Lichtenstein always wanted to play at Miami. Five years later, he finally gets his chance
There was once a time — “the dinosaur ages,” as Jacob Lichtenstein termed them — when Lichtenstein thought he might go straight from high school to playing for the Miami Hurricanes. He grew up a Miami fan and dreamed of playing there. He went on recruiting trips to Coral Gables and talked frequently with coaches. It was so long ago, Lichtenstein’s lead recruiter was Mark D’Onofrio, who hasn’t been the Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator since 2015.
Recently, an old Miami Herald video even resurfaced on Twitter of Lichtenstein talking about how the Hurricanes were recruiting him. “I would probably commit,” he said back in 2015, ahead of his junior season at Cypress Bay.
“They recruited me a little bit, but never pulled the trigger,” the defensive lineman said Tuesday after his 13th spring practice at Greentree Practice Fields, recalling his high school days in Weston.
This was three coaching staffs ago, when Al Golden, now the defensive coordinator for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, was coach. The next two coaches — Mark Richt and Manny Diaz, who was Richt’s defensive coordinator at Miami from 2016 to 2018 before taking over as coach in 2019 — never offered Lichtenstein a scholarship, either. They let him leave Florida for the West Coast and, eventually, Lichtenstein became a starter for the USC Trojans.
Mario Cristobal, however, was always interested. He was the Alabama Crimson Tide’s offensive line coach at the time and was responsible for recruiting South Florida for coach Nick Saban. Although he ultimately signed with USC in the Class of 2017, Lichtenstein always liked Cristobal, so the coach’s decision to leave the Oregon Ducks to take over at his alma mater piqued his interest.
After five seasons in Los Angeles, Lichtenstein was in the transfer portal. He had to try one more time to go to his dream school. Less than two weeks after Cristobal came home, Lichtenstein did, too.
“When I saw he got the job here, I knew I wanted to come,” Lichtenstein said. “I reached out to him and it got rolling from there, so it’s a great feeling.”
The first few months have gone well, too. Lichtenstein enrolled for the spring semester in January and was able to jump right into a wide-open competition on the defensive line. With one practice left before the spring game Saturday, Lichtenstein is frequently playing defensive tackle with the first-team defense, providing some needed experience in the middle after the departures of former defensive linemen Nesta Jade Silvera and Jonathan Ford.
Although it took him a full college career to get there, Lichtenstein became a key contributor for the Trojans last season, at the end of five stop-and-start years in California. As a freshman in 2017, he redshirted and then he started twice in 2018. He was on the right track and then his career screeched to a halt again: A knee injury kept him out for all of 2019, and he decided to opt out of the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, returning for the final two games, but not playing. At one point, Lichtenstein flirted with retiring. Instead, he came back to USC last year, started eight games and recorded 28 tackles, eight tackles for loss and six sacks.
With at least one year of eligibility remaining, Lichtenstein entered the portal on the same day the Hurricanes hired Cristobal and eight days after the Trojans hired Lincoln Riley as their new coach.
Miami and USC are often compared as traditional powerhouse programs at private schools in major markets, and Lichtenstein gets those comparisons — the weather and the history, he said, are definitely similar — but Cristobal’s program is just different than the one he played for when Clay Helton was coaching the Trojans.
“I don’t know what’s going on up there right now, but I can see this program — we’re really committing to it and putting all the resources into it,” the redshirt senior said. “That’s a really big difference.”
Lichtenstein has a chance to be a big part of what Cristobal is building, too. With Ford and Silvera gone, Lichtenstein is spending the spring competing with Leonard Taylor and Jordan Miller to start at defensive tackle, and fellow defensive linemen Antonio Moultrie and Jared Harrison-Hunte — both of whom are currently sidelined by injuries — will join the competition in the fall, too. Moultrie, Lichtenstin, Harrison-Hunte and Miller all have starting experience, and Taylor, who was the No. 11 overall prospect in the 247Sports.com composite rankings for the Class of 2021, might be the most talented of the bunch.
Lichtenstein expects the competition to go all the way until the Hurricanes open the season against the Texas A&M Aggies in September. His experience can help Miami bridge the gap to its next generation, but he’s not taking a starting job for granted.
“That’s what you want,” he said. “It’s going to push everyone to get better and no one can relax.”
Brown, Austin-Cave enter portal
As the Hurricanes’ depth chart starts to clarify in the final days of spring practice, Miami is losing some depth pieces to the transfer portal.
Running back Cody Brown and linebacker Tirek Austin-Cave both entered the portal this week, a source confirmed to the Herald. Austin-Cave was never seriously in the mix to compete for a starting job, while Brown was seemingly going to be stuck as the fifth tailback to start the fall, behind fellow running backs Donald Chaney Jr., Jaylan Knighton, Thaddius Franklin Jr. and Henry Parrish Jr.
Brown had 34 carries for 139 and three touchdowns as a freshman last year, occasionally getting work as a short-yardage back before Franklin took over the job late in the year. Austin-Cave had four tackles last season and 11 in his two years with the Hurricanes.
