Miami Emerges As Favorite For Duke Transfer QB Darian Mensah

Trinton Breeze

Jan 16, 2026 1 min read

Word around college football today is Miami is now the team to beat for former Duke QB Darian Mensah, who recently entered the transfer portal on the last day. This isn’t some long shot, the Hurricanes are getting serious looks and buzz as the favorite to land him according to 247Sports.

He broke out at Tulane in 2024, starting all 13 games and throwing 2,723 yards with 22 touchdowns and only 6 interceptions while completing 65.9% of his throws. He also ran for 132 yards and a score.

He then transferred to Manny Diaz’s Duke squad for the 2025 season, and he took off even more piling up nearly 4,000 yards passing with 34 touchdowns and 6 picks and a completion rate around 67%.

Mensah is back in the portal, and Miami fans are hyped about the possibility of adding a proven Power-5 QB.

Click to expand...

Facebook X Bluesky LinkedIn Reddit WhatsApp Email Link

Comments (4481)

Status: Not open for further replies.

View article View as thread

caneholic88

Jan 22, 2026

It’s not rocket science, bring in the most talented players you can and eventually the cream rises to the top. For those that can’t cut it GABOS

Santana Sosa

Jan 22, 2026

Alex Del Piero said:
You have players entering the portal with the do-not-contact tag or committing to a program the day after they are officially in.

Tampering is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.

Tampering is as real as the portal itself.

Alex_Dynamix

Jan 22, 2026

OrangeBowlMagic said:
I know this is a terrible answer, but those plays are almost unguardable. Could we have pressed harder to throw off timing? Could we have put a different kid on him? Yeah. But that was far and away my #1 concern going into the game from a defensive standpoint. I was fully confident we could limit every single aspect of their offense (and we did), except when they really needed a play, literally all season, they beat the brakes off people with the back shoulder throws. It worked all season, against everyone. It's their bread and butter, honestly. I knew before the snap on both those plays that it'd be the call. We really needed OJ in those situations, the only way to stop that is to play incredibly violently at the catch point and hope you don't get a PI. Pretty much the way OJ played it in the endzone on their first scoring drive, actually, but it's a lot easier when you're at the 10 and you don't have to worry about him running by you.

It's just a total mismatch on O'Conner. And they exploited it, and it won them a natty. I really don't know how you plan to stop it other than challenging your DB to get a rebound without fouling.

At the end of the day, injuries at DB cost us bigly. The way to combat those plays from them is to have a big, physical DB who can match Becker's strength. 24 ain't that. 2, 6, and 29 are. Well...in the 2nd half, only 1 of those kids was on the field.

Everything you said is true but take out the stupid *** punt and we held them to 20 points of offense, pretty good showing by the defense overall against the mighty unstoppable Heisman winner Mendoza

Pentagon Cane

Jan 22, 2026

Cribby said:

Bringing the heat and pointing out their hypocrisy.

P
PACANEZ

Jan 22, 2026

JayCane20 said:
Yep and yep.

No idea what the deal was with Brown and OJ but not having them down the stretch was so frustrating. Everyone is different but seeing what Keionte did to come back and play and getting nothing from Damari.... not the best look and ultimately hurt us and was the death blow to our season.
Damari Brown seems to be injured time and time again...Had high hopes for him......

Santana Sosa

Jan 22, 2026

Alex Del Piero said:
And I'm trying to hook up with Sydney Sweeney.

This SHOULD be treated as fact tho. Because if I found access to her...I'm likely going to prison.

Canes Legacy

Jan 22, 2026

Cribby said:

9
90scane

Jan 22, 2026

JayCane20 said:
Yep and yep.

No idea what the deal was with Brown and OJ but not having them down the stretch was so frustrating. Everyone is different but seeing what Keionte did to come back and play and getting nothing from Damari.... not the best look and ultimately hurt us and was the death blow to our season.

Turf toe can be career-ending or quick to recover from. Scott was quick. Brown fought through it for most of the year from what I was told, then it got worse.

OJ- sucks when injuries compound. I'd have to go back to my sports medicine days to find a study on the rates of injuries returning after an injury. Ankle to Calf makes sense. One that I just read about: concussions lead to ACLs. Individuals who have had a recent concussion have a much higher risk of an ACL injury due to a lack of balance.

OrangeBowlMagic

Jan 22, 2026

Alex_Dynamix said:
Everything you said is true but take out the stupid *** punt and we held them to 20 points of offense, pretty good showing by the defense overall against the mighty unstoppable Heisman winner Mendoza

I’ve said for 3 days now the defense played well enough to win. Zero doubt about it. As they did for 15 other games.

G
Gru

Jan 22, 2026

ZeroBeachCane3

Jan 22, 2026

Gru said:

MF Doom mask in your Ig prof pic? Lol yeah you cool with me Spida

CaneMutiny06

Jan 22, 2026

How do we not have a Duke tears thread yet. These are some gems.

C
canesbaby

Jan 22, 2026

ZeroBeachCane3 said:
My god…

Miami's super bowl. Wow. The delusion level is up there with Notre Dame in early December.

As if Duke is anything more than a pimple on Miami's ***.

TaylorWalls

Jan 22, 2026

CaneMutiny06 said:
How do we not have a Duke tears thread yet. These are some gems.

Main board.

CreativeCane

Jan 22, 2026

ZeroBeachCane3 said:
My god…

canesbaby said:
Miami's super bowl. Wow. The delusion level is up there with Notre Dame in early December.

As if Duke is anything more than a pimple on Miami's ***.

I'm sorry, I thought our Super Bowl was, ya know, the National Championship game. Duke wasn't even a thought to us other than us taking your players.