Georgia Tech (5-4, 3-3) returns to the field this week after its bye and will host No. 4 Miami (9-0, 5-0). The Hurricanes were ranked No. 4 in the College Football Playoff committees’ initial rankings and not only do they bring their undefeated record to Bobby Dodd Stadium, but they also have a Heisman contender at quarterback.

Cam Ward initially declared for the NFL Draft after entering the transfer portal, but reversed course and opted to come to Miami for one final collegiate season and he has turned this program around. The Hurricanes are the favorites to win the ACC and make the College Football Playoff. Although they have recruited well and have a good team, there is no denying that Ward has them as one of the best teams in the country.

After practice yesterday, Yellow Jackets head coach Brent Key had plenty of praise for Ward and talked about what makes him so difficult to slow down.

“Yeah, well it’s a challenge, it’s exciting too. Like I said, he’s probably the leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy right now. I mean, they don’t just hand these idiots out, but he does. I mean, I think in the Duke game he had 11 scrimmages. Two of those 11 converted for touchdowns. I thought Duke did a good job on a lot of others, but two of 11, two touchdowns. So this is where you have to be careful. They do a good job of continuing to stay active at the receiver position to be able to layer the field in front of the quarterback to give him places to go. He does a good job of running and moving, looking away. So you can’t really follow his eyes and see where he’s looking, because he’ll look here at the last second and move him to the other side. So we must be disciplined. We have to keep everything in front of us on defense, which is hard to say because you watch it sometimes with all the free throws they have and you want to jump and rush them. At the same time, he gets these crazy scrambles and you have to keep him in front of you and tackle the ball. You have to be disciplined with our pace and we have to be safe tacklers. We have to be sure of the tacklers. He breaks a lot of tackles in these scrums. It goes left, goes right, appears in the middle, and then, you know, some of them, you’re talking eight, nine, 10 seconds, some of them are the last ones.

Key also said that Ward and the confidence Miami has in him is one of the main reasons they have been able to win so many close games:

“I think there’s obviously a level of confidence there. I think they have confidence in the quarterback, confident in his ability to make plays. They have confidence in their team that once you’ve won a few, it becomes contagious and you keep going so, you know, but they did it, they had close games and they found a way to win and that’s the mark of a good football team because they did it, it’s not like they won half of them, they won them all. They scored more points in the fourth quarter than in any quarter. what another quarter, so it’s a four quarter football team We have to play four quarters.

Can Georgia Tech’s defense stop Cam Ward? They haven’t been a good team at forcing turnovers and putting pressure on the quarterback so far this year, although they are an improved defense from last year. Ward makes mistakes sometimes and the number of times Georgia Tech can turn the ball over to him could be the difference in the game.

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