South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Young WRs making strides during offseason
Local trainers weigh in on what they’ve seen from those players
Between the end of a college football season and start of spring practice, college coaches are limited — even more so than usual — in how much time they can spend with players.
At Miami, on-campus training consists of offseason workouts with strength and conditioning coach David Feeley while players still have occasional team and positional meetings with coaches. Several college players seek extra training on the side during these times when the team is not running official practices.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel spoke with a couple of those local trainers, Chris Scott and Tevin Allen, to discuss strides Hurricanes players they work with have made in their speed, agility and footwork ahead of the start of spring drills Monday.
In the first of a two-part series, we focus on UM offensive playmakers, specifically the young wide receivers that have worked with the two.
Scott, commonly known as “Scottie,” who runs his TH3 LAB training service, began working with second-year wide receiver Keyshawn Smith following the end of the season. He feels Smith
is ready to take the next step in his game after he saw the most playing time out of the four freshman wideouts that came in together in the 2020 recruiting class.
“There’s no reason why Keyshawn should not be getting first-team reps, if not splitting reps somewhere in that receiver room,” Scott said of the speedster from San Diego. “We’ve been working a lot at the top of his routes, getting in and out of his breaks and releases. He has solid feet at the line, but he wants to be able to add more to his package, his toolbox as far as going against press coverage.”
Scott said Smith is approaching the offseason with a mentality of getting what he wants and is hungry for an expanded role in offensive coordinator Rhett Lashlee’s offense.
Xavier Restrepo, another one of those second-year receivers on Miami’s roster, has worked with Allen, who runs Gold Feet Global training services, for years as a Broward County high school standout that played at Monarch, St. Thomas Aquinas and Deerfield Beach.
“It’s really being patient,” Allen said of his focus with Restrepo. “Making sure he’s doing the correct things at the correct times and running his routes like they’re supposed to be run. He’s being real detailed right now, especially with Mike [Harley] being back.”
Harley, who has worked with both Allen and Scott but has been training in Atlanta in the offseason, opted to come back for an extra season because the NCAA did not count the 2020 season against player eligibility due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Harley’s return makes finding an avenue to start in 2021 more difficult for Restrepo as both work primarily in the slot, but Allen said Restrepo also sees the value in learning with Harley for another year.
“We’re really just preparing for, once he’s the guy, he’s ready to take it to another level and push into helping them get some wins,” Allen said. “He’s been in the program way longer than X, so why not sit behind him and gain some knowledge from Mike? … Once his time is up, we’re going to ball.”
Dazalin Worsham saw the least action of the four freshman wideouts last season, but Scott has seen him tack on some needed muscle for the 6-foot-1, 175-pounder.
“He actually has gotten a lot bigger in the weight room,” Scott said. “That was the knock, big thing against him. He was a skinnier guy, so that’s why he didn’t really see the field, but now he’s put on some decent size.”
Allen has also worked briefly with Michael Redding III.
“We had a good little stint of him training,” Allen said. “He was getting better at changing direction. He’s a very, very big body. You just have to throw the ball in his area, and he’s able to have that catch radius to come down with it.”
Incoming freshman wideout Jacolby George from Plantation is not yet enrolled at UM for the spring semester, but Allen has worked with him for years as he grew into the four-star prospect he became.
“He really can do everything,” Allen said. “He’s fast enough to break out. He has hands for days. He does not drop the ball. Long arms, able to jump over people. His rhythm and coordination, we’re working on right now, but he’s getting out of cuts. He creates separation. He gets from Point A to Point B.
“But I think it’s more like, as he’s starting to get older, he’s starting to get used to his body. He has that real lanky body, and it’s harder for some of those guys to have good coordination, in a sense. Just been working on that, working on his release package, getting off the line, being physical, fighting pressure with pressure because they usually can’t touch him.”
Veterans Mark Pope and Dee Wiggins were consistently in the starting lineup along with Harley last year. Progress they made was marred by drops throughout their junior seasons.
Scott has a long-standing relationship with them and feels the drops were mental, but the pair of former Miami Southridge standouts are getting over it.
“They own what happened last year,” Scott said, “and they said that definitely won’t happen again.”
One year later didn’t make Dustin Johnson change his mind. He’s not going to the Olympics. Johnson didn’t want to go to Tokyo a year ago, before the
COVID-19 pandemic led to a one-year delay, because of a crammed summer schedule and his desire to stay fresh for the PGA Tour’s postseason that culminates with the FedEx Cup. He won the FedEx Cup and its
$15 million prize for the first time. Johnson said he didn’t put forward his name to be among the maximum of four Americans who can play in the Olympics. The Masters champion is No. 1 in the world. Countries can have as many as four players provided they are among the top 15 in the world ranking on June 21, the day after the U.S. Open. Johnson is no longer part of the Olympic ranking. “I really didn’t think much about it. I actually didn’t really ever decide whether I was going to play or not, I just didn’t sign up,” Johnson said Saturday. “But it’s right in the middle of a big stretch of golf for me, so that was the reason I was kind of waffling on it a little bit.” The men’s competition starts on July 29.