Inside the mind of the imposing figure coming on at the back of USC’s defense
When a wide receiver and a cornerback line up tight outside on a football field, it’s usually the corner staring into the chest of the offensive player, maybe taking a peak upward at his face.
When a receiver lines up across from South Carolina corner Israel Mukuamu, the offensive player might well be looking up at him.
“He’s 6-foot-5 with cleats on,” fellow sophomore Gamecocks corner Jaycee Horn said. “It’s crazy. He’s 6-5 lined up in front of the receiver. And when he does get off the line, it’s almost like he smothers a receiver. It’s nowhere they can run. Sometimes they just stop in the middle of a route.”
Even as taller cornerbacks have become an in-demand kind of player, those who are Mukuamu’s size are a rarity at best. There wasn’t a pure corner taller than 6-foot-3 in the NFL last season, while he stands an inch taller than that.
And the rarity was part of the reason he took to the position.
“That’s why I kind of moved to DB,” Mukuamu said. “It’s not a lot of guys that’s 6-foot-4 that can move because usually guys that are 6-4 play receiver. So I think that is unique about me, but just I just keep working on it.”
Mukuamu got mop-up duty early on and then saw his role increase as a freshman. By the Clemson game, he was playing 71 snaps and drawing praise from his head coach for matching with a strong receiver.
He almost went to Florida State after high school, but the collapse of the Jimbo Fisher era reopened his recruitment and the Gamecocks brought the former Berkeley High School player back home.
At his size, there was a good deal of speculation he’d end up a safety, as taller players tend to get put there. He resisted that.
“A lot of people think I’m 6-foot-4, automatically think safety,” Mukuamu said. “But as I was coming out of high school I always think I’m a DB, whether you need me to play safety to corner, I mean that’s what I’ll play.”
He found a coaching staff whose outlook matched his own. South Carolina coach Will Muschamp and defensive coordinator Travaris Robinson keep things relatively fluid in the back end of the defense. If the situation calls for him to play safety, he might. He got some work there in the last scrimmage of training camp. For the moment, the staff seems to want that kind of length on the outside.
It even makes life hard for a teammate in quarterback Jake Bentley when he has to challenge them in practice.
“The windows are small,” Bentley said. “Israel especially and Jaycee, Israel just being so long it’s hard to get around him.”
It was almost a marvel to Horn, a talented corner in his own right after starting as a true freshman. He had to laugh at questions about what it might be like to play the position at his size, flipping his hips with legs that long.
Horn joked he’d never had the experience of standing so tall, but he also just came away impressed with his partner.
“I don’t see how he moves like that at 6-foot-5,” Horn said.