Miami’s wide receiver room is packed, but the real fight is for one spot.
Cooper Barkate and Malachi Toney are the headliners. Both turned in 1,000-yard seasons in 2025, and both look like automatic starters for Miami this year. Barkate should handle one of the outside receiver jobs, while Toney is set to slide back into the slot, where he broke UM records last season.
That leaves a single primary outside role up for grabs, and the Hurricanes have no shortage of options. The competition has become one of the sharper battles of fall camp, with several receivers pushing for snaps and all of them expected to contribute in some form.
“I think we’ve got so many people, so much talent, on the offensive side of the ball that we’ve got to get in specific sets to get everybody on the field,” quarterback Darian Mensah said.
The names in the mix have narrowed since the dismissal of West Virginia transfer Cam Vaughn. Now, the main contenders are South Carolina transfer Vandrevius Jacobs and sophomores Josh Moore and Daylyn Upshaw. Each has drawn praise from coaches and teammates this fall, but offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said the group still has to tighten things up before anyone can claim the job.
“You see spurts; we’ve got a lot of guys doing a lot of good things,” Dawson said. “And then you’ll have some bonehead things.
So we’ve got to clean up the misses. Your misses can’t be that big, if that makes sense.
We’ve got to minimize the misses, and that’s at every position, especially when you’re talking about two people competing against each other. A lot of times it isn’t about the great plays they make as much as the (dumb) plays they make.
… Somewhere in the middle, you have to raise the bottom part.”
Jacobs brings the most college experience of the trio. He has played in 26 games over the past three seasons, with stops at Florida State in 2023 and South Carolina in 2024-25. Last season, he caught 32 passes for 548 yards and four touchdowns, and his average of 17.1 yards per catch showed why he was used as a deep threat for the Gamecocks.
Moore gives Miami a different look. The West Broward High product has size at 6-4 and enough speed to make plays down the field. He found the end zone twice against USF last season, and he said his offseason was about sharpening every part of his game.
“The main focus during this offseason was really perfecting my craft,” Moore said, “which really means getting better at every aspect of the game, trying to perfect my craft, become a pro - have (a) pro mentality, pro mindset.”
Upshaw, listed at six feet, doesn’t bring the same frame, but he has shown he can turn a catch into a chunk gain. He had a 41-yard reception against Syracuse last season, and he said he feels more settled now after adding weight.
“I have put on a lot more weight and I feel comfortable now with the offense,” Upshaw said.
Miami’s freshmen are also part of the picture. Four-star receivers Somourian Wingo, Milan Parris and Vance Spafford are all pushing for playing time, and Moore said they arrived hungry.
“They want (to play),” Moore said. “You can tell all the freshman receivers we got, they came in looking at us veterans, and they want it. We showed them the process, and we showed them … the standard of the program, and they just took it and ran with it.”
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