‘He puts so much pressure on himself’: How Pope started ‘feeling like Mark Pope again’
It was all there in his latest leaping, contortion-act sideline catch last Friday against the North Carolina State Wolfpack.
Mark Pope, long saddled with lofty expectations as a former five-star recruit, tracked a pass from D’Eriq King as he sprinted down the right sideline and got a step on his defender. The throw was a few yards short, so Pope had to think about the words Rob Likens has spent the past few weeks drilling into his wide receivers’ brains: “Don’t be soft.”
Pope planted his right foot in the grass and scream to a halt, his eyes pointed at the sky and Cecil Powell trying desperately to catch up to the wide receiver. The North Carolina State cornerback never turned his head around, so Pope sprung into the air, reached his arms around the face-guarding defensive back and plucked a 39-yard catch out of the air as he tumbled to the ground.
It was the complete five-star package for Pope. His speed left a corner in the dust, his tracking let him adjust to a slightly underthrown ball and his body control helped him make one of the Miami Hurricanes’ most impressive catches of the season. He punctuated it by hopping off the ground, clenching his fists and flexing. He smacking the side of his head as he screamed.
“There was kind of like a release for him,” said recruiting director David Cooney, who was Pope’s offensive coordinator for two years at Miami Southridge. “It’s going to thrust him into the remainder of his career.”
On the very next play, Pope caught his first touchdown of the season on a 17-yard grab in the back left corner of the end zone. He finished the 44-41 win with new career highs of six catches and 97 receiving yards.
Since No. 9 Miami opened up its wide receivers competition before a win against the Virginia Cavaliers last month, Pope has looked like the blue-chip prospect the Hurricanes thought they were getting when he signed his national letter of intent with them in 2018.
In the Virginia game, Pope made an even more impressive catch than his sideline grab against the Wolfpack. He again beat a defender 1-on-1 down the left sideline and created enough space for King to make a throw his way.
This time, King’s throw sailed a little too far to the sideline and Pope had to make a different sort of contortion act. He spun to the right as the star quarterback’s pass lofted over his shoulder and he extended his arms, while somehow keeping a toe on the ground, to make a 38-yard catch.
In the two games since Miami (6-1, 5-1 Atlantic Coast) opened up the competition at wideout, Pope has nine catches for 145 yards and his 330 receiving yards are second most on the team behind only fellow wide receiver Mike Harley.
“I’m actually feeling confident, feeling back to normal, back to happy,” Pope said Tuesday, “feeling like Mark Pope again.”
When Pope signed with the Hurricanes back in 2017, he picked the Hurricanes over the Alabama Crimson Tide, Florida Gators and at least half a dozen other traditional college football powers. He was a five-star wide receiver in the Rivals.com rankings and an All-American. As a junior at Southridge, Pope caught a 72-yard, game-winning touchdown in the fourth quarter of the 2016 Class 8A championship, moments after he declared to Cooney, “They cannot cover me!”
As soon as he finished his career with the Spartans, his confidence started to shake. An academic hold-up in high school kept him from early enrolling as he originally planned and he admitted he struggled to grasp the playbook as a freshman in Coral Gables. As a sophomore, he only cracked the 50-yard threshold once — in a blowout win against the FCS Bethune-Cookman Wildcats.
The whole time, Cooney could see the burden of exptations weighing on the receiver, who dropped too many passes and never was quite able to put together a highlight-reel play. Even in his 92-yard game against Bethune-Cookman last year, Pope caught a screen and made a defender miss, but tripped with open field in front of him to prevent a massive gain or long touchdown.
“He puts so much pressure on himself,” Cooney said. “‘I just don’t feel like me.’ He would say that in practices when he would like mess up a rep or something, or after the game. He would not have the game that he would want. He would say, ‘I just don’t feel like myself.’”
The release of the last few weeks, he hopes, will be a turning point.
Pope said he tries to catch 100 balls every day after practice, mixing up basic catches with over-the-shoulder grabs and other, more difficult types of plays.
For the first time since he got to Miami, Pope doesn’t feel the pressure to make a game-changing play every time he touches the ball. The result is something like the player he was in high school
“He was electric. He was Pope,” Harley said. “Like, he was Mark Pope. He was that guy. You see it all started off tough and now he’s in his groove, now he’s having fun. That’s all it’s about and he’s getting his confidence.”
