Langham Shines Under the Brightest Lights
By David Villavicencio
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – It’s tough to blend into the crowd when you are 6-foot-4.
Score a game-winning touchdown against your school’s biggest rival and come back a week later and make a game-saving catch that helps keep your team unbeaten, and you become one of the most well-known faces on campus
For three years, Darrell Langham was happy to go largely unnoticed as he roamed the University of Miami campus. But the redshirt junior has had all eyes on him since making big-time plays that helped the No. 8/7 Hurricanes defeat Florida State and Georgia Tech in consecutive weeks.
“At first it was strange, but then I just kind of got used to it,” Langham said.
A Hurricane hero over the past two weeks, Langham’s path to recognition has been a long one.
The Lantana, Fla., native was a three-star recruit when he signed with Miami in 2014, spurning offers from Arkansas, Illinois, and the rival Seminoles to play for the Canes.
A standout at Santaluces High School, Langham came to Miami as a lanky 6-foot-4, 190 lb., receiver who needed work before he could be counted on to contribute at the college level.
The work began in the fall of 2014 when Langham redshirted in his first year at Miami to learn what it took to be a college football player. A year later, Langham did not see any game action, working as part of Miami’s practice squad.
Langham finally got on the field in a game in Year 3 at The U, seeing action in the season opener against Florida A&M. But he continued to be buried on Miami’s depth chart behind veterans like Stacy Coley, Braxton Berrios, and Malcolm Lewis and passed over by freshman star Ahmmon Richards.
Despite the lack of playing time, Langham never doubted himself or his commitment to the Hurricanes.
“My parents always told me to never quit,” Langham said. “Always fight through.”
In the spring after the 2016 season, his third since coming to Miami, Langham began to flash. The tall receiver with long arms and a big body began using his size to make plays in practice and people began to take notice.
“It was gradual,” Miami head coach Mark Richt said. “I think he understood what we were wanting from him, and wanting from him on a consistent basis. He would make some plays. He would use his body to shield a guy and catch a slant, snatch it out front. But it wasn’t happening over and over and over again. It was sometimes yes, sometimes no. I can’t say he never drops a ball, but I don’t think he’s worried about, ‘Can I snatch that ball or not?'”
Langham’s confidence continued to grow after an impressive spring that culminated in an outstanding showing in Miami’s final practice, hauling in two touchdowns at Richt’s alma mater, Boca Raton High School. Coaches took notice of his growth as a player and named him Miami’s most improved wide receiver for the spring.
“I saw it in January,” Miami offensive coordinator Thomas Brown said of Langham’s substantial development. “Coming through mat drills through spring ball to summer conditioning, you could tell that he was a different guy with a different mindset.”
While the mindset was improved, the results needed to come between the lines on gameday. Prior to the 2017 season, Langham had no catches and no recorded stats. That all changed in the season opener against Bethune-Cookman, when he impressed with three receptions for 65 yards and scored the first touchdown of career.
Langham recorded no stats in victories over Toledo and Duke and his performance against Bethune-Cookman was starting to look like an aberration.
That trend continued for over 58 minutes in Miami’s rivalry matchup at Florida State before Langham took an offensive snap. The redshirt junior needed just two snaps on offense to carve his name into Hurricane history.
“I was ready the whole game,” Langham said. “I was just waiting for my time.”
Langham dove at the goal line to score a 23-yard touchdown catch on Florida State’s star corner Tarvarus McFadden with six seconds remaining that snatched a victory from the Seminoles and sent the Hurricanes home victorious.
“We tell these guys, you never know,” Richt said. “You think you’re third string, but you could end up first string by the end of the game, let alone the end of the season, so you have to get your mind right. Langham is one of the better examples. He was probably third team going into the game, but here he is being called on to win the ballgame on the very last offensive snap.”
A week later, Langham made his first career start when the Hurricanes hosted Georgia Tech and finished the game with a career-high 100 yards on a career-best five receptions, none bigger than the 28-yard gain on fourth-and-10 from the Miami 43 that gave the Hurricanes life.
“It means a lot,” Langham said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, I haven’t really played much. I’m happy to help the team out in any way.”
The 6-foot-4 wideout reached over defensive back Lamont Simmons, who was a hero at the beginning of the second half for Georgia Tech, and tipped the ball in the air before corralling it as he was falling to the ground.
“To catch that crossing route in the rain [against Georgia Tech],” Richt said. “When Malik [Rosier] threw it, I was like, ‘there’s no way with a wet ball anybody is going to grab that thing.’ He used all 6-5 of himself and snatched it. If you notice, on that play and [the play where] he caught a seam route where a safety bounced off of him and he kept going…usually when you’re not confident or super confident, you may catch it and you’re happy to catch it. You fall down and you kind of wait to get hit a little bit. He’s now catching it expecting to tuck it and get yards after the catch. That’s just the next phase of confidence and the next phase of coming a big-time player.”
Four plays later, Michael Badgley hit a game-winning 24-yard field goal to push Miami past Georgia Tech, 25-24, and preserve the Hurricanes undefeated season.
“I’m so proud of that dude,” Brown said of Langham. “He’s obviously come a long way from last year. He was a guy that we had high hopes for. You can obviously see his size and catch radius and I’m not sure if it was confidence deal last year or what it was, but he just didn’t play on a consistent basis like he is right now. I think he’s playing at a high level right now. He’s take coaching really well right now from Coach [Ron] Dugans and he continues to work every day.”
Langham enters this weekend’s game against Syracuse with nine catches for 188 yards, two touchdowns, and two game-saving catches. He also was named one of Miami’s four captains for the contest, showing just how far he has come in the eyes of the Hurricanes’ coaching staff.
“Being captain is based on performance on the field, in practice, in the classroom, and he’s earned the right as much as anybody on the offensive football team to be that guy,” Richt said. “Obviously he made this great catch against Florida State on [his] second play of the game – just to be ready, when you’re third string going into a game, and at the end of the game you make the play that everyone wants to talk about, that’s impressive. Now you become more involved. You catch five balls for 100 yards and some key catches in the rain and some drives we had to have it. Obviously the tipped ball at the end. To have that kind of concentration to make the play is impressive. He has always been the right kind of person, he has always been the right kind of student. But now he’s starting to do some things on the field that warrant him becoming captain.”
The big plays in key moments may have come as a surprise to fans, but Langham’s teammates have had a first-hand look at the wideout’s tremendous development over the past year.
“Langham has been that guy since spring and summer,” defensive back Jaquan Johnson said. “We already knew what we were getting from Darrell Langham whenever the ball is in the air. But every day we compete, he makes us better and we make him better. It’s tough on him just like it’s tough on us.”
The Hurricanes will face a confident Syracuse team on Saturday at 3:30 p.m., and Langham may not be in the starting lineup. With the Canes deep at wide receiver, there is a constant competition to see who will earn a start on a week-to-week basis.
But starting is not what matters to Langham. He will just stay focused and stay ready for when his name is called. That’s what he’s done all season and it’s what he plans to do going forward.
“It kind of feels good now because all that hard work I put in is actually showing,” Langham said. “I just have to keep my head straight and keep pushing through.”
