Virginia Tech CB Mansoor Delane had a nightmare of a season opener as he was torched by Vanderbilt on the Hokies’ way to defeat in overtime. During that game, Delane gave up six receptions on eight targets with one of those two incompletions being a drop on a wide open pass.
His performance was stunningly disappointing and raised questions as to whether this was an outlier for Delane or if this was a case of possible regression.
Well three weeks later, it’s pretty clear that his season-opening performance was an extreme outlier.
Over the past three games, Delane has only allowed two receptions for 32 yards on 13 targets, gaining only 10 yards after the catch. On the season, Delane is now allowing only a 38.1% completion rate with a 42.9 passer rating per the NFL passer rating metric from Pro Football Focus.
Those are insanely dominant numbers reflective of a high-level cornerback who will be playing on Sundays in the near future.
The traditional stats are also strong for Delane as he has 11 tackles, two interceptions, and four pass breakups. While one of Delane’s interceptions came off a great deflection by Mose Phillips, that stat line is an earned one for Delane reflective of the high level that he’s been playing at in recent weeks.
The fact that he only has 11 tackles through four games is in many ways a great sign that teams aren’t even completing passes in his general direction even if he isn’t the technical player in coverage. When Tech needs him to make a tackle, he’s been rock solid with only one missed tackle and a missed tackle rate of 7.1% which is significantly down from 16.2% last season.
When you get figuratively punched in the mouth like Delane did in the season opener at Vanderbilt, you can learn a lot about what someone is made of.
Well what Delane has shown is he is made of the type of stuff that you want from a football player with the type of resilience that you can build quality football programs around. Delane has embraced the humility that a performance like that can bring and used that to take his game to a level that we haven’t seen from him previously over the past few weeks, playing some of the best football of his life.
This week will prove to be a massive test for Delane given Miami’s loaded WR room with Xavier Restrepo, Jacolby George, Sam Brown, and Isaiah Horton. Those four are arguably the best WR corps in the ACC and one of the best in the nation, even with what the Hokies have at WR to push Miami for that top spot in the league.
However, Mansoor Delane has shown over the past three weeks why he is one of the best cornerbacks in the ACC. Going forward, it’s reasonable to believe that he can give Miami plenty of fits in coverage this week even with all the talent that they bring to the table. This game will be an opportunity for Delane to show that it wasn’t a good response against weaker opponents but a sign of a dominant season to come.
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