South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
CBs Blades Jr., Ivey vying for time in new-look Hurricanes secondary
CORAL GABLES – It’s going to be, Al Blades Jr. knows, strange to take the field later this month for Miami’s opener against Florida without the likes of Michael Jackson, Jhavonte Dean, Sheldrick Redwine or Jaquan Johnson in the secondary.
During his freshman year last fall, Blades and fellow newcomer DJ Ivey often looked to Miami’s veteran corners and safeties to guide them as they adjusted to the level of play across the ACC.
Now, with that secondary returning just one experienced player, junior cornerback Trajan Bandy, Blades and Ivey know it will be up to them to try and duplicate the kind of success their predecessors had when Miami had the nation’s top pass defense in the country last fall.
“We know they’ll be watching and we know they’ll be with us no matter what,” said Blades, a former St. Thomas Aquinas High standout and the son of Hurricanes great Al Blades. “I think this group does a really good job of comprehending what the coaches are telling us, knowing what [those other players] did. They taught us a lot of things, don’t get me wrong. Watching those guys and seeing how they played, that really set a standard and imprinted us as we came in.”
As the Hurricanes move closer to the start of a new season and prepare for their first scrimmage of fall camp on Sunday, players across the roster are competing for starting jobs, most notably at quarterback.
But in the cornerbacks room, Ivey and Blades, along with newly arrived freshmen Christian Williams and Te’Cory Couch, will be in the hunt for the opportunity to start opposite Bandy, a third-team All-ACC selection who started all 13 of Miami’s games last season and notched a career-high 36 tackles last year while hauling in three interceptions.
Ivey played in 11 games, with
most of his time coming on special teams. Blades, similarly, was a special teams standout, earning the right to serve as a captain for that unit multiple times since the season ended. He was pressed into duty in Miami’s opener against LSU when Bandy was ejected from the game early for targeting.
Williams and Couch, meanwhile, come in with impressive resumes. An Under Armour AllAmerican, Williams was a fourstar prospect coming out of Daphne, Alabama who was recruited by the likes of Alabama, Auburn, LSU, Florida, Michigan, Texas A&M, Oregon and others.
Couch, a former standout at Chaminade-Madonna, was also an Under Armour All-American who had 65 tackles and five interceptions last season while helping the Lions clinch a state title.
Both, defensive coordinator Blake Baker said, can add to the rotation, along with Ivey and Blades.
“I think we recruited a very talented freshman class and I think they’re all physically capable of playing early,” Blades said. “I really have been impressed with all of them. … Te’Cory Couch, a freshman, is really, really
twitchy. Really athletic. He’s got great feet and he’s fearless. He can run. … He’s a guy that can potentially slide in there.”
Huff arrives, makes good first impression
Former St. Thomas Aquinas linebacker Avery Huff, the last member of the Hurricanes’ 2019
recruiting class to report to campus, was on the field late Friday for a workout with his new teammates.
Though he’s still has to complete the NCAA-mandated fiveday acclimatization period before donning full pads, he’s already made an impact on coach Jonathan Patke and with depth an issue in the injury-depleted linebacking corps, there’s a good
chance Huff will have the chance to be a contributor this season, even as he’s coming off a shoulder injury himself.
“I think he did some nice things. He’s a super athlete. Just getting into our system,” Patke said. “He did a lot of things in high school. They asked him to do a lot of things. So we just got to get him into what we do, our defense and see what he can do there.”