Miami's Malachi Toney is ready for prime time

CORAL GABLES, Fla. -- Carson Beck remembers the first time he saw Malachi Toney making plays against the Miami defense in the spring. He was running routes like a veteran and making moves that Beck calls "inexplicable."

Beck stood on the sideline, unable to throw while rehabbing an elbow injury, but he had seen enough to know the receiver would be a star. He asked Toney to watch game tape with him, so they could be on the same page once fall camp started. The two spent hours together inside the Miami facility: Beck, the sixth-year veteran; Toney, the 17-year-old true freshman who should have been preparing for his senior year of high school.

They watched tape of Georgia, where Beck played the previous season. He pointed out the way receiver Ladd McConkey, tight end Brock Bowers and running back Cash Jones ran option routes to perfection.

"I want you to do it this way," Beck told him.

Toney listened and nodded.

"Sure enough, we go out to practice in the fall, and everything is identical."

But the moment that Beck knew Toney was different came during Miami's game against Florida State, in early October. Miami lined up to go for it on fourth-and-2 from the Florida State 40-yard line, hoping to build on its 14-3 lead. Toney lined up just behind the right tackle, and the Florida State defense showed a specific look the two went over in the summer.

When the play started, Toney ran around the right side of the tackle to an open spot beyond the first down marker as the Florida State defense lost track of him for a split second. That was long enough. Toney quickly turned around, Beck got him the ball and Toney made one juke move to get him racing past the defense and into the end zone for a touchdown.

Beck stood there, incredulous. Toney had remembered exactly what to do, months after they went over the play. What Beck did not know was that Toney had been waiting all season for that moment.

"I knew once I got that look, it's a touchdown," Toney said. "It was all like slow motion."

Toney finished with seven catches for 107 yards and two touchdowns in the 28-22 win. He had a third score that was called back because of a penalty. Afterward, Toney deflected praise, instead thanking the coaches and his teammates for believing in him while crediting his mom for his work ethic. "Getting up early and staying late, that comes from watching my mom," he said. "If she can do that, why can't I?"

Early the next day, at around 3 a.m., Toney sent a message to his high school coach, Mike Smith. It included a picture from the state championship game his freshman year in 2022, when Toney fumbled as the team was driving for a game-tying score.

Toney wrote, "This changed my life forever."

AS MIAMI PREPARES to play Texas A&M in the first round of the College Football Playoff on Saturday (noon, ABC), Toney has emerged as one of the most fascinating players in the 12-team field. The ACC Rookie of the Year, Toney had 84 catches for 970 yards and seven touchdowns, rushed for another and threw for two more, lining up at every position on offense minus the offensive line.

"Hell, he even might be able to do that," Miami offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson says.

Texas A&M defensive coordinator Jay Bateman said this week that Toney is "maybe the best player we've played all year." Beck heaps even bigger praise on Toney, saying he is already one of the best players he has played with in his entire career. "If he continues on the path he's on," Beck says, "he will be the best that I've ever played with."

At 5-foot-11, 188 pounds, he is not the biggest player on the field. Nor is he the fastest. But Dawson says Toney's football knowledge, capability, body control and peripheral vision set him apart now, just as they set him apart as a youth football player in South Florida.

The Toney legend grew early on, when he started playing quarterback at age 7 because his team needed one. On his 8U team, he scored a game-winning touchdown on a quarterback sweep that went 40 yards to get his team into the playoffs. One of his youth coaches dubbed him "Baby Jesus," and the nickname took off from there -- though the devout Toneys avoid using it themselves.

Once Toney arrived at American Heritage High in 2022, the plan was for him to play receiver. In his very first game, he had 100 yards.

Toney was a bona fide varsity star, and it was hard to keep him away from football. He'd plead with his coaches to play in junior varsity games, too. He spent all his extra time on the game. Then came the Florida Class 2M state championship game against Miami Central. American Heritage trailed 38-31 with two minutes left and started driving for the tying score.

Toney caught a pass in the flat, and he took off. But as he was getting hit, he fumbled at the 28-yard line. Future Miami teammate Rueben Bain Jr. recovered with 1:17 remaining to give Central the championship. Toney sobbed as he headed for the sideline, inconsolable, believing he had cost his team the game.

His mom still has a photo of him on the floor of the locker room, in tears.

"That feeling that you cost your team a great moment, like a moment that will never be remade, that was the turning point for me," Toney said. "Knowing that feeling will never go away, that's why I work so hard."

His mom saw a different Malachi from that moment forward.

"That freshman season put something different inside of him," Shatravia "Toni" Toney said.

Malachi Toney doubled down on the work. Every day during lunch, he would go on the Jugs machine and catch 200 balls. He watched game tape religiously, competing against Smith for most hours watched in a week. Once, he got up to 14 hours and told Smith, "I'm going to catch you." Toney would often call Smith in the middle of the night with questions about coverages, and plays they should run.

"Malachi," Smith would say. "Go to sleep."

By the time his junior year rolled around, Toney decided to reclassify and leave high school one year early to play in college.

"I had some coaches ask me, 'Do you think he's ready? Is that a smart idea?'" Smith says. "For 99 percent of kids I would say, 'No.' But for Malachi? I knew that kid was ready. This is what he's been wanting to do his whole life."

American Heritage made the playoffs again, but Toney was out of the regional semifinal against Fort Lauderdale's Dillard with a sprained ankle. By his own admission, Toney was hobbled and unable to run at full speed. But trailing 14-0, Smith felt a tap on his shoulder.

"Coach, can I go suit up?" Toney asked.

Smith held him off, but only for so long. Toni saw her son, in a walking boot, headed back to the locker room and ran after him, knowing he was getting ready to put on his uniform to play.

"Malachi, you can't do that," Toni said.

"I've got to try something," he told her. "We can't go out like this."

Toney came out after halftime to play receiver, but a few plays into the second half, starting quarterback and Texas commit Dia Bell went down with an ankle injury of his own. Smith turned to Toney and told him he would have to go in at his old position: quarterback.

Coming in cold with literally zero quarterback reps in three years? Toney smiled at Smith, the way he always did. Toney used to joke around in practice that he was a human Jugs machine because he could deliver the ball with both speed and precision. He threw his first pass so hard that his receiver dropped it. No biggie. Toney proceeded to lead American Heritage to 24 unanswered points and the victory.

They rolled to wins in their next two games before meeting Orlando Jones in the state championship game -- the moment Toney had waited on since his freshman year. Only this time, he had the ball in his hands as the quarterback. Toney threw one dime after another -- starting the game 15-of-15 as American Heritage won its first state title since 2020.

"I feel like I repaid the program," Toney said. "I stayed down 'til I came up."

"When he came in as a freshman and they were like, 'This is Baby Jesus,' I'm like, 'I am not calling that kid Baby Jesus,'" Smith said. "But by the end of his career, after the state championship, I said, 'You know what? I will call you Baby Jesus now.'"

TONEY ENROLLED AT Miami in January. He took his work habits to a new level with the Hurricanes. Every minute of every day was dedicated to either football or class, with little time for anything else.

What Beck saw in those first practices is what the coaches saw: a player who was not only hard to cover, but fearless. Put him in a two-minute drill and watch him make every catch and score. Jump up for a catch, land with perfect balance, then keep going? Check. That is why Mario Cristobal said last March, after a handful of spring practices, "They keep calling him Baby Jesus. You guys know who I'm talking about, right?"

Everyone in South Florida knew exactly who Cristobal was talking about. The rest of the country would find out soon enough. Miami opened the season against Notre Dame, in a national spotlight prime-time game.

"It was easy for us to see this kid's special," Dawson said. "Then it went to: 'Let's don't talk about it too much, because he's never done it in a game.' Then he just made plays against Notre Dame. The game was not too big for him. He had no fear of failure."

Indeed, Toney had six catches for 82 yards and a touchdown against the Irish, finding ways to repeatedly get open against one of the best secondaries in the nation. Afterward, Cristobal lamented, "We tried to keep him a secret, but it didn't take long."

The word was out, and defenses adjusted. Toney saw more double teams. He heard more trash talk, as players yelled at him, "This isn't high school anymore!" He got pushed more when he got tackled to the ground. Toney never said a word back.

Dawson got creative with the way he lined Toney up. Because he played quarterback, Toney has a unique ability to understand not only what everyone on offense should be doing, but what defenses are doing, too. That ability, matched with his desire to learn, gave Dawson more options.

"You move him around, it doesn't faze him," Dawson said. "If you show him something on a whiteboard, or you show him something that somebody did -- and it may not be his position -- but we're going to line you up here, and you're going to do this. Then you go out to the field, and it looks better than the damn kid that you showed him."

That includes lining Toney up in the Wildcat position, or as Dawson has coined it, the "Malicat." In the regular-season finale against Pitt, Toney lined up in the Malicat and took the snap. He dropped back to pass. His first read, a post route, was covered. So he threw a wheel route instead to Elija Lofton for the touchdown.

Cristobal has repeatedly praised Toney for carrying himself like an NFL veteran, pointing to his work ethic as exemplary.

Every morning, Toney wakes up at 4:55, the same time as his mother. He arrives at the facility 30 minutes before he is supposed to, then proceeds to get taped up and stretched before going to meet with coaches upstairs to go over the practice script and take notes.

After practice, he spends more time on the Jugs machine, gets in the cold tub, heads to class and comes back to the facility to watch more tape before going back home to do it all again the next day.

"I know what I had to do to get to this position, so I was willing to sacrifice things like sleep, not going to parties, missing out on time with my mom," Toney says. "What you put in is what you're going to get out, so that's how I go about it. If I want to go out there and have a big game, I've got to put in the work."

Once rivals, now teammates, Bain has watched Toney work since his arrival in January. When the offense has a 30-minute break between the end of practice and a lifting session, Bain sees Toney lead the receivers on the Jugs machine. "He's the last guy to leave the building and the first guy to be in," Bain says. "It's a mindset for him, and it's a way of life."

He has not let Toney forget that fumble. This past Wednesday, after the first-team offense went against the first-team defense to close out practice, he went up to Toney and could not help but talk some trash, telling him, "I've got a play in your mind that will last the rest of your life."

Toney played it off, but Bain is right.

Because every time he takes the field, Toney remembers the way he felt three years ago in the state title game. He channels that pain into action. He grips the football tight.

He has not fumbled since that night.