How Hurricanes star Rueben Bain Jr., ‘a man of action,’ used his words to spark Miami
Rueben Bain Jr. isn’t a man of many words, especially in the middle of a game. The Miami Hurricanes’ star edge rusher lets his actions on the field do most of the talking for him.
So it meant something to his teammates — a lot, actually — when he stood up in the locker room at halftime of the Cotton Bowl, a College Football Playoff quarterfinal against the defending national champion Ohio State Buckeyes, and spoke from his heart.
“We only got 30 more minutes,” Bain told the team, as seen in a video released by the Hurricanes afterward. “Thirty more minutes we get everything we worked for. Them boys ain’t work how we work. They ain’t feel how we feel. They ain’t cry how we cry. You can see they don’t got the energy we got. They don’t want it how we want it. Thirty more minutes is all we’ve got. Let’s go!”
“It meant a lot to the guys in the room because Rueben’s not a guy who talks a lot,” said fellow edge rusher Akheem Mesidor. “He’s a man of action, not words, but when things need to be said, he’ll step up and say it. So it meant a lot to all of us to see him step up and say the words that he said, and we ended up finishing the game strong.”
Bain’s words resonated.
Miami held off Ohio State’s rally attempt for a 24-14 Hurricanes win against the Buckeyes to keep their season and chance for the school’s first national championship since the 2001 season alive. The defense forced five sacks, held Ohio State to a season-low 45 rushing yards and had two turnovers in another stellar postseason effort, with Bain himself having three tackles, one sack and one-and-a-half tackles for loss.
“It turns us up. ‘Oh, Bain’s speaking? Oh yeah, it’s time to go!’” running back Mark Fletcher Jr. said Tuesday ahead of No. 10 Miami’s College Football Playoff semifinal against the No. 6 Ole Miss Rebels in the Fiesta Bowl on Thursday. “Bain, he doesn’t speak a lot. He just goes out there and does his thing. But when he decided to speak in front of the whole team and tell us, ‘let’s go,’ oh yeah, we knew it’s time to go.”
And on they keep going. The Hurricanes, the last at-large berth into the 12-team playoff field, rattled off consecutive wins to start the playoffs and have now won six consecutive games dating back to the end of the regular season to keep this run going.
“This is the same team we’ve been since the beginning,” Bain said after that game. “People are just getting to see it now, and they’re starting to believe it. We’re just doing what we do. The same thing we do in practice is the same thing we’re going to do in the game. Being the Hurricanes that we are, we trust in the coaches and trust in each other.”
And Bain’s teammates especially trust in him. He’s one of their leaders on the field, one of the players doing extra work before and after practice, one of the most prepared players on game day. He’s the one that won’t talk smack to the opponent but will note anything and everything said about him or his team to use as fuel.
“He’s not a loud, rah-rah guy. He’s not going to chat your head off,” quarterback Carson Beck said. “He’s going to put his head down, and he’s going to work. And he’s going to work, and he’s going to work.”
He has worked, and the results are showing.
Bain enters the Fiesta Bowl with career highs in tackles for loss (13) and sacks (eight-and-a-half). His 75 total quarterback pressures, according to Pro Football Focus, are second nationally behind only Texas Tech’s David Bailey (81) and his 23.7% pass-rush win rate — basically how often he beats an opposing offensive lineman on non-penalized pass-rush snaps — is the second-highest among 20 players with at least 50 total quarterback pressures (Western Michigan’s Nadame Tucker has a 28.4% win rate).
“The way he practices and the way he competes, that speaks for itself,” Hurricanes defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman said. “And when he needs to say something, I think the guys are going to listen because he’s put in the work; he’s put the effort in. He’s played at a very high level over and over again.”
As long as the Hurricanes’ playoff run continues, Bain’s actions and his words will continue to resonate.
“For guys like that in those moments to step up and say something and be open like that, to come out and speak in front of the entire team when that’s not necessarily something he does all the time, you know he means it,” Beck said. “I think there’s weight behind that. That’s something that’s coming from the heart, something that he needs to say to the team. Shoot, it had me juiced. I was ready to roll out there and go die for those boys. Again, honestly, I think it’s an iconic moment in his development as a player and what he’s been able to do for us this year.”
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