Alex Donno shares his recap of the second day of spring football practice for the Miami Hurricanes. Xavier Restrepo made the play of the day on a pass from Cam Ward.
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00:00 I thought the energy level was probably even not to say it wasn't good on Monday, but the energy level was probably a little bit higher even today in the second practice and a big part of that because this guy got the entire facility hyped up.
00:14 Was Xavier Restrepo that was the play of practice at least the portion that the media gets to watch. We only get to watch. I think a little bit less than half of practice, but Restrepo he's running deep one on one against Mish Powell, who's a pretty darn good seed.
00:29 Safety who just transferred into Miami from Washington and it's Cam Ward throwing the football individual drills.
00:36 Ward, he launches a very well thrown deep ball, but Strep had to contort his body and adjust to the football because the coverage was so tight too tight.
00:48 In fact, but he had to adjust to the football and makes this acrobatic catch while he's falling to the ground inside the end zone.
00:55 It got everybody hyped and not only was it an amazing catch, but he also drew a flag for pass interference on Powell.
01:02 Powell did everything he could physically to keep Restrepo from catching the ball and he still did.
01:08 That was a lot of fun.
01:09 So guys, I mean, this is two practices in a row and again, this is the media viewing period.
01:14 We can't watch the entire practice, but two straight times.
01:18 Restrepo, I thought in terms of receivers made the best play of the media viewing period because he had one and they're both from Cam Ward, by the way, he had one from Ward on Monday where he got way vertical, climbed up the ladder in a way.
01:31 A lot of people don't really appreciate how athletic Restrepo is.
01:35 And then he had this other one today, which was just incredible concentration, incredible hands to make that catch happen.
01:42 And, you know, we'll talk about it a little bit more throughout this episode, but you're seeing chemistry developing, I think pretty quickly with Ward and Restrepo specifically.
01:52 Other receipt, this was a very good practice for the receiver room.
01:56 So it's not just Restrepo, but specifically Restrepo, who was Miami thousand yard receiver last year, second ranked receiver in the ACC last season.
02:05 I know a lot of people were saying like, oh, now the Tyler Van Dyke is gone.
02:10 You know, it was Restrepo.
02:11 It was all Van Dyke and Restrepo.
02:13 He's not going to do it.
02:14 Guess what?
02:15 The common denominator here is Restrepo because Restrepo, yeah, he was Van Dyke's number one target.
02:20 He's looking like Cam Ward's number one target.
02:22 Let's just agree that he is.
02:24 He's the number one target on this Miami hurricanes football team, and he's practicing really well so far.
02:29 And Shannon Dawson, the offensive coordinator, he spoke today.
02:32 He seems pretty pleased with the early chemistry so far between Ward and his past catchers.
02:39 And I always make sure to ask Dawson about that because I can remember when Dawson first arrived last year, he gave me this really good answer about like how long it takes to build chemistry.
02:49 And once he started to see some of that develop in practice, so he's very much on top of that.
02:54 So I always like to kind of check in on the quarterback receiver chemistry and, you know, for what it's worth, I think Miami seems to be a little bit ahead on again, spring football.
03:04 You know, let's not jump to too many conclusions.
03:07 I try not to get overhyped about this stuff, but just, you know, comparing spring this year to the early stages of spring last year, it looks like Miami is probably a little bit ahead of that when it comes to the quarterback receiver connections.
03:19 Miami is a little bit ahead to practices in this year than even where they were, let's say three or four practices in last year.
03:26 So I think Dawson is rightfully pretty happy about that.
03:29 And again, I thought even beyond Restrepo, this was an especially good day for wide receivers, including Jojo Trader.
03:38 Josiah Trader, I would never think he's a freshman out there, an early enrollee.
03:43 In fact, he caught this perfectly thrown deep ball from Jacari Brown and Trader.
03:47 Listen, Miami's defensive back room in spring is not very deep right now.
03:54 Trader happened to be going up against the best cover guy, Darryl Porter Jr.
03:58 Like winning a route against DP is not easy and Trader was able to do that and he won some good battles today.
04:05 And it was a very well thrown deep ball by Jacari.
04:08 And yeah, Brown looks really good today in drills.
04:11 Like I made a point to watch Jacari a little bit more closely today than I did on Monday, because so many people were asking about how Brown is doing.
04:19 And, you know, he looks he looks a lot, I think a lot better than he did this time last year, which was a lot better than he looked this time two years ago.
04:30 Like Brown, Brown to me can definitely, definitely compete in that room.
04:34 Now, Ward is no doubt the top dog.