A Hurricanes transfer drawing attention. And UM recruiting, staff and personnel notes
A six-pack of Miami Hurricanes notes on a Wednesday:
▪ A UM person who watched closed Canes practices this month said Akheem Mesidor, the West Virginia transfer, has been very impressive.
And UM’s other new veteran defensive end, Mitchell Agude, impressed Senior Bowl executive Jim Nagy so much on tape that Nagy served up a thread this week on Twitter about him.
Nagy said: “Haven’t seen much on here this summer about UCLA transfer Mitchell Agude but his talent jumps off tape.... [Agude] also has disruptive knack for separating ball from QB with seven [forced fumbles] over the past two years. ... He also held up well at [the point of attack] when UCLA [played] him inside. Senior Bowl isn’t sleeping on Agude.”
Nagy added that “numbers lie all the time in scouting and there’s not a more misleading individual stat in CFB from last year than... Agude being credited with only 2.0 sacks. Hard-charging Agude is way more impactful on that than the number suggests.”
Nagy noted that Agude “almost lost his life in a ripstick accident as a kid and that might explain his relentlessness on the field. Plays every snap like it’s his last.”
Nagy, incidentally, also tweeted that the UM football staff told him that cornerback D.J. Ivey (32 3/8 arm) “made a big jump this offseason.”
▪ Only three of UM’s 17 nonbinding commitments in its top-10 quality 2023 class – and none of the top six - are players who attend high school in South Florida.
What’s most impressive, but not surprising, about the early stages of the Mario Cristobal era has been his success recruiting the West and elsewhere.
But Cristobal wants to be clear that South Florida remains a priority.
“If you don’t have a South Florida base at the University of Miami, you’re on borrowed time,” defensive backs coach Jahmile Addae said. “That’s not an elephant in the room. We talk about that. Are there elite players in the country you can supplement your roster with? Yes.
“Are they going to come in and play? Yes. Will they be developed? Yes. But I’ll be darned if you leave home without doing your due diligence and making sure you get what’s here before looking elsewhere. And we’ve done that as a staff.”
UM has lost out on too many top players from Plantation American Heritage over the past five years, from Patrick Surtain II and Tyson Campbell to Marvin Jones Jr., Earl Little Jr., Andrew Chatfield and Jacolby Spells.
Alabama and Georgia - even West Virginia - have beaten out Miami for some of these players. One of those players, cornerback Daryl Porter Jr, transferred from West Virginia to UM this past offseason.
Addae, who coached at Georgia last year and coached Porter at West Virginia, puts it this way: “We have to do well there. That is a school you have to win, have to dominate. There are five or six you say within this radius, we have to own this school and if we do it will help our program tremendously. That school happens to be one of them. We are in constant communication, almost living in that place to make that happen. You got to keep the others out because everyone is in there.”
▪ Hurricanes athletic director Dan Radakovich told WQAM’s Joe Zagacki and Don Bailey Jr. that UM has sold more than 35,000 season tickets in football - about 6,000 more than last season.
Radakovich, about what stands out to him watching the football team practice under Mario Cristobal: “The discipline, the pace, the intensity the coaches put our student athletes through is very, very positive. Talking to people who have been here a while, they feel there’s an awful lot of teaching getting done. We have expectations. But I caution everybody it’s year one (of the Cristobal era).”
Zagacki asked Radakovich how the Big 10’s new big TV contracts with Fox, NBC and CBS impact the ACC?
“It’s the largest collegiate deal [ever] as it relates to television,” Radakovich said. “They did a very good job of leveraging their brand...It’s a pretty big gap between what the Big 10 will be distributing to its members versus what the ACC will be distributing. We have to keep looking at ways to gain revenue.. and get its done. We’ll continue to be in touch with them and support them.”
▪ UM defensive line coach Joe Salave’a said he frequently tells his wife that he’s “pinching himself” working on a staff with Hall of Famer Jason Taylor and former NFL defensive lineman Rod Wright. Those three are combining to give UM strong coaching on the defensive line.
Salave’a said that arrangement wouldn’t work everywhere but does here.
“Jason, you would never have thought he was gold jacket individual, because he’s so low key,” Salave’a said. “He’s all about mentoring and contributing to the staff. The guys are really receptive to it, to a coach who has done it at the highest level. We’re tickled to have Jason and coach Rod. Those men both played at the line of scrimmage for a long time. In some places, it probably wouldn’t work. There’s too many alphas in the kitchen. Not here. We’ve all bought into the vision of putting our guys in front of any of us.”
Salave’a, incidentally, appeared in 100 NFL games and started 28.
“He’s always talking about striking your man in the chest every play,” Mesidor said of Salave’a.
▪ A person close to the Canes running back room said Don Chaney Jr.’s injury that will keep him out a while is a hip injury. The Canes remain hopeful he will play at some point this season.
And that source said that freshman running back TreVonte’ Citizen’s injury that will keep him out longterm is a significant knee injury, sustained in a practice.
▪ Quick stuff: Defensive coordinator Kevin Steele told Zagacki and Bailey that “our tackling and football IQ have improved… We’ve got the right guys [in our front seven]. We’ve got good run stoppers. We’ve got good pass rushers. And we’ve got some that can do both.”...
With tackling emphasized in the wake of the debacle in that area the past two years, safety Kamren Kinchens said: “Everyone is [swarming] to the ball. Just in case a guy misses a tackle, they’ve got 10 other guys to back them up.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2022 at 3:12 PM.
