Mario Cristobal offers ‘goal’ for return date for injured Miami Hurricanes CB OJ Frederique
There’s hope for a crucial defender’s return, but it will be quite a while.
The Miami Hurricanes suffered a tough blow to their defense in the season-opening 45-6 win over the Stanford Cardinal on Friday. Starting cornerback OJ Frederique left the field on the opening drive with what appeared to be an upper body injury, and he was unable to return to the game.
Suspicions were confirmed on Monday, when Mario Cristobal said that Frederique had a “pretty significant injury” that would keep him out for “quite a while.”
Well, naturally, the next question from Miami fans is: what’s quite a while? Cristobal addressed that on “The Joe Rose Show” on Tuesday morning. The answer might not be the entire season, perhaps late in the season. Or at least that’s the hope by Cristobal.
Mario Cristobal says the ‘goal’ is for CB OJ Frederique to be back from injury late in the season
“That’s the goal. You’d like for that to happen, and that’s what we’re targeting. So, I know him and medical and everybody is working their tails off to make that happen, but we’ll have to wait and see, man.”
Miami will now turn to some combination of Damari Brown, Ethan O’Connor, JJ Dunnigan, and others to fill that role, and Cristobal talked about the importance of having positional versatility due to situations like Frederique’s early season injury.
“This really exemplifies why you practice versatility throughout fall camp,” Cristobal added. “I mean, every nickel has gotten reps at the boundary corner and the field corner, actually the strong safety. They’re a lot like the offensive line, right? Five and six guys on the field at a time, and they’ve all got to be, at least most of them have to be capable to play at least two to three positions, and that’s what comes into play now. I mean, the season has started. We got hit early, which is extremely unfortunate. No one’s happy about it, but you know what? The ball is gonna be placed on the tee on Thursday at eight o’clock, and it’s time to roll, man.”
We’ll see how Miami addresses Frederique’s absence on Thursday night against Florida A&M in the Hurricanes’ 2026 home opener.
