Miami star wide receiver Malachi Toney may or may not be out for the season with a serious ankle injury. Unfortunately, a local reporter released the name of the college football player who was involved with incident during practice.
He is now subject to hateful rhetoric on social media.
Most college football fans agree that it was not necessary to release the player’s name. It was not his fault!
Malachi Toney suffered an injury during practice.
The No. 1-ranked Miami Hurricanes will play their biggest game of the season against the No. 11-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish on Saturday. They will be without their leading receiver.
Malachi Toney, a true sophomore, has the third-most receiving yards of any player in college football. He is the primary offensive catalyst with 1,027 yards and 13 touchdowns on 73 catches. That is less than 100 yards behind Jessee Legree and Jeremiah Smith. Miami’s next closest receiver has only 372 yards and four touchdowns on 28 catches.
Miami announced on Wednesday that Toney is going to miss an extended period of time with an ankle injury. The Hurricanes were extremely transparent. Rarely does a team provide this much information about an injury to its star player. Especially on game week.
Most programs choose to keep things as quiet as possible. That would force the Fighting Irish to game plan for Toney even though he is not playing, which would mean that the coaching staff is not spending as much time on the next man up.
As things currently stand, there is some optimism for a return. Toney will undergo tight rope surgery. He could be able to play if Miami makes the College Football Playoff but he may not be anywhere close to 100%. Only time will tell.
In the meantime, the Hurricanes will need to restructure their entire passing game. And they have only a few days to do so before they face their highest-ranked opponent of the regular season.
A Miami-based reporter released the name of the other player.
Miami chose not to keep Malachi Toney’s injury a secret. Sources close to the program gave a pretty complete understanding of what happened in terms of diagnosis and a potential timeline for return.
However, the Hurricanes did not provide a full explanation of how the injury happened. It choose to keep that information under wraps. It was not relevant. Things happen.
Josh Moser — a Miami-based sportscaster and host better who is known as ‘The Moz’ — took a different approach.
He released the name of the player that “inadvertently rolled up” on Toney’s ankle during practice. The player is a true freshman.
Hurricanes fans and college football fans mostly came together in response to Moser’s report. They called for him to delete his post and/or make an edit to remove the player’s name.
- “Please take the kid’s name down”
- “Take the kids name down, there’s no reason to have it be said who it was when he didn’t do anything wrong”
- “Dude it’s 2026 and there are some real crazy fans and dudes who probably bet on this s— that’s so f—— sketchy to post this kids name.”
- “What’s wrong with you dude? Take that kids name down.”
- “Using ‘via a source’ as an excuse to dox a kid is absolutely disgusting. Even if it was him, I can’t imagine the psychological toll of realizing what he INADVERTENTLY did, and now his life could be put in danger by your post. This isn’t journalism, it’s a completely unethical, irresponsible, and reckless exploit for clicks. Please, take this down.”
Those are just a few of many examples. Most people agree that it was not necessary to name the player who was involved with a freak injury during practice. It was not his fault. The player was just trying to do his job.
Unfortunately, a small portion of the Miami fanbase (the outliers) went after the player on social media.
- “Take this kids NIL take his scholarship take his jersey number he can wear a number in the 40s”
- “Is he in the portal yet?”
- “Never touch the money.”
- “Hahahaha dumb a– freshman”
The player also received hateful messages on Instagram.
- “this literally was [your] fault”
- “No f—– way u just hurt da goat fam”
- “It should’ve been you, not Mali”
That only begins to scratch the surface. The player had to remove multiple comments from his old posts because Moser phrased his report as though he was/is responsible for Toney’s injury.