MIAMI (AP) -After helping engineer a game-winning drive for the Miami Dolphins, John Beck turned toward the sideline and punched the air.
“I got a little excited,” the rookie quarterback confessed.
Sure, it was only the first preseason game, one where the Dolphins rallied to beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 18-17 on Saturday night. But meaningless? Certainly not to Beck, the team’s second-round draft choice this spring who’s the No. 3 quarterback in camp behind Trent Green and Cleo Lemon.
He was serenaded by “Let’s go Beck!” chants as he trotted onto the field for the first time with 8:54 remaining, those yells raining down from the few thousand fans who remained even before he made it into his first NFL huddle.
Beck wasn’t flawless – far from it, actually – on that drive, but still managed to steer Miami 69 yards for the winning score.
“I was having a lot of fun out there, definitely,” Beck said. “These are guys I work with every day, and we want to come out as a group and be able to succeed in what we practice on. It felt good tonight to be able to put a drive together like we work on in practice and say, ‘When we needed to, we put the ball in the end zone.”’
Beck completed three of five passes in his debut for 23 yards, and got plenty of help from running back Patrick Cobbs – who rushed five times for 27 yards on that drive, not including a 10-yard pickup when he scooped up Beck’s fumble with about 5 minutes remaining.
Cobbs capped the drive with a 3-yard touchdown run with 3:46 left, then put the Dolphins ahead with a two-point conversion plunge – setting off Beck’s impromptu celebration.
“Regardless of preseason or not, if you get a chance to win it, you want to take that chance,” Beck said. “You want to win.”
Dolphins coach Cam Cameron elected to give most of the offensive workload to Green and Lemon, who combined to go 11-for-21 for 116 yards in the game’s first 51 minutes.
But in the little bit he saw from Beck, he gave the former BYU star solid marks.
“John is like all young quarterbacks,” Cameron said. “He’s going a thousand miles an hour. He finally got himself under control.”
Afterward, Beck acknowledged that it wasn’t a perfect night.
One of his passes was nearly intercepted, and he had what seemed like it could have been a surefire touchdown pass sail just out of Courtney Anderson’s reach – “that never should have been incomplete,” Beck said – with 4:37 left.
“There’s certain things throughout the drive that I’m going to be able to watch on film, and some of them right after they happened, I knew what I needed to change,” Beck said. “I’m going to try to take as much from this as I can and improve for next week.”
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