Miami Herald Logo

Miami Hurricanes’ Duke Johnson looks like royalty in debut | Miami Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Site Information
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
    • Herald Store
    • RSS Feeds
    • Special Sections
    • Advertise
    • Advertise with Us
    • Media Kit
    • Mobile
    • Mobile Apps & eReaders
    • Newsletters
    • Social
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

    • Sections
    • News
    • South Florida
    • Miami-Dade
    • Broward
    • Florida Keys
    • Florida
    • Politics
    • Weird News
    • Weather
    • National & World
    • Colombia
    • National
    • World
    • Americas
    • Cuba
    • Guantánamo
    • Haiti
    • Venezuela
    • Local Issues
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • In Depth
    • Issues & Ideas
    • Traffic
    • Sections
    • Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Pro & College
    • Miami Dolphins
    • Miami Heat
    • Miami Marlins
    • Florida Panthers
    • College Sports
    • University of Miami
    • Florida International
    • University of Florida
    • Florida State University
    • More Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Auto Racing
    • Fighting
    • Golf
    • Horse Racing
    • Outdoors
    • Soccer
    • Tennis
    • Youth Sports
    • Other Sports
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The Florida Influencer Series
    • Sections
    • Business
    • Business Monday
    • Banking
    • International Business
    • National Business
    • Personal Finance
    • Real Estate News
    • Small Business
    • Technology
    • Tourism & Cruises
    • Workplace
    • Business Plan Challenge
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Cindy Krischer Goodman
    • The Starting Gate
    • Work/Life Balancing Act
    • Movers
    • Sections
    • Living
    • Advice
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    • Home & Garden
    • Pets
    • Recipes
    • Travel
    • Wine
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Dave Barry
    • Ana Veciana-Suarez
    • Flashback Miami
    • More Living
    • LGBTQ South Florida
    • Palette Magazine
    • Indulge Magazine
    • South Florida Album
    • Broward Album
    • Sections
    • Entertainment
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Games & Puzzles
    • Horoscopes
    • Movies
    • Music & Nightlife
    • People
    • Performing Arts
    • Restaurants
    • TV
    • Visual Arts
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Jose Lambiet
    • Lesley Abravanel
    • More Entertainment
    • Events Calendar
    • Miami.com
    • Contests & Promotions
    • Sections
    • All Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Op-Ed
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Jim Morin
    • Letters to the Editor
    • From Our Inbox
    • Speak Up
    • Submit a Letter
    • Meet the Editorial Board
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Blog Directory
    • Columnist Directory
    • Andres Oppenheimer
    • Carl Hiaasen
    • Leonard Pitts Jr.
    • Fabiola Santiago
    • Obituaries
    • Obituaries in the News
    • Place an Obituary

    • Place an ad
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Apartments
    • Auctions/Sales
    • Automotive
    • Commercial Real Estate
    • Employment
    • Garage Sales
    • Legals
    • Merchandise
    • Obituaries
    • Pets
    • Public Notices
    • Real Estate
    • Services
  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Real Estate
  • Mobile & Apps

  • el Nuevo Herald
  • Miami.com
  • Indulge

Sports

Miami Hurricanes’ Duke Johnson looks like royalty in debut

    ORDER REPRINT →

September 02, 2012 12:01 AM

We have seen the face and the future of Miami Hurricanes football and need but a single syllable to say it:

Duke.

No. Wait.

Duke!

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

The exclamatory is necessary if you want that syllable to sound like what Duke Johnson looked like here Saturday afternoon in sparking and lifting UM to its season-opening 41-32 victory over Boston College.

I’m not even sure if the surname won’t seem superfluous pretty quickly. Duke will be enough to describe the kid who is putting the “oh!” back in UM’s offense. Who knows? Duke might even be enough to lead the Canes’ determined effort back toward eventual national relevance.

That is why he is here. Why he stayed home. Why he didn’t run from the looming cloud of the NCAA. Because he has one goal.

“To take UM back where it used to be,” says Duke Johnson.

This was the remarkable collegiate debut of the blue chip, true-freshman running back from the backyard, from Miami Norland High. This was a kid staring down a ton of hype, then rising up to meet it, and beat it. And if what we just saw of Randy Johnson, nicknamed Duke in honor of a relative, is not a mirage but just the beginning, I think Canes fans have a new star on which to hitch their dreams.

No one-man show

There was other stuff to like about UM’s overall performance as it began its 87th season of football and second under the aegis of coach Al Golden, he of the signature orange necktie over crisp white dress shirt.

Junior quarterback Stephen Morris, running the offense now, looked every bit up to the task, poised, in control, strong-armed, accurate. The squad as a whole showed mettle in overcoming an early 14-0 deficit on the Atlantic Coast Conference road and winning with something approaching command if not quite comfort.

All of that offense was needed for Miami to overcome its own slovenly defense against the pass, a malfeasance that somehow turned a Boston College quarterback named “Chase Rettig” into the second coming of Andrew Luck.

It made for a wild opener.

“I’m spent,” Golden began his post-mortem with the media, voice hoarse.

(The game was a coaching triumph for Golden and offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch, whose no-huddle attack caught BC by surprise and played to UM’s advantage in speed and conditioning.)

Yes, Miami will need a lot better pass defense (and pass rush) if these lightly regarded, youthful Hurricanes — picked ninth-best in a 12-team ACC — are to improve on last year’s 6-6 record.

What jumped out of this game, though, at least for me, wasn’t the negativity over defensive lapses or even the impressiveness of Morris, but rather the electricity and potential embodied in Duke Johnson.

He produced 214 total yards on only 13 touches. That included 135 yards rushing on a mere seven carries. And that included game-changing touchdown runs of 54 and then 56 yards.

Johnson busted or slid through six would-be tacklers on that 54-yard run. It might have been more but he was moving so fast I couldn’t keep up. That was even though “as soon as I got the ball I was stumbling,” the kid said.

The 56-yard burst found Johnson hardly touched as he hip-swiveled down the field, turning around defenders like Tim Hardaway used to delight in doing with those crossover dribbles of his. Call it the Duke Juke (patent pending).

“He prepares like a senior. He’s in great condition. He’s a pleasure to coach,” Golden said of his new star. “He’s got a good gear.”

Morris busted into a smile when asked to describe Johnson.

“A funny, happy-to-be-around guy,” the quarterback said. “He has the want-to-attitude.”

After Johnson’s first long scoring run, Miami rapper and Canes diehard Luther Campbell gushed on Twitter that Duke would end up as the greatest runner in UM history. I thought it a rush to hyperbole.

After the second long scoring run, I began to reconsider.

UM history is important to Johnson. It’s why he stayed. He even found old video of ex-Canes star Clinton Portis on YouTube and compared that with tapes of himself.

His own stardom waits but for now Johnson is as humble as you’d expect of a teenager who only three months ago attended his senior prom. He speaks with yes-sirs and no-sirs. He admitted to “freshman jitters” before Saturday’s kickoff. He is deferential to older teammates such as senior runner Mike James, his road-trip roommate, saying, “This is their backfield. I’m just coming in to do my role.”

We want more

That role will change, though. Should change.

Johnson, at 5-9 and 185 pounds, might never be a 25-carry-a-game workhorse, but anyone capable of 54- and 56-yard touchdown runs in one game must see more than seven carries.

More Duke, please. Lots.

This could turn out to be the greatest Duke since John Wayne. Sports’ best Duke since Duke basketball. As big dogs go, the only bigger Duke might be Marmaduke.

OK I’m getting carried away. That’s all right, though.

I wouldn’t blame Canes fans for feeling that way today. For feeling nourished.

The program’s last of five national championships was in ever-distant 2001, with a gradual lapse into mediocrity and now this threatening NCAA cloud.

UM fans are allowed to believe as much as hope that this coach, Golden, will be a leader here befitting his improbable surname.

Just as fans are allowed to believe as much as hope that Saturday unfurled something very special in the budding new star who hardly requires a surname at all.

Duke.

Related stories from Miami Herald

latest-news

Duke Johnson, Stephen Morris lead Miami Hurricanes in win over Boston College

September 02, 2012 12:01 AM

HOMEPAGE

Game stats | UM 41, Boston College 32

September 02, 2012 12:43 AM

HOMEPAGE

UM Blog | Eye on the U

July 01, 2011 01:58 PM

HOMEPAGE

Pigskin challenge: Make your college football picks against Miami Herald sportswriters

August 29, 2012 10:31 PM

  Comments  

Videos

Dwyane Wade on his 16th and final NBA season

What the Dolphins new defensive coordinator wants in his players

View More Video

Trending Stories

Here are some of the worst mistakes immigrants make applying for legal papers

February 15, 2019 11:26 AM

Dolphins sign former second-round defensive end and a young cornerback

February 15, 2019 03:30 PM

U.S. looks to send food aid to Haiti as violence brews humanitarian crisis

February 15, 2019 06:27 PM

Author of homophobic slur among 8 ousted in new Broward sheriff’s ongoing purge

February 15, 2019 03:26 PM

‘Crazy chick’ didn’t want to sit next to a toddler on a plane. Then came the outburst.

February 15, 2019 03:28 PM

Read Next

Mark Walton, former Canes star now with the Cincinnati  Bengals, arrested in Miami

Crime

Mark Walton, former Canes star now with the Cincinnati Bengals, arrested in Miami

By David Ovalle

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 16, 2019 11:05 AM

Miami police arrested Cincinnati Bengals running back Mark Walton, former University of Miami football star, after officers said he snatched a cell phone from a woman at a Brickell condo during an argument at a parking garage.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE SPORTS

After a two-year drought, American Heritage girls’ soccer back in state championship

Broward High Schools

After a two-year drought, American Heritage girls’ soccer back in state championship

February 16, 2019 12:45 AM
McCarthy girls’ soccer gets its ‘redemption game’ and a spot in the state championship

Broward High Schools

McCarthy girls’ soccer gets its ‘redemption game’ and a spot in the state championship

February 16, 2019 12:40 AM

Sports

Balotelli in scoring form as Marseille beats Amiens 2-0

February 16, 2019 01:03 PM

Sports

Apartment popularity rises in Twins Cities, along with rents

February 16, 2019 01:04 PM
The Latest: Shiffrin calls Swedish fan up to stage

People

The Latest: Shiffrin calls Swedish fan up to stage

February 16, 2019 12:53 PM
No peanuts or Cracker Jack at the old ballgame in Hartford

News

No peanuts or Cracker Jack at the old ballgame in Hartford

February 16, 2019 12:52 PM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story