Has Michael Irvin II finally grown up for the Miami Hurricanes? All indications are yes
During the past three years, Michael Irvin II hit plenty of potholes at the University of Miami: multiple suspensions, coaches frustrated with his lack of conditioning and physical ailments that hit the tipping point when he underwent knee surgery in August 2018 for a medial collateral ligament injury in his right knee.
But Irvin, the son of UM great and Pro Football Hall of Fame member Michael Irvin, seems like a new man. He has always been respectful, but already in his fourth year with Miami, he knows his time is running out. He wants these final two seasons to be meaningful.
“Big realization. I’ve been here, what? This will be my fourth year,’’ Irvin told reporters Saturday as CanesFest was ending at the Carol Soffer Indoor Practice Facility. “I didn’t redshirt [initially]. I got the medical [last season] because of my knee. You only get four years of eligibility [to play] in the NCAA. So I gotta be a leader, I’ve got to be one of the guys that shows everybody how to play, how to be tough, how to do things right.
“I’m very urgent. I lost a lot of time last year, and that hurt me. It sucks to not be able to help your team in any way possible. It just let me know I have to be able to work hard.’’
Irvin, listed as 6-3 and 240 pounds, has changed his body much like many of his teammates, going all in with new strength and conditioning coach David Feeley’s offseason workouts, and “shedding a lot of body fat’’— from 16 percent to his current 12 percent.
“I feel almost as good as I can, honestly,’’ he said. “We grind every day. We have practice every day. It’s taxing. And it can do something to your body. But we try to take care of ourselves well and I feel pretty good.
“...We just want to be tough. We want to be able to be multiple, like coach says. And we want to pay attention to details, and hopefully we’ll be able to make a lot of crazy stuff happen.’’
Irvin made his only 2018 appearance in the Pinstripe Bowl, and played in 12 games in 2017, catching nine passes for 78 yards. As a freshman, Irvin II, a former three-star prospect out of Fort Lauderdale St. Thomas Aquinas High School, played mostly on special teams.
“The injury was probably the best thing for him,” Irvin’s father said recently at the 2019 Paradise Camp for top UM recruits. “It focused him in on the seriousness of time and that time is running out. And when you get on the field, or every time you’re out there, you have to squeeze that opportunity. You never know if you’ll get another opportunity...’’
The elder Irvin said his son’s work ethic had “skyrocketed.’’
Michael II acknowledged that nationally touted fellow tight ends Brevin Jordan and Will Mallory are the big names, so to speak, in the tight ends room. But he said all three are “very close.’’
“They help me by pushing me, because there’s a standard that we have, and our coach, [offensive coordinator Dan] Enos, Coach [Manny] Diaz, all of them, everybody holds us to a very high standard. They expect us to be able to do things that other people can’t do, and we have to make it happen.
“They help me by...just being there.”
Diaz praised Irvin during the spring, indicating that he had matured and was working hard.
“He shows [progress] on plays, even playing without the ball in his hands,’’ Diaz said, “going and straining on a block, on a perimeter running play. Those are the things that you can start to build a career around. He’s a guy I’d say from when he first got here has made large improvements. And even coming back this spring he’s carrying himself in a different manner than he did last fall.’’
Irvin hasn’t just had to deal with his rehabilitation this past year. In March, his father posted on Instagram that he was tested for throat cancer and asked football fans around the nation to pray along with him. The elder Irvin shared that lost his father “at the young age of 51. He had throat cancer. This demon has chased and vexed me deep in my spirit all my life. So saying I am afraid this time is a big understatement...’’
The tests proved negative.
“It was very scary,’’ Irvin II said Saturday. “My father lost his father at 16 and he used to — I mean I won’t say everything he used to tell me, but he would say stuff like, ‘I might not be here all the time.. this , this and that. So, that, for me and for my family, for my mother and my sister and my brother it was very scary.
“But thank the Lord. We prayed and it came back clean.”
▪ Projected starting offensive tackle Kai-Leon Herbert, a 6-5, 302-pound redshirt sophomore out of Plantation American Heritage High, said Saturday that he is only playing on the right side of the line. Herbert, a consensus four-star prospect, received a medical redshirt his freshman year in 2017 and only played in the regular-season finale last season.
He said the line has made great progress since the spring “just from everybody knowing their assignments to the calls to what we gotta do in certain protections,’’ he said. “Honestly, we feel like we’re competing a lot better.’’
This story was originally published August 3, 2019 at 7:32 PM.
