FIU Athletics
FIU Football: A lights out performance for Keyone Jenkins
Just one week after suffering a 22-17 loss to the Louisiana Tech Bulldogs, the FIU Panthers shifted gears and decided it was time to give the Miami Central High product and true freshman Keyone Jenkins the start against the Maine Black Bears, an FCS school.
"We thought Keyone was doing really good things in practice," said FIU head coach Mike MacIntyre. "We just thought it was the best thing for our team in this game to make that change at the time. We will evaluate after this weekend and see what's the best thing to do next weekend. "
Jenkins led the Panthers to their first win of the season as he tossed two touchdowns and now holds the record for most passing yards by a true freshman in their debut with 292. The record was previously held by Jamie Burke who threw for 258 yards in 2002 against Butler.
Jenkins first touchdown of the night has a nice story attached to it. Offensive coordinator and quarterback coach David Yost had his play call changed by Jenkins, but it ended up working at the as Keyone called the hitch and go route to wide receiver Kris Mitchell who ended up scoring a 19 yard touchdown to give the Panthers an early 7-0 lead.
"Great relationship with Coach Mac and Coach Yost," said quarterback Keyone Jenkins following the game. "Coach Yost was always telling me, if you write the check, you gotta cash it and I was 1,000% sure I was going to cash that if you ask me."
What also stood out about Jenkins was the ability to make plays with his feet. He ended the night with 31 yards, which put him at the top of the rushing leader board for FIU.
On the down side, Jenkins was sacked three times and threw an interception. "They were still playing the same, said Jenkins when talking about what he saw in the second half. "We just had to tag it differently. We kind of got our run game going a lot."
The top receiver that Jenkins targeted was Kris Mitchell who ended the night with two touchdowns for 201 receiving yards which puts ties him with Tyrese Chambers and T.Y. Hilton for most receiving yards in one game.
"When we mess up and throw an incompletion, we'll talk about what's going on here," said Jenkins. "Let me know what you see or what happened and what went wrong and stuff like that."
Aside from Jenkins making his college football debut, the FIU defense was the story of the night. Linebacker Donovan Manuel tied his career high in total tackles with 14 and safety D'Verik Daniel set a career high in total tackles with 11. On top of the career nights from Manuel and Daniel, the defense as a whole ended the night with two sacks. One from Alex Nobles and another one from Jordan Guerad.
The Panthers ended up winning the game, 14-12 and are now 1-1 on the season. FIU now faces former Conference USA University of North Texas who last season took down the Panthers to a final score of 52-14. It is unsure who the Panthers starting quarterback will be, but Jenkins made the case to start next Saturday.
