Darian Mensah has already put himself in rare company at Miami, but the conversation around him is no longer just about the highlight throws and the gaudy production. The next step is about refinement.
Mensah, who has spent the last two seasons giving the Hurricanes a Heisman-like presence at quarterback, is still operating at an all-time level. Even so, offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson believes there’s another layer waiting to be unlocked.
“The best thing he does is take care of the football,” Dawson said. “Now, we threw a pick in that game, look, it happens, right?
And that particular play, I mean, there’s a lot of coaching points in that play. You could throw it out there a little bit more, you could run it, right?
“But ultimately, like, his decision-making, it's been pretty spot on, and the taking care of the ball. And I tell every quarterback this too.
You want me to call the game aggressively? Then take care of the football, and I'll call it real aggressive if you take care of the football, and he does that.”
Mensah did throw his first interception of the season, but the response afterward still fit the broader picture: he kept playing at a high level. For Dawson, the encouraging part is that the good is already obvious. The challenge is tightening the places where things can still drift.
“Now, you were talking about one thing to work on. The only, like, when we get in trouble is, like, is when we get, like, in the pocket.
There's some stuff that might happen that moves us and takes us off our progression at times,” Dawson said. “There was one particular play in the game I'm thinking about that, like, the second read, kind of what you were talking about, but the second read was open, but we kind of got a little bit moved off the pocket, in the pocket, but for no reason really.
“And so, and he's really, really good in the pocket, and there's probably a couple plays in the game that happened that, man, like when there's no reason to move, there's no reason to move, you know? Every quarterback's guilty of that.
"That's not being overly critical of him because, it's a hard job back there. You got big, talented guys running after you, twisting, and your eyes need to be down the field. You got to be calm in the pocket, but you got to move when you need to move, and you got to extend when you need to extend.
“So the job description's tough, we're critical of a lot of plays in the meeting room. Because ultimately we want to continue getting better, continue pressing the envelope, and so you can't do that if you're patting everybody on the *** all the time, surely.”
Even with that first interception on the books, Mensah’s numbers against the blitz against FSU only reinforced how dangerous he can be when the pressure rises: 8-for-8, 88 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions.
He’s already been spectacular. If he sharpens the pocket work Dawson is talking about, the ceiling gets even higher.
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