CaneSport’s Inside The Lines: Up close with Miami Hurricanes DT Ahmad Moten

If there is a question mark on the Miami Hurricanes’ defense, it’s probably at cornerback and defensive tackle. At corner the team added three transfers after the spring to help in the competition, and at tackle there was a late addition as well with Anthony Campbell (and Miami previously added Branson Deen and Thomas Gore out of the transfer portal).

A name that perhaps isn’t at the tip of everyone’s tongue right now at DT but that has his sights set on being a difference-Maker?

Ahmad Moten, who enters Year 2 after redshirting last year.

“I feel like (my game) is going well,” Moten told CaneSport. “I had a good spring, just want to keep going forward, don’t want to go back and push back. Going into the season I expect playing time and getting tackles, all that, getting my name out there.”

He adds that his mindset is competing, and that “if the threes are the same as the twos, and the twos the same as the ones, then no one can beat Miami.”

Moten arrived at Miami last year as a bit of a project at tackle, needing to tone up and – like all true freshmen – learn the defense. He wound up playing 31 reps and struggling (he had an overall 38.2 defensive grade per Pro Football Focus). But struggles are typical for an interior defensive lineman that’s in his first year.

Now it’s Year 2.

Moten showed this spring he’s making strides, and he hopes to prove this fall he belongs in the rotation.

“It’s very competitive,” Moten said. “On the grass we’re going full speed. We’re all a brotherhood, it’s all love. It’s just we go compete and may the best man win.”

Moten says he sees increased competition and a player-led team, and attributes that as part of the culture change that Mario Cristobal is looking to instill.

“Last year we didn’t have that,” he said. “Last year we were just guys playing for themselves. The past is the past, as coach (Mario) Cristobal says. The U is right now, and I feel like we’re changing the culture.”

*Moten points to a couple of young guys that have impressed him: WR Ray Ray Joseph and DL Rueben Bain.

“I wish I was like that when I came in here,” Moten said. “They’re on a mission. You can tell they are passionate, really care about what they are doing.”

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