How No. 8 Miami set up its freshman class to be the Hurricanes’ best in years
The easiest thing for a coach to do in the preseason is talk up a freshman class. Freshmen mostly come into college football with a track record entirely based on high school performance, usually when they’re the best player on the field any given Friday.
Flaws haven’t come to light yet and thinking of what a player can potentially be three or four years down the line is always thrilling.
Manny Diaz is like any other coach, guilty of heaping praise upon freshmen because of what they have the chance to be, even when he admittedly can’t be sure when — or even if — they’ll fulfill their promise. So far in 2020, all the excitement he expressed about the Miami Hurricanes’ freshmen has been justified.
“This class has something to it. I feel like I’ve been saying that,” Diaz said Monday. “You want it to be true as the games come, but it’s turning out to be true.”
In Miami’s win against the then-No. 18 Louisville Cardinals on Sept. 19, freshman running back Jaylan Knighton scored the first two touchdowns of his career.
In the Hurricanes’ 52-10 rout of the Florida State Seminoles on Saturday, fellow freshman running back Donald Chaney Jr. scored his first two, freshman wide receiver Michael Redding III scored his first and Miami (3-0, 2-0 Atlantic Coast) emptied the bench to play 20 true freshmen in the blowout win.
The Hurricanes’ Class of 2020 finished No. 16 in the 247Sports.com composite rankings and it’s shaping up to be one of the most productive freshman groups Miami has had on offense since at least 2014, when former running back Mark Walton scored 10 touchdowns and former tight end Chris Herndon served as a key contributor.
Knighton has run for 96 yards and a touchdown on 18 carries, and caught four passes for 110 yards and a touchdown. Chaney has run for 97 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries, and caught one pass for 15 yards. Redding had his first two catches Saturday for 13 yards and a touchdown, including a critical reception on third down in the third quarter before the game was out of hand.
Knighton and Chaney, in particular, have carved out important roles as the co-backups to running back Cam’Ron Harris, and they complement each other well. Knighton, from Deerfield Beach, is dynamic in space and gives No. 8 Miami pass-catching third-down running back. Chaney, from Miami Belen Jesuit, is finding a role as a goal-line threat, and he scored touchdowns of 2 and 5 yards Saturday — the first of which came with freshman tight end Dominic Mammarelli on the field in a jumbo package.
“I’m not going to lie, it felt amazing, just seeing everybody get hype and do what they do, what we always do when we score,” Chaney said Saturday. “It felt so good — so good — to have those rings on. It was fun to be able to feel what my teammates feel and what Cam always feels, so it was fun to share the moment with him.”
Redding, so far, has separated himself among a group of hyped freshman receivers. Mike Harley, Mark Pope and Dee Wiggins get the vast majority of snaps, with fellow wide receiver Jeremiah Payton typically as the No. 4 wideout. Redding has edged out fellow freshman wide receivers Xavier Restrepo, Dazalin Worsham and Keyshawn Smith early on as the No. 5 option.
The reasons for the immediate success from these freshmen is multi-faceted.
The most obvious is just they’re really talented. Knighton, Chaney and Redding were all All-Americans, as opposed to last season, when Miami started freshman offensive linemen Zion Nelson and Jakai Clark, who were both ranked outside the top 1,400 nationally.
A better group of veterans also contributes, not just through leadership, but also because competition is stiffer for offensive linemen. The No. 8 Hurricanes don’t just have to play freshmen because there are no other options.
Above all else, Diaz also likes their personalities. It would’ve been easy for Chaney, Knighton or Redding to head elsewhere last year, when Miami was struggling through a six-win season with losses to the FIU Panthers and Louisiana Tech Bulldogs. Instead, they stuck with the Hurricanes because they wanted to be part of the solution.
Already, they are.
“They want to work. They want to be great. We saw that when they stuck with us during some of the dark moments we had last fall and as they’ve gotten here they’ve been who we thought they were,” Diaz said. “That’s what it’s all about, right? It’s about adding like-minded people to your program that fit the culture of what you want to build.”5
