MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. - Miami left Saturday night with a 77-7 win over Florida A&M and a deeper look at the one area that suddenly needs to hold up: the secondary.
The No. 5 Hurricanes have plenty of firepower, with Malachi Toney and Darian Mensah drawing Heisman buzz.
But while the offense keeps grabbing attention, Miami is dealing with a cornerback situation that has thinned fast. OJ Frederique Jr. went down in the opener, Xavier Lucas was injured in the second game, and Jaboree Antoine was already lost in the preseason.
Lucas, who came to Miami from Wisconsin in the late-period transfer portal window, is now expected to miss about a month, head coach Mario Cristobal said.
“Xavier got hurt last game,” Cristobal said. “He’ll be out for approxmimately a month.
Hopefully that’ll be it. We’ll get him back.
OJ (Frederique) is a little bit more extensive that that, and we lost Jaboree (Antoine) in the preseason.
“So, certainly not what you want. It’s a situation we’ve not really had since we’ve been here.
But we are here now, and we’re making the appropriate, I would say, making our guys who were showing versatility throughout fall camp. They’re getting a chance to show what they worked on, and they showed up all tonight.
We expect them to be really good players."
That meant a heavy workload for Miami’s depth pieces against the Rattlers. Isaiah Taylor played 24 snaps, Cortez Redding 24, Omar Thornton 23, Zechariah Poyser 23, JJ Dunnigan 23, Ryan Mack 21, Chris Ewald Jr. 18, Bryce Fitzgerald 17, Camdin Portis 15, Brody Jennings 15, Ethan O'Connor 11, Jaelan Waters 9, Damari Brown 6, Andres Williams 3, Monroe Toney 3, Takai Azziz 3 and Stone Stroud 2.
Cristobal called that kind of exposure “invaluable.”
“It is invaluable,” Cristobal said about the depth of his team. “I can't emphasize that enough.
It is about playing football and not worrying about the scoreboard. I adamantly support playing players deep in to games to be developed.
The guys that played tonight worked as hard as everybody else and they were itching for time.
“Unless you put them in the game, you aren't going to find out what they can do when the lights come on. We had that opportunity tonight and we took advantage of it as best we could.”
Miami saw Redding, Dunnigan, Mack and Ewald Jr. handle important minutes against Florida A&M, and that group will need to keep stepping up with the Wake Forest Demon Deacons coming Friday night. With the schedule getting tougher, the Hurricanes’ secondary is suddenly a major storyline.
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