FIU’s Stone Norton, D’vonte Price and Lexington Joseph among Conference USA leaders

Despite a season-opening loss, three FIU Panthers football players — including redshirt freshman quarterback Stone Norton — are sitting on top of Conference USA’s stat sheets.

Norton, who made his collegiate debut in the second half of FIU’s 36-34 loss at Liberty on Saturday, leads the league in pass efficiency. He completed 9-of-13 passes for 120 yards and two touchdowns.

In addition, FIU senior running back D’vonte Price ran for a career-high 148 yards and leads C-USA on a per-game basis. His 11.4 yards per rush is also the best in the conference.

And Lexington “Flex” Joseph, FIU’s sophomore kick returner, leads the league in all-purpose yards per game (255). Price is second (154).

Joseph on Monday was named Conference USA’s Special Teams Player of the Week after averaging 42.5 yards on six kickoff returns. His biggest highlights were a 100-yarder for a touchdown and also a 65-yard return.

“On kickoff returns, you can’t always block everyone,” FIU coach Butch Davis told The Herald on Tuesday. “You’ve got to be able to make guys miss. You’ve got to see a crease and explode, and that’s what Flex did.

“Flex has good vision and good hands. As a running back, he is used to running through traffic. You could sense for the two weeks leading up to the game that Flex was going to be really good on returns.”

Price, who sat behind Alex Gardner, Anthony Jones, Napoleon Maxwell and Shawndarrius Phillips for much of the past three years, is finally FIU’s No. 1 running back. And Price, the young man who has never cut his hair and has a Samson tattoo on his right forearm, is finally showing his full strength.

“In just about every single aspect of his game on Saturday, D’vonte was excellent — his vision, he ran with power, he did an excellent job on blitz pickup, and he caught a touchdown pass,” said Davis, who believes the 6-2, 218-pound Price can be an NFL draft pick in April.

“He’s a really good football player, and it’s good to see him get off to a strong start for his senior year.”

As for Norton, Davis said the starting job is not yet his. With FIU idle this Saturday and not playing again until its 4 p.m. home opener Oct. 10 against Middle Tennessee (0-3), Davis said the quarterback position will still be an open competition between Norton, redshirt junior Kaylan Wiggins and Maryland transfer Max Bortenschlager.

“We’re still evaluating,” Davis said.

Davis compared this QB competition to what he had at FIU in 2018 between James Morgan and Christian Alexander. In that case, Alexander threw eight passes in the opener and four in the second game — both in a backup role — before Morgan assumed complete control. Morgan went on to become a 2020 NFL fourth-round pick while Alexander eventually transferred to Wagner.

As for the current three competitors, Davis said Wiggins “did a few things pretty well” and added that Bortenschlager was “a little bit not familiar, a little bit like James Morgan was two years ago, coming in after never having been part of the offense and trying to learn and grow. He did some things that were pretty good.”

Statistically, Bortenschlager completed 1-of-3 passes for 11 yards. Wiggins completed 1-of-4 passes for 5 yards.

Norton, meanwhile, played the entire second half, which speaks volumes of what FIU coaches thought of his performance.

“Stone made some really good throws,” Davis said. “He gave us a chance to get to overtime if we make the [two-point conversion] catch in the end zone.”

Davis said Norton looked “poised and calm”, but …

“One game is way too premature to say he’s going to be the guy,” Davis said. “He may be the guy, but it’s whoever has the best practices, does the best job in preparation and has the confidence for the next game we play, whether we play three quarterbacks or two or one.”