Hurricanes
expectations for yourself,” said Richards, who still managed to finish as Miami’s third-leading receiver with 24 catches for 439 yards and three touchdowns last season. “When you go out, you just want to have the best game you ever played. And when you don’t, it just sucks.
“You go home and you just think to yourself, ‘I just can’t get it.’ Then it’s like one thing after another. It’s my hamstring, I had like a high ankle sprain at one point, then my knee.”
Richards had hoped to build on a strong freshman season, when he earned Freshman All-American honors with 49 catches for 934 yards and three touchdowns. But he revealed Wednesday that he was 100 percent healthy for only one game last season — a 31-6 win over Duke on Sept. 29. He had three catches for a season-high 106 yards and a touchdown that day.
“That’s why I wasn’t as good as I can be, because it kind of hampered me from being in team drills and getting game reps,” Richards said. “So when I got to the game, I wasn’t game ready. In the game, everything moves faster.
“I don’t think I was ready for game reps because I wasn’t practicing as much as I should have because I was injured and they were trying to keep me as fresh as possible. I couldn’t catch a break.”
Everything about last season frustrated Richards, especially his inability to move around after knee surgery.
“After surgery I was still in pain, so I would just like sit on the couch with my leg up on something,” he said. “Walking around on crutches, it sucked . ... I’m crutching around campus, it’s hot, it was just bad.”
Richards and the Hurricanes hope that’s all in the past. The 6-foot-1, 205-pound Wellington native has been cleared to resume full workouts with the team since the summer, and he’s expected to be ready for the start of camp in just a few weeks.
And Richards is taking better care of his body — a lesson he learned after all of the setbacks last year.
“That’s something I think I took for granted, whether it’s little things like stretching and hydrating,” he said. “That plays a big factor in the long run, and unfortunately I found that out the hard way. But I’m taking care of my body a lot more than I did before. I think I will benefit from it.”
Richards says this is the best he has felt since before the start of the 2017 season. College football experts are expecting big things from him: He has been named to the watch lists for the Biletnikoff Award, which goes to the top receiver in college football, and the Maxwell Award, which goes to the Player of the Year.
“If he feels that good at the end of the year — all year — I’ll be so excited because it’s easier to call plays when you’ve got Ahmmon Richards, I can promise you that,” Hurricanes coach Mark Richt said. “He’s a great player, a great playmaker and he’s fun to watch. He’s dynamic. He’s an elite player.”
When did Richards know he was fully healthy? He remembers the moment.
“We were doing a little 7-on-7 thing outside and I had caught a ‘go’ route,” Richards said. “I caught it on the run and I just finished for a touchdown. It felt so like me. I just felt like finally, I didn’t feel like no injury. My leg wasn’t bothering me or anything. It just felt great. It was something I needed.”
It’s something the Hurricanes need, too.
“Yeah, Ahmmon looks like Ahmmon,” Johnson said. “You can tell his confidence is up the roof right now. He’s feeling good, his body is healthy and he’s really looking forward to the opportunity when we get to play LSU (in the Sept. 2 opener) and he gets to play one of the best cornerbacks in the nation.”