Marquise Lightfoot’s rise with the Miami Hurricanes has been about more than talent. The pass rusher has grown into one of the team’s top defenders and one of the better edge threats in the ACC, and Mario Cristobal says the biggest shift has happened in Lightfoot’s mindset.
“He's become serious about football,” Cristobal said. “I think early, you have two really good players, right? The guys that were here last year, and you have a really talented guy coming in, and sometimes they get it and they're still full bore, like, let's go.
“And then others, sometimes they drift a little bit. I think he drifted a little bit, not out of, not being malicious, but just being young and getting working through immaturity.
But awesome mom who hammers him as hard as you can imagine, and a guy that loves football and loves being at the University of Miami. And then the more he was around, Mesidor and Bain, they really started affecting him here and here, and then you start seeing the habits change.
“His body change, his investment in the weight room change. And now you're seeing a guy that, you know, he's often mistaken because he looks thin.
You know, he's getting close to 240 pounds now, which is not a giant, but for him, that's a lot. His levels in the weight room, his metrics are off the charts.
And he sticks his face in there and plays with physicality and getting better. He’s doing a much better job.
He still has a lot to work on, but we're really proud of him and with his progress.
“But we challenge him daily. Like there's no, like he doesn't-we don't let him come up for air.
Like it's right back at it, go, go, go. And you know what?
He appreciates it. He's up to the challenge, and he's looking forward to going out there to practice tomorrow and getting better.”
That progress has shown up on Saturdays. Lightfoot’s biggest outing of the season came against Central Michigan, when he forced a fumble with a huge sack and added another sack while he was on the field. Through this season, he has four sacks, 17 tackles and one forced fumble.
Lightfoot said the jump starts with the details that come with being a football player every day.
“The work ethic, understanding that I'm a football player at the end of the day, and I got to prioritize everything that goes into that, which is my health and how I eat,” Lightfoot said. “I'm a defensive end, I'm gaining weight, so a lot goes into that. But I just say work ethic mainly.”
He has also taken on a bigger voice within the defense, helping set the tone for a unit that believes its best football is still ahead.
“We believe that we can continue to just continue growing as a defense,” Lightfoot said. “Like we haven't showed or thrown our best punch yet at all.
So we seen this, we know this. So we just gonna continue just getting better and playing together as a team on defense.”
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