across the Hurricanes’ undefeated start, finding the end zone 24 times against just five interceptions to position himself as a favorite for the Heisman Trophy. He helped erase a 10-point Virginia Tech lead in Week 5 before leading Miami back from a 35-10 hole against California seven days later.
Ahead of his team’s trip to Coral Gables, Duke football coach [autotag]Manny Diaz[/autotag] talked about what makes Ward such a nightmare for opposing teams during his Monday press conference.
“You’ve got to defend two plays,” Diaz said. “The first thing, he’s got great anticipation, very quick release, very accurate, and then he’s a hard guy to get on the ground. He runs around and can make plays scrambling to throw and scrambling to run.”
While Ward doesn’t rip off 40-yard scrambles with the ease of 2023 Heisman winner Jayden Daniels, he’s still more than capable as a runner. He’s amassed 186 rushing yards and three touchdowns on the ground this season.
More than anything else, Diaz highlighted how Ward makes Miami a particularly dangerous team on third down. The Hurricanes have converted 59.8% of those plays into first downs so far in 2024. The Army Black Knights, who sit second among FBS offenses in third-down conversion rate, are only moving the chains on 54.7% of their tries.
“Any quarterback like that at any level puts a high amount of stress on the defense,” Diaz said. “I’m sure everyone has gone into the game saying ‘Hey, we’ve got to try to contain this guy,’ and they’re 0-for-8 in trying to execute that, so how you want to do it and actually being able to pull it off are two different things.”
The elite Duke defense gets its shot at Ward at noon Eastern time this Saturday on ABC.