Miami's Secondary Looks to Continue Growth at UNC
By David Villavicencio
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Malek Young is one of the best cornerbacks in the ACC.
The sophomore, who is frequently tasked with covering an opponent’s best receiver, has 20 tackles, six pass breakups and was the first Hurricane to done the Turnover Chain when he intercepted a pass in the season opener against Bethune-Cookman.
While Young has put it all together on the field, he frequently has trouble holding it together off the field on game day.
“I threw up last game twice,” Young said. “I don’t know why. After the second kickoff, I had played a possession already, but I had to throw up. I don’t know why. I don’t feel nervous. I just feel like I have to get that out of me.”
Young’s weekly upchuck has become well-known amongst his teammates and coaches, but they know it has nothing to do with his ability as a player. It’s just part of his process.
“Malek is a kid who is humble,” cornerback coach Mike Rumph said. “His nickname is ‘Humble Child.’ He’s very humble, but as a corner, you have to mentally feel like you’re that guy so he does. But he vomits before every game and I think at Notre Dame last year, he threw up on Coach [Ephraim] Banda’s shoe. And last game they said, ‘Malek just vomited’ and he’ll do it and just says, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s just what I do.’
A starter for Miami’s 2001 national championship team, Rumph remembers one of the greatest defensive players in Hurricane history had the same ritual as Young.
“Dan Morgan was the same way,” Rumph said. “So pregame Dan would always be in the stall and you’ll just hear somebody and you’re like ‘Ok, that’s Dan.’ With some people, that’s just how they get rid of their anxiety, they let it out physically…from their stomach.”
Standing 5-foot-9 and 180 lbs., Young is far from a physically imposing figure. But the sophomore from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., uses other skill sets and his aggressiveness to succeed on the field.
“Me being a smaller guy, I have to have great feet and play through the hands,” Young said. “Sometimes receivers love to jump and I just wait for them to come down and play through their hands. I am more physical than them, even though I’m a smaller guy, because receivers don’t like having hands on them. It’s not about the size, it’s about what you have in your heart.”
Rumph has been impressed by Young’s growth since last season. An Army All-American out of high school, Young took some time to adjust to the college game before flashing his skills over the final five games of Miami’s 2016 season. After an impressive spring, Young’s development continued and he has flourished into one of the best defensive backs in the conference.
“He’s a fearless competitor and that’s the number one thing I tell the guys is compete when you’re not worried about getting beat and even if you do get beat, you just come back and compete,” Rumph said. “He has that in him, he has tremendous ball skills like I said and the main this is Malek plays very confidently. He feels like he’s one of the top corners when he gets out there and that’s what we instill in him every week, just understanding that you’re going to go against the best guy and you’re going to take him man-to-man and I want you to take him out of the game.”
Young is one of several Miami defensive backs that have impressed this season. The Hurricanes entered the season with one of the most feared front sevens in the country, but a lot of uncertainty in the secondary. But Miami defensive coordinator Manny Diaz has seen a lot of growth among his corners and safeties and he is eager to see how much more they can improve.
“The first thing that jumps out is the back end,” Diaz said. “Obviously we’ve had some great challenges the last couple of weeks. I think Mike Rumph in the corner room has done a great job. The play of Michael Jackson and Malek Young and guys like Trajan Bandy hopping in there and taking their slot receiver away from them really stands out. I think in all levels guys understand what to do more. I think they’re becoming more confident in what their techniques are out there. Now the key as a coach is you say, ‘You’ve got that. Now let’s get this.’ Let’s find the next way that we can all improve ourselves.”
Jackson has been excellent in 2017, emerging as a starter after serving largely as a special teamer in his first two seasons at Miami. The junior leads the Canes with three interceptions, including two last week against Syracuse.
“It’s contagious,” Jackson said of picking off passes. “Because once one player gets an interception, the whole defense is motivated to get one, even the D-linemen. But once the play is over, my thought is, ‘I have to get more.'”
The No. 8/8 Hurricanes’ secondary will face a talented group of receivers Saturday at North Carolina, led by sophomore Anthony Ratliff-Williams.
“Their receivers do a great job at breaking routes and coming back to the ball,” Jackson said. “They run deep routes, crisp routes, so we have to put in the good work and get ready for Saturday.”
Safety Jaquan Johnson was one of the few known commodities the Hurricanes had in the secondary entering the 2017 season and he has lived up to expectations. The junior leads Miami with 40 tackles (20 solo) and has recorded three pass breakups and an impressive interception.
“Jaquan has been unbelievable the last three games and a guy that absolutely does not get the credit that he deserves,” Diaz said. “The number one thing a safety has to be, they have to be the eraser. Any time we create a problem, he has to bring his big jar of white out and he has to erase it and that’s what he’s done up to this point. Against Syracuse, we deepened him to help him be a sideline-to-sideline guy and all the shots that they throw and, sure enough, he covers down and makes a sliding interception and a big-time play. His tackling in the alley in the Florida State game, Georgia Tech game and the Syracuse Game the last three weeks has been phenomenal.”
Young, Jackson and Johnson are all returners that have excelled in the secondary, but Miami is also getting strong performances from several newcomers on the back end. Freshman Trajan Bandy and junior Jhavonte Dean have stepped up in recent weeks to earn more playing time.
“Trajan just wants to play the game,” Rumph said. “He reminds me of those throwback players like Sean Taylor and all those guys who just want to play ball. No matter where they’re at, he’ll stop everything and go play football. So he has that in him but I had to transition him into playing within the defense and what I mean by that is if you have to go to the right, you have to go to the right because the defense says go to the right. You can’t go to the left because you see the ball going to the left. This is not a school where you have to do everyone else’s job, you do your job to the best of your ability and the other 10 will do the same thing.”
Miami head coach Mark Richt felt Bandy’s aggressiveness, toughness and ball skills stood out and his love for Miami made him “perfect for us” as a recruit. But it’s been his development that has caught the attention of his head coach.
“You have to be disciplined, and sometimes you have to be patient, too,” Richt said. “You don’t want to make them play at the expense of being reckless. He played an inside cut slant route – inside lane, was running a little ‘lookie’ or a ‘slant’ or whatever you want to call it – and he played it perfectly. He had one hand in position to tackle and the other hand from behind to bat the ball away. Sometimes a young guy might say, ‘I’m going to intercept this thing.’ He tries to go underneath the thing, the ball gets caught and there’s no one to tackle the guy. You just have to be disciplined in the way you go about your business. That was a good example of him doing it right.”
Adjusting to Miami’s defense is often a challenge for new players, but Bandy bought into the concepts that Diaz and Rumph preached and has found success.
“At first it was overwhelming, but as time went on I started to lock in and just do what the coaches told me to do,” Bandy said. It’s about the whole team. I have to make sure I’m not trying to make all the plays because I know I have a lot of guys around me.”
The same could be said for Dean, who arrived at Miami as the top junior college cornerback in the country. A Miami native who attended South Dade Senior High School, Dean got a late start learning the system after arriving from Blinn College in the summer.
“The number one thing was that he didn’t get to go through spring with us and he just went straight to fall camp so it took him a little time to transition to the defense,” Rumph said. “A guy like Adrian Colbert that came here from safety and never played corner it’s easy to teach him because he hasn’t learned anything. Dean has already learned and was taught something differently, so I had to get him to forget that and work into what we’re doing here. So that was a transition process for him, but he’s a diamond and he’s 6’2″, has tremendously long arms like myself and he’s probably the second or third-fastest on the team behind Ahmmon Richards. He’s a guy where I can’t wait for him to be who he can be and he was that guy last week where he got about 20 snaps and now he’s getting into the main role of playing a lot more corner for us.”
Freshmen safeties Derrick Smith and Amari Carter are earning more playing time in the secondary, as well. As the season progresses, Diaz anticipates Miami’s secondary to become a strength as even more defensive backs emerge into contributors for the Hurricanes.
“Derrick played more and did a nice job when he was in there,” Diaz said. “Amari Carter we thought looked good in the game last week and felt like he wasn’t out of place out there and played physical. Jhavonte Dean is starting to get it like we said he would. I told you the last six games of the year he’d be a different guy and he made some nice plays today in practice. Obviously, Trajan played a lot more. We knew we had some guys in the back end that would be coming along. When we get into more traditional offenses and it’s not Georgia Tech where you are sort of breaking all the rules, hopefully, even more, guys show up.”
