Explaining why Carson Beck was left off Ari Wasserman top 10 college football players returning in 2025

Quarterback Carson Beck made one of the biggest moves of the offseason in college football when he left the Georgia Bulldogs, where he’d been a two-year starter, to transfer to the Miami Hurricanes.

Despite the splash that his transfer made, Beck didn’t make it on On3’s Ari Wasserman’s list of the top 10 college football players returning for the 2025 season. It was, arguably, a snub but it also made sense for him to not make the list, as Andy Staples broke down on Andy & Ari On3.

“I think he’s hard to judge because he’s coming off elbow surgery,” Andy Staples said. “We don’t know what his arm is gonna be like coming off the injury and you have two sample sizes of Carson Beck. When he has two of the best pass catchers in Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, he’s awesome. When he doesn’t, he’s kind of okay. So, what’s Miami got? Because you and I talked to Xavier Restrepo in Mobile, he’s gone. Jacolby George is gone. Can Miami replace that production in the receiving corps and give Carson Beck a chance to put up big numbers.”

Last season at Georgia, Beck completed 64.7 percent of his passes for 3,485 yards and 28 touchdowns to 12 interceptions. That’s a worse completion percentage, fewer yards, and double the interceptions from the season prior. Still, there were times when he flashed the top-end talent that Beck was expected to show off all year.

Ari Wasserman, who put the list together, questioned just how happy Miami fans are to see Carson Beck transfer to Coral Gables. After a season of Cam Ward, is this an exciting move at quarterback? However, as Staples explained, it’s the better option for 2025 if you’re the Hurricanes.

“I don’t think they were super juiced. I think they were more relieved because the Emory Williams experiment in the second half of the Pop-Tarts Bowl said okay, need a different quarterback. Need somebody better than this. So, they got somebody better than that. Carson Beck is definitely better than that. So, I think they’re excited about that. I think they’re probably looking at it, going well Cam Ward’s issue at Washington State was he didn’t have the talent around him, and then once he got the talent around him at Miami, he’s just blossoming,” Staples said.

“Carson Beck had talent around him at Georgia. Now, he had more talent earlier, less talent later, but the talent at Georgia last year was probably fairly comparable to the talent at Miami this year will be.”

Of course, now Carson Beck will have the opportunity to prove that he’s one of the 10 best players in the game. Go out and lead Miami to the College Football Playoff in 2025 and nobody will doubt Beck at quarterback again.