Miami Hurricanes suffered a big under-the-radar loss early in the season, and it will test one of their greatest strengths
The Canes are going to be shorthanded in a key area for the next month, but they have the depth to handle it.
The Miami Hurricanes entered the 2026 season with a very deep and largely healthy secondary. It took just one game for that to change significantly.
Miami lost starting cornerback OJ Frederique on the first series of the game with an injury. Damari Brown took over and did a solid job off the bench in Miami’s 45-6 win over the Cardinal. Per Cristobal, the “hope” is that Frederique will be back before the end of the season, meaning it was obviously a significant injury.
That alone isn’t ideal, but not too big of a blow. Except, as it turns out, Frederique wasn’t the only starting corner who suffered an injury against Stanford. Xavier Lucas logged 39 snaps against Stanford, so, given Miami had the game on lock at halftime, he put in a full day’s work as a starter and all seemed normal there.
However, Lucas was absent from Miami’s 77-7 win over Florida A&M. After the game, Cristobal was asked about Lucas, and he said that Lucas was also injured in the Stanford game and will be out about a month.
Mario Cristobal says CB Xavier Lucas will be out ‘approximately a month’ with an injury from Stanford game
“Xavier got hurt last game,” Cristobal said. “He’ll be out for approxmimately a month. Hopefully that’ll be it. We’ll get him back. OJ (Frederique) is a little bit more extensive that that, and we lost Jaboree (Antoine) in the preseason.
“So, certainly not what you want. It’s a situation we’ve not really had since we’ve been here. But we are here now, and we’re making the appropriate, I would say, making our guys who were showing versatility throughout fall camp. They’re getting a chance to show what they worked on, and they showed up all tonight. We expect them to be really good players.
That versatility was on display on Thursday night. Miami’s sensational young safety Bryce Fitzgerald moved over to cornerback, and touted true freshman JJ Dunnigan drew the start at safety. It certainly worked, as the Hurricanes’ defense allowed just 70 passing yards and 37 rushing yards while pitching a shutout (FAMU scored on a fumble return in the fourth quarter).
We’ll see how Miami’s new look secondary fares when the competition is kicked up a few notches next Friday against Wake Forest on the road.
