Jackson Cantwell’s Miami arrival is already drawing heavyweight buzz.
Bruce Feldman’s annual Freaks List dropped Monday at The Athletic, and the Hurricanes’ freshman left tackle checked in at No. 4 among the 101 players ranked. Feldman has been putting together the list since 2005, and it measures athletic output, not what players have done on Saturdays. South Carolina receiver Nyck Harbor claimed the top spot for the third time.
For Miami, Cantwell’s numbers are the kind that make you stop and stare. The staff has measured his peak power output at 9,461 watts.
That figure tops what Francis Mauigoa posted as a junior, when he reached 9,273 watts and finished 16th on last year’s list before going 10th overall in the 2026 NFL Draft. Feldman noted that Mauigoa’s mark was the highest on Miami’s roster in 2025, and it came in nearly 1,000 watts ahead of the next player.
Cantwell has also been clocked at 17.3 mph. Mauigoa, by comparison, got to 17.6 mph in his final Miami season after three years of college strength work.
The freakish athletic profile makes sense once you look at the family tree. His father, Christian Cantwell, is a four-time world champion in the shot put and won silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. His mother, Teri Steer Cantwell, captured two NCAA shot put titles at SMU and competed at the 2000 Games in Sydney.
Jackson Cantwell’s own track résumé is just as loud. In 2024, he set the national high school sophomore record in the shot put at nearly 75 feet. He also won Missouri state titles in the shot and discus and earned the state’s Gatorade Boys Track and Field Player of the Year honor.
Miami landed him as one of the premier recruits in the 2026 class, beating out Georgia, Ohio State and Oregon in May 2025. He also became the first offensive lineman to be named Gatorade National Football Player of the Year.
Listed at 6-8 and 330 pounds, Cantwell is expected to start at left tackle. That’s a big assignment for any freshman, but Miami is asking him to step in while rebuilding most of an offensive line that reached the national championship game and while breaking in Darian Mensah at quarterback.
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