Miami’s 2026 season opens in a little more than a week with a trip to Stanford, and the Hurricanes are walking into it with plenty of spotlight already fixed on them. They’re coming off a title game appearance and sitting inside the top 10 in every major preseason poll. Mark Fletcher Jr. and Malachi Toney made the preseason AP All-America team, while Darian Mensah was named the ACC Preseason Player of the Year.
That’s the headliner stuff. But Miami’s season will also depend on a handful of players who aren’t drawing nearly as much noise.
Mo Toure is one of them. The veteran linebacker is set to begin his eighth year of college football and his second at Miami, and he’s coming off a season where he became one of the Hurricanes’ most important defenders.
Toure led the team with 84 tackles in 2025 and added three tackles for loss, two sacks and six pass deflections. He earned All-ACC honorable mention recognition, and with Wesley Bissainthe headed to the NFL, Miami needs Toure to keep carrying that load.
Injuries have followed him through his career, but he’s healthy entering 2026.
Ryan Rodriguez is another player whose importance goes beyond the spotlight. He has been at UM since 2021, yet opportunities have been limited.
In five years with the program, he has only 263 career offensive snaps. A starter in Miami’s 2024 opener, he suffered a season-ending injury and never got back into the starting picture in 2025.
Now he’s in line to be the Hurricanes’ starting center, which puts him at the center of everything the offense wants to do. Miami is counting on him to steady the line, and his health matters because the depth behind him at center is uncertain.
Elija Lofton has been a talking point since he arrived before the 2024 season, but the breakout many expected still hasn’t fully arrived. Last year, Miami’s top pass-catching tight end caught 23 passes for 218 yards and three touchdowns.
This season, the loaded receiver group could actually help him. With Toney and Cooper Barkate expected to draw plenty of defensive attention, Lofton may find more room to work underneath and in space.
Shannon Dawson said at the start of fall camp, “We want to be explosive on offense, so we need people that can run and catch,” offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said at the start of fall camp. “And so, ultimately, that’s the one thing that he can bring to the table is he’s hard to tackle.
… He knows his fighting weight, and he’s done a good job of getting there. He looks really good right now.”
Ethan O’Connor also fits the mold of a player whose value shows up more in the snap counts than the headlines. Miami brought back its entire outside cornerback group, and O’Connor quietly carved out a major role in it.
He started only seven of the team’s 16 games last season, including all four College Football Playoff games, but played more snaps than every outside corner except Xavier Lucas. O’Connor finished with 22 tackles and five pass breakups, and Pro Football Focus gave him a 75.6 defensive grade and a 74.5 coverage grade.
He should again rotate with Damari Brown, OJ Frederique Jr. and Xavier Lucas, giving Miami both depth and freshness at the position.
Marty Brown rounds out the group, and his role may be even more important if Miami has to lean harder on its running backs. Fletcher gets most of the attention after his playoff run, but Brown handled the dirty work in short-yardage situations.
The 5-foot-11, 220-pound back ran for 474 yards and seven touchdowns last season, including scores against Ohio State and Ole Miss in the playoffs. With Jordan Lyle’s roster status still uncertain after his arrest earlier this month, Brown may be asked to shoulder even more of the tough-yardage load this year.
In Other News...
Miami Has Several Once Promising Players Running Out Of Time
Brown, Wheatley-Humphrey, Pickett and Pruitt all sit in the same familiar spot for Miami this offseason, still on the roster and still trying to turn promise into a bigger role by 2026. Each has had some version of a stop-and-start path so far, whether through injury, limited playing time or the simple reality of crowded position groups, and each now faces the same challenge: showing enough to move from hopeful depth piece to someone the staff can lean on.
For Miami, the interest goes beyond just keeping talented bodies in the building. These are the kinds of players who can quietly shape a season if they finally stay healthy and find a footing, especially when the competition for snaps is so tight. The question now is less about what they were supposed to become and more about how much time they have left to prove they can still become it. [Read more 🡒]
Dereon Coleman Is Suddenly At The Center Of Miamis QB Future
Mario Cristobal has made it clear Miami wants to lean more heavily on homegrown quarterbacks instead of chasing one-year fixes in the transfer portal, and that puts Dereon Coleman in a more prominent spot than many freshmen usually find themselves. The four-star recruit from Jones High School is already competing for the backup job, and he arrives with the kind of dual-threat skill set that gives the Hurricanes a different kind of option under center.
Coleman has also added muscle since getting to campus, another sign that Miami sees real long-term potential in him rather than just a developmental project. With the staff stressing internal growth at quarterback, his progress now matters not only for the depth chart this fall, but for how the program wants to build the position moving forward. [Read more 🡒]
Miami's 2028 QB Picture Just Got Tougher For Knox Annis
Knox Annis has spent his prep career looking like one of the more intriguing names in Miamis 2028 recruiting class, and the Hurricanes have reason to be optimistic about a quarterback who has already flashed promising production in high school games. Rated as a three-star recruit, Annis has been viewed by some as a bit underrated, especially when measured against the rest of Miamis quarterback commitments in that class.
The picture around that future quarterback room may be changing, though, with CJ Cypher possibly reclassifying into 2028 and adding another layer of competition before Annis even gets to campus. For Miami, it is the kind of development that can reshape a recruiting board quickly, since extra talent at quarterback often means fewer clean paths to playing time and a more complicated long-term plan for everyone involved. [Read more 🡒]