UM\u2019s win over Stanford on Friday<\/a> and did not return to the game.<\/p>\nFrederique was one of the Hurricanes\u2019 most dependable defenders last year. He had 19 tackles and seven pass deflections last year, earning a 62.1 defensive grade and a 63 coverage grade from Pro Football Focus.<\/p>\n
But Frederique, a St. Thomas Aquinas alumnus, has dealt with injuries in the past. He missed five games last season.<\/p>\n
In Frederique\u2019s absence, the Hurricanes turned to Damari Brown, Xavier Lucas and Ethan O\u2019Connor to take the reins at outside cornerback. Lucas had two tackles and two pass breakups (68.1 coverage grade); O\u2019Connor had no official stats and a 71 coverage grade; and Brown had no official stats with a 45.7 coverage grade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think, obviously, OJ is a very talented player. Love having him,\u201d defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman said. \u201cBut for us, I think we get a lot of really talented players and we\u2019ll change things up, we\u2019ll do different things, coverage-wise, we\u2019ll [do] different things in different areas. But I think we\u2019re going to continue to attack offenses the way we normally do, and I think we have a lot of really talented players on the team that [will step up] and fill the role.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miami\u2019s cornerback depth will be tested in the early part of the season. Sophomore cornerback Ja\u2019Boree Antoine also suffered a significant injury before the season, and Cristobal said he would not return until the latter part of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cJa\u2019Boree\u2019s going to be out for a little bit. He suffered an injury where we expect him back in the latter part of the season. Dylan Day will be back soon. His was a non-football-related illness, so if he doesn\u2019t make it in time for [Thursday\u2019s game against Florida A&M], he\u2019ll be back in time for the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Hurricanes have some younger players who could also step up to fill the void left by Frederique. Miami played 13 different defensive backs against Stanford as the Hurricanes rolled to a blowout.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe played [Camdin] Portis a bunch. Brody [Jennings has] come along really well,\u201d Cristobal said. \u201cRyan Mack, I think, is really playing better and better every single week; [a] guy we\u2019re depending upon. You guys saw J.J. Dunnigan in there. Obviously, a very physical presence. A guy like a play zone, man coverage, and stick his face in there in the run game and play in the box as well. So a lot of guys played really, really well.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CORAL GABLES \u2014 The Hurricanes may be without starting cornerback OJ Frederique Jr. for the near future. Miami…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":393518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,114,123,125,5079,124,110],"class_list":["post-393517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-college-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-miami-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=393517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/393517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/393518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=393517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=393517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=393517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}