Circus catches and track speed: Miami freshman receivers are forcing their way onto the field
By now, anyone who doesn’t know Romello Brinson’s name at least surely knows his signature play.
The freshman’s wildly acrobatic touchdown catch Saturday in a 69-0 rout of the FCS Central Connecticut State Blue Devils — it is, frankly, still hard to describe — was the No. 1 play on SportsCenter’s top 10 and spread like wildfire across just about every social-media platform. Upperclassmen joke he’s a celebrity now, and the twisting, one-handed grab got him an avalanche of calls and text messages from friends, former teammates and even his cousin, Chad Johnson.
For the Miami Hurricanes and most of South Florida, Brinson’s touchdown — up against the left sideline in the end zone, he jumped and twisted until he was fully horizontal, then he reached back to make a one-handed catch, pinning the ball against his hip — was just the culmination of a rapid ascent into relevance for his hometown team. After two productive weeks, Brinson is now truly part of Miami’s wide receivers rotation.
“The older guys try to say I’m a celebrity because I got the No. 1 play on ESPN, but I can’t let that play get to me,” the 6-foot-2, 185-pound receiver said Tuesday. “If I let that play get to me, it’ll just go downhill. I got to keep going up [from] here. I can’t settle for less.”
Key’Shawn Smith will probably start again Thursday — just like he has in each of the first four weeks of the season — but Brinson could be out on the field to start the second series. It’s what he did against the Michigan State Spartans on Sept. 18, when he made the first three catches in only his third career game
It has been less than a month and offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee has already found it hard to keep Brinson — and fellow freshman wide receiver Brashard Smith — off the field.
Brinson, at this point, has the most clear-cut role. Like Xavier Restrepo has pushed fellow wide receiver Mike Harley in the slot, Brinson is pushing Smith on the outside.
“I look at Romello and Key’Shawn, like I look at Harley and X,” offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee said. “They’re co-starters.”
Brinson is now up to five catches for 58 yards and a touchdown across two games.
Smith, however, has actually been the most productive of the freshman wide receivers with five catches for 91 yards and a touchdown, largely buoyed by his 75-yard catch-and-run touchdown Saturday.
Smith was originally supposed to be part of the game plan Sept. 11 against the Appalachian State Mountaineers, Lashlee said, although the opportunity never presented itself to get him on the field. In the Michigan State game, Smith got his first touch — a 9-yard reverse — only to have it called back because of a penalty.
On the Hurricanes’ second drive Saturday, Smith lined up in the backfield, to the left of Tyler Van Dyke with running back Cody Brown to the quarterback’s right. Van Dyke faked a handoff to Brown going left, while Smith jetted in front of them in the other direction. Van Dyke threw a quick pass to the receiver, who sped down the field for a long touchdown.
Lashlee, it’s worth noting, was the primary recruiter for the 5-10, 194-pound wideout — the only non-quarterback whose recruitment he led in the Class of 2021. Smith’s speed and versatility — he played some running back at Palmetto in Pinecrest — made him a one-of-a-kind player in Miami’s 2021 recruiting class.
“The plan was always to keep bringing Brashard along because you see the playmaking ability, the explosion and the versatility he gives,” Lashlee said. “He’s a receiver, and so you can keep him in the game and run your base offense. He does have some running back skills once he gets the ball in his hands. He’s not really a running back, but you saw what he can do with the ball in his hands, so that does allow you to maybe play around and use him a variety of different ways.”
