Training camp is barely underway in Arizona, and Carson Beck is already drawing the kind of attention that comes with every missed throw and every clipped practice rep.
The Cardinals have Beck in the mix as a third-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and the plan is for him to compete with veterans Jacoby Brissett and Gardner Minshew for regular-season snaps at some point this season. He should also get a solid look in the preseason opener on August 6. But after a rough weekend, the noise started fast.
“Carson Beck has had a lot of big misses early in camp. Like, 5+ yards off target. Something to keep an eye on.”
There are clips floating around on X showing the misses, and yes, some of the throws were off. That said, it’s practice.
Beck has been working with different groups, sometimes with the ones, sometimes with the twos, and at other times with players who probably won’t make it to August 6 or definitely won’t be around past August 7. That matters.
The bigger picture is that Beck’s limitations have been known for a while. His arm may never be the same after the UCL tear and surgery, and nobody is mistaking him for Lamar Jackson. What he’ll have to lean on in the NFL is the part of the game that still decides so much: making the right reads and handling the football.
And the rough clips don’t tell the whole story either. Beck has had good practices too, and there are videos showing him making plays. One example came when he handled a bad snap and still found Elijah Higgins for a completion.
“Jeremiyah Love taking his first reps of the day with the Cardinals 2s.
Carson Beck wrangles tough snap and hits Elijah Higgins pic.twitter.com/6kLv3egTKQ”
The context matters here. If Beck is running team drills behind a practice squad-level offensive line and facing the Cardinals’ first-team defense, the results are going to look messy at times. That’s just the speed of the league.
None of that means he gets a pass. It does mean this is July, not late August or September.
If the same problems were still showing up then, it would be a different conversation. For now, the reaction feels a little early.
And if some Georgia Bulldogs fans are still bitter that they ran him off and then had to watch him lead Miami to the CFP championship, that’s their issue. Miami fans, meanwhile, have plenty to appreciate about the leadership Beck brought to last year’s team and the role he played in helping the Hurricanes come close to the top.
For now, the best answer for Beck is simple: keep stacking good practices and let the noise fade.
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Mensahs rise adds another layer to Miamis offseason intrigue because he arrives in Coral Gables after already moving through two other schools in a short span. He transferred from Duke, where he threw for nearly 4,000 yards and 34 touchdowns while helping win an ACC title, and now he steps into a program that has been willing to spend aggressively to stay in the national conversation. The bigger question around Miami is no longer just how good Mensah can be, but how long a market like this can keep climbing before the numbers get even harder to ignore. [Read more 🡒]