Football Kicks Off Spring Practice
By David Villavicencio
HurricaneSports.com
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – 80 degrees and sunny. What a perfect day to start spring football.
Tuesday marked the first day of spring, signaling the beginning of a new season, so it was fitting that the Miami Hurricanes returned to the Greentree Practice Fields to begin preparation for their 2018 campaign.
“Well, Day 1 – as you can tell, it was a little bit warm and humid, which was good,” Miami head coach Mark Richt said. “We did have a nice breeze, which helped them out a little bit. I thought we competed really well. It’s just fun to come out here and most everybody knows what to do – and that includes how we stretch, how we go from drill to drill, how we hustle after a rack of four plays, just how we buckle up our chinstrap every play. Then you have a couple of young guys who are really trying to figure out what’s up. You can tell their condition isn’t just what it should be, but good thing they’ve been here for a month and a half or two months to give themselves a chance. I was pleased with the Day 1, for sure.”
Veterans and newcomers alike were back in pads competing for the first time since Miami’s appearance in the Capital One Orange Bowl and they were eager to be back in action once again.
“It was nice to get back on the field with the guys, and I love being out here with them,” quarterback Malik Rosier said. “I think the biggest thing you see is that our defense is so fast. I mean they are still as fast as they were in the fall. They didn’t drop off any, especially in the secondary. They have a lot of experience. They are better at disguising. I mean they are even throwing new coverage on us, which is nice to see. Coach [Manny] Diaz is going to be ready for us and we just have to come and prepare every day because if not, you are going to have a terrible day out here.”
Rosier was joined by redshirt freshmen N’Kosi Perry, Cade Weldon and Augie Debiase, as well as freshman Jarren Williams in the quarterback rotation. Richt hopes to learn a lot about his quarterbacks as they compete over the course of Miami’s five-week spring period.
“We install a certain amount of plays against the coverages that we know we’ll see,” Richt said. “How do they react? How do they take it from the meeting room to the field? One part of it is a mental process, to be able to throw to the right guy at the right time. The other part of it is, can you hit your target when you’re going to the right guy? Or, if everybody is covered, what do you do now? Do you scramble? Do you throw the ball out of bounds? Do you do something safe, like you’d normally do in a game? Sometimes I learn more from a play that doesn’t have much chance of success and the guy not trying to make something out of nothing. There’s a lot of things we can learn.”
Williams is one of 10 early enrollees participating in their first spring as Hurricanes. Richt and his staff have emphasized the advantage of enrolling early since they arrived in Coral Gables. Previous early enrollees like Shaquille Quarterman, Michael Pinckney and Navaughn Donaldson got a head start on their college careers and earned Freshman All-America honors after their inaugural seasons. Rosier sees several of the newest Canes that could carve out major roles for themselves on the 2018 team.
“Lorenzo [Lingard] definitely stands out,” Rosier said. “The big thing with him, he’s a rookie. You can tell he’s fast, he’s explosive and once he figures out what he’s doing on every play, he’s going to be a freak. And I think another guy is Gilbert [Frierson]. Gilbert is going to be really good, so is Gurvan Hall. Those guys in secondary are just running balls down. There was one play, where [Frierson] was open, you see him – how do you say it – there was a lot of grass and he just collapsed that grass. I think he dove and knocked the ball away. So, I mean, he’s doing a great job and those defensive players are going to be really, really good.”
Jaquan Johnson, who emerged as an All-ACC player as a junior in 2017, is one of the veteran leaders setting the tone for Miami this spring. The defensive back played a major role in Miami’s 10-3 season a year ago, but he is not dwelling on previous success. Instead, he is focused on making his final season even better.
“Basically, when we come out here, we come out with the mindset that we want to erase last year,” Johnson said. “We’re not even thinking about last year, for the most part. We are coming out as a new team with new faces. We are trying to establish leaders and compete every day. That’s how we go about our business.”
