forums

This defensive line will be historic

Hstokes1447 said:
People want to talk about replacing Bain and Mesidor like this program is starting from scratch up front, and that narrative needs to stop right now. Moten is a top ten defensive player in the country heading into 2026 and a first round pick waiting to happen. Scott took a massive step forward last season and is right behind him on that same draft board. Wilson comes in from Missouri as the best edge rusher available in the portal, 9.5 sacks and over 50 pressures last year, and he slides right into the boundary side and takes that pass rush to another level.

Blount is the answer at field side defensive end, and if you watched him last season you already know why. He is up to 275 pounds now, he has the strength, the power, and the motor to be an absolute monster against the run, and that is exactly what Bain was for this defense. Blount does not replace Bain, he becomes his own version of that problem. Wilson off one edge and Blount holding the other down against the run is a combination that should have opposing offensive coordinators losing sleep. Scott and Moten anchoring the interior make this front four as good as any in the country.

Then you have Lightfoot, who is not just a backup but a genuine chess piece for Hetherman, a five-star with the athleticism and versatility to be deployed in situations that stress any offensive line, and Hayden Lowe coming back healthy after missing all of 2025 with that five-star frame and the upside this staff has been waiting to see. This is not a rebuild. This is a reloaded, deeper, and more versatile defensive line than the one that just took us to the national championship game, and the argument can be made that when it is all said and done, this group goes down as one of the best in Miami Hurricanes history.

2026 DEPTH:
Boundary DE
SR Damon Wilson II 6-4 250, former 5 star, PFF #9 ranked returning DE
JR Marquise Lightfoot 6-5 240, former 5 star
RSO Booker Pickett Jr. 6-4 230,

Boundary DT
JR Justin Scott 6-4 303, former 5 star, PFF #9 ranked returning DT
JR Keona Davis 6-5 280
JR Armondo Blount 6-4 275, former 5 star

Field DT
RSR Ahmad Moten Sr. 6-3 300, PFF #5 ranked returning DT
SO Jarquez Carter 6-1 288
FR Keshawn Stancil 6-4 285

Field DE
JR Armondo Blount 6-4 275, former 5
SO Herbert Scroggins 6-3 245
RFR Hayden Lowe 6-5 275 former 5 star



5 Star Players:
Five star defensive linemen are the most consistently drafted position group in all of college football, and Miami has five of them on the same roster. Between 2013 and 2023, 78 five-star defensive linemen were ranked in the 247Sports Composite top 100, and 67 of them were drafted to the NFL. That is an 85.9% draft rate, with 62.8% of them going in the first round. The round 1 and round 2 combined rate sits at 71.8%, meaning nearly 3 out of 4 of these prospects don't just get drafted, they go in the top 64 picks.

If Miami's five 5-star defensive linemen follow that same historical trend, you should expect 4 to 5 of them to reach an NFL roster, 3 to 4 of them to go in the first round, and the odds that at least 3 of the 5 get drafted sits at over 93%. That's not a coincidence, that's a pattern.



2023 class of 5 stars are now JRs




Lightfoot not looking so light



https://x.com/floridaboycorey/status/2026341432676778412/video/1


Finally the scheme itself is the reason there won't be issues with setting the edge. The questions surrounding how this staff replaces Bain and Mesidor and who is going to set the edge are answered not by looking at the players on the roster but by understanding how Corey Hetherman runs his defense. At Minnesota in 2024, working almost exclusively with 3-star recruits, Hetherman fielded the 12th ranked run defense in the country. At the University of Miami he helped build one of the more disruptive defensive fronts in the ACC, and at James Madison he ran a defense that consistently outperformed its roster talent on paper.

The reason his defenses hold up against the run is structural. In Hetherman's system the edge is not the sole responsibility of the defensive end. The APEX defender, whether that is the boundary safety or the nickel, is equally accountable for securing the edge, which means the defense is never one player away from being exposed in the run game. The edge rushers carry that responsibility too, but the scheme is designed so that no single position has to carry it alone. When you build that kind of structural soundness into a defense and then add five star defensive linemen on top of it, the results tend to take care of themselves.

I could go on and talk about how the offense scoring more points playing into the strength of the multiple pass rushers in the defensive line, but you get the point.

These boys are about to eat.
View attachment 366256
Click to expand...


I'm thinking, this did not age well.

(Just saying)
 
Hstokes1447 said:
This defensive line through 8 games has put up more sacks and more pressures than last seasons defensive line. This defensive line is also the reason Miami also has the #1 rush defense in the nation.
Click to expand...

no, the reason we have the no.1 rush defense is two-fold:

1) we commit to run stuffing with our LB's and Nickel and Safety stunt packages. our LB's are pretty good run stuffers and it helps when you are making your run fits with 7-8 guys most of the time.
2) teams don't bother running against us when they can throw for 450 yards a game.
 
RedSquare said:
no, the reason we have the no.1 rush defense is two-fold:

1) we commit to run stuffing with our LB's and Nickel and Safety stunt packages. our LB's are pretty good run stuffers and it helps when you are making your run fits with 7-8 guys most of the time.
2) teams don't bother running against us when they can throw for 450 yards a game.
Click to expand...
Ok
 
Hstokes1447 said:
This defensive line through 8 games has put up more sacks and more pressures than last seasons defensive line. This defensive line is also the reason Miami also has the #1 rush defense in the nation.
Click to expand...
What happened man, did someone pull an Hstokes and bump one of your threads for receipts??? 🤣

I’m just messing with you. I don’t know one way or the other, it’s too early to bump but I don’t think this line is as good as last year’s line. Pretty good at stopping the run. Bain and Mesidor aren’t being upgraded over. We really need the DB’s to get healthy. They can help the DL and vice versa. We didn’t do enough to fix the LB spot, particularly in the passing game.

Regardless, it’s a much better conversation about where we’re at than a few years ago.
 
What’s the pressure rate? That’s more important than the sack rate. QBs in general don’t do well with pressure, especially at the college level. That’s what made the 2025 defense so good, we pressured the QB at (I believe) the highest rate in the nation. I don’t think that’s been close to as good this year.
 
RVACane said:
What happened man, did someone pull an Hstokes and bump one of your threads for receipts??? 🤣

I’m just messing with you. I don’t know one way or the other, it’s too early to bump but I don’t think this line is as good as last year’s line. Pretty good at stopping the run. Bain and Mesidor aren’t being upgraded over. We really need the DB’s to get healthy. They can help the DL and vice versa. We didn’t do enough to fix the LB spot, particularly in the passing game.

Regardless, it’s a much better conversation about where we’re at than a few years ago.
Click to expand...
I think there’s a lot of recency bias going on here. The defensive line we saw in the 2025 playoffs was not the same defensive line we saw during the 2025 regular season.

If we’re comparing the current 2026 regular-season defensive line to last year’s regular-season unit, this 2026 group has actually performed better. The numbers back that up.

Bain only had 2 sacks at this point in the 2025 season and finished the regular season with 4. There’s supposedly a BOLO out on Wilson, yet he already has 3.5 sacks with five games left in the regular season. Then you add Lightfoot, who has 7 sacks, 3.5 more than Mesidor had at this same point last season.

The production is there, and this defensive line is putting up better numbers than last year's group.

Now, if the secondary were playing at the same level as last year's secondary, everyone would be calling this a historic defense. That's the difference.

Mesidor 2025 numbers after 8 games

IMG_5374.jpeg


Bain 2025 numbers after 8 games

IMG_5375.jpeg

Wilson 2026 numbers after 8 games

IMG_5376.jpeg


Lightfoot 2026 numbers after 8 games
IMG_5377.jpeg
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
What’s the pressure rate? That’s more important than the sack rate. QBs in general don’t do well with pressure, especially at the college level. That’s what made the 2025 defense so good, we pressured the QB at (I believe) the highest rate in the nation. I don’t think that’s been close to as good this year.
Click to expand...
2025 pressure rate 41.7%
2026 pressure rate 41.2%

The pressure is getting there, bro. The problem is the secondary just isn’t holding up its end of the deal. Way too many missed tackles in the open field, turning what should be 3–5 yard stops into 15–20 yard explosive plays. The front is doing its job getting pressure and sacks, but the secondary has to finish the play.
 
Hstokes1447 said:
I think there’s a lot of recency bias going on here. The defensive line we saw in the 2025 playoffs was not the same defensive line we saw during the 2025 regular season.

If we’re comparing the current 2026 regular-season defensive line to last year’s regular-season unit, this 2026 group has actually performed better. The numbers back that up.

Bain only had 2 sacks at this point in the 2025 season and finished the regular season with 4. There’s supposedly a BOLO out on Wilson, yet he already has 3.5 sacks with five games left in the regular season. Then you add Lightfoot, who has 7 sacks, 3.5 more than Mesidor had at this same point last season.

The production is there, and this defensive line is putting up better numbers than last year's group.

Now, if the secondary were playing at the same level as last year's secondary, everyone would be calling this a historic defense. That's the difference.

Mesidor 2025 numbers after 8 games

View attachment 378861

Bain 2025 numbers after 8 games

View attachment 378862
Wilson 2026 numbers after 8 games

View attachment 378863

Lightfoot 2026 numbers after 8 games
View attachment 378864
Click to expand...
Those are pretty good stats actually. Better than I expected. I was going to ask about the pressure getting to the QB this yr vs last year but I see OBM has that covered.
 
Back
Top