Miami Hurricanes QB Room: Mensah's Camp, who locked down QB2 and QB3 Race

We're into that quasi-camp, quasi-Stanford-week stretch now, with all eyes set on who Miami will roll out on the first drive.

@DMoney and former Hurricanes wide receiver Ahmmon Richards were at every practice, every scrimmage, all the way through the non-media portions, to give you the real picture of where each position group stands with less than two weeks before we hit the field.

Here's where the quarterback room stands in their eyes.

Darian Mensah Doesn't Need to Be Cam Ward

The takeaway after watching Darian Mensah up close all summer is simple: he's bigger in person than he looks on TV, and he protects the football well, especially for a guy who takes shots downfield.

He's not going to wildly scramble around, and the fluidity in his arm angles give this offense throwing lanes Miami didn't have last year.

The deep ball is the headline. With this receiver room, the vertical passing game should expand in a real way.

Ahmmon backed that up from his own view of camp — completions down the field for legitimate explosive plays, more than he's seen in practice in a long time.

"I think [Mensah] allows us to attack defenses with multiple different looks," Ahmmon said.

However, don't expect a five-hundred-yard coming-out party in week one.

DMoney's expectation for Miami is a slow build — run the ball behind a new offensive line finding its footing, take the shots when the numbers are right, and let the passing game grow into itself as the season gets tougher.

Not Cam Ward's ceiling in week one. Not Carson Beck's volume, either.

Just Mensah being Mensah.

QB2 seems locked in​

Sophomore Luke Nickel took clear strides since spring — still hasn't seen real game action, but the flashes in camp point to a guy who's coming along on his own timeline.

Ahmmon likes the arm talent and the physical profile; shades of Ward in his stout build and the willingness to hang in the pocket and make a throw instead of just running.

The one thing DMoney wants to see cleaned up: getting rid of the ball faster. Nickel can hold onto it and create, but mastering the offense well enough to get through his reads and out of his hand quicker is the last piece.

The QB3 Race​

By the end of camp, DMoney's sense was that Dereon Coleman had made a real move for the third quarterback job — not a threat to Nickel's spot yet, but doing exactly what you want out of a true freshman: staying consistent, cutting down on erratic reps, getting more comfortable running with the third-string group — which still has plenty of talent with Miami's deep WR room.

Ahmmon has seen the arm talent from day one: a quick, whippy release, almost no wind-up, the kind of ball that's hard for a DB to jump because it's out of his hand before the read is even finished.

"There's no real wind-up in his throwing mechanics at all," Ahmmon said. "It's just a quick, flick release."

Judd Anderson is still in the mix, and his flashes are real — DMoney pointed to his size as a double-edged sword. When his mechanics line up, it looks close to perfect. When they don't, the accuracy gets inconsistent.

Right now, the momentum belongs to Coleman.

Miami is two weeks from Stanford. Everything said here is a camp evaluation — it means something, but it's not the full evaluation. That one starts under the lights.