⚡ CFB Dashboard

CORAL GABLES, Fla. – After primarily being relegated to a special teams role in his first season at Miami last year, former N.C. State transfer Kamal Bonner made his first start at linebacker for the Hurricanes. Bonner, a 6-foot-2, 225-pound redshirt junior from Moultrie, Ga. who started the final seven games for the Wolfpack in 2024, started alongside Mohamed Toure in Miami's 77-7 win over Florida A&M.  "Maturity," head coach Mario Cristobal said of the difference with Bonner this year. "I think a lot of guys are realizing that, we kind of use the term a lot nowadays in college football that the older teams win, and we like to think of it more as the mature teams are the ones that win. The ones that can come in with that adult mentality, with that veteran mentality, understand that it doesn't matter how old you are because Malachi (Toney) came in at 17-18 years old, but his mentality was one of a professional. I think K.B., he got hurt early, and then there are ups and downs that come with that. When he started understanding the professionalism that is necessary to be a good player and to compete. "Miami now has good players, so you can't really walk in the door and earn a spot. You got to go compete for it. I think he's been learning more and more and more in his last, I'd say, halfway through camp and all the way through now, we've seen a lot of progress. A ton of improvement in his game in terms of physicality, dissecting plays, triggering contact, block destruction, and then finishing on tackles. So, he's got, he's got the staff excited and also he has to understand we're going to push him a hell of a lot harder to get more out of him because we need to get more out of him and everybody else on this football team."  Bonner, who has the second-highest tackling grade (80.4) on the team this season, started in place of Chase Smith, who started the opener against Stanford, but could return to a reserve role on Friday (7:30 p.m. ESPN) at Wake Forest after not being credited with a tackle in 12 snaps and posting the lowest defensive grade (51.2) on the team against the Rattlers.  Regardless if he starts or not, Bonner figures to be in the mix as Corey Hetherman likes to rotate in linebackers, which will be important to play well against the Demon Deacons (2-0, 0-0 ACC).  "I think the quarterback run game, the eye candy, all the pre-snap different pictures they're going to show with motions, with shifts, with, different backfield settings, it's going to be a lot of different things and we just got to make sure we're detailed with our eyes," Hetherman said. "We can have a great discipline, great pre-snap awareness of what's going to happen with some of the things they're going to get into. I thought last week (the linebackers) played better than week one. I thought our guys had really good awareness of what we were doing with some of the zones, what we were doing with some of the man techniques we were playing with last week. I thought our guys had really good awareness of what was going to happen on certain snaps. We played six guys in both games. I thought our tackling got better. I'd like you to see we're a little bit more physical. I thought we took one more step. We ran through people a little bit better than we did the first game. I thought we were plunging and putting our eyes down, and those are the little techniques we got to continue to clean up in practice."  Toure headlines the linebackers with Bonner, Smith, Kellen Wiley, Cam Pruitt and Ezekiel Marcelin also in the rotation.  "I think communication has gotten better," Hetherman said. "I still think communication's one thing we're constantly working every single day, making sure our, our guys are a little bit more---making sure they're communicating, getting to everyone on the defense. But, I'm excited about the group, and I think we'll continue to get better every week." Christopher Stock has covered the Miami Hurricanes since 2003 and can be reached by e-mail at stock@insidetheu.com and on Twitter @InsideTheU