DETROIT— Dequan Finn looked right at home in Ford Field.
Strolling through the building’s south concourse in a black suit and sunglasses Thursday morning, Finn walked between teammate Silas Walters and head coach Chuck Martin to the group’s next activity as part of the Mid-American Conference’s annual football media day.
“This brings back a ton of memories,” Finn, a Detroit native, told one reporter with a smile on his face.
Which made sense, as the former Michigan Mr. Football is no stranger to the Detroit Lions’ home stadium. Finn, who grew up within a 12-minute drive of the building, previously won high school state championships and a Mid-American Conference crown here at the corner of Brush and Adams streets. Now, the former Toledo and Baylor signal-caller enters the 2025 season —in his first year as a RedHawk— hoping to claim yet another title in his hometown when the MAC Championship Game kicks off on Dec. 6. This time around, the former MAC MVP will be part of a Miami program that has also experienced plenty of success in the Motor City, with three title game appearances since 2019, including a pair of trophies.
“I feel honored, to be quite honest with you,” Finn said of joining the Red and White. “Just a rich tradition, and being able to play under Coach Martin, I’m ecstatic.
“I can’t wait for the season to start!”
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Finn and Walters took very different journeys to become Miami’s offensive and defensive representatives at the MAC’s 2025 kickoff event.
“One was a dream-team player of the year in Michigan, all-everything,” Martin said as he looked over at his new 24-year-old quarterback. “Then you’ve got a local walk-on [23-year-old Walters, a native of West Chester, Ohio] and he’s here. You can get here a lot of different ways…
“That’s the beauty of football. There aren’t a lot of walk-ons in other sports that become what Silas has become for our football program: Not only as one of the best players, but the leader and now the guy that’s representing you at media day.
“It just goes to show there are a lot of avenues in football. You work hard, and you persevere: There are opportunities for everyone.”
While Finn had previously attended Media Day in 2023 (also in Detroit) during his time with the Rockets, this was Walters’ first year participating in the event. The standout safety, who memorably received a scholarship ahead of the RedHawks’ spring game in 2023 (‘If you win the flip, you either get to pick offense or defense, or whether you want to be on scholarship at Miami!’), thoroughly enjoyed this week’s experience, periodically pulling out his cell phone to document the proceedings from his point of view. As the constant whirlwind of interviews, photo shoots and filming unfolded, Walters continued to bring up his team’s main goal: Returning to the same building 19 weeks from now to play for the MAC Championship again.
“That’s every team’s goal that’s here: Get to this point in December,” said Walters. “So we are super-excited, ready to go for the season, and hungry to get back here.”
The preseason coaches’ poll, unveiled earlier that morning, unsurprisingly had Miami near the top. The RedHawks were picked second in the league with 131 points, four shy of Toledo, and earned the second-most votes to win the championship with four.
“We talk about it in our first team meeting: We want to try and get to Ford Field and play for a MAC championship. That’s the goal,” Martin said. He brought up his very first media day in the conference, when his program was at the other end of the standings, and recalled the vision of what his staff hoped to eventually build in Oxford. “Miami has such a rich, storied tradition in football, and we felt the opportunity…to turn it back to what Miami Football should be like: A team that every year people are talking about has a potential to win a MAC championship,” Martin explained.
“Not that we’re going to win it every year or that we’re the favorite every year, but we’re in that hunt. When we got here 12 years ago, we weren’t close to that. Now we’ve built it back, so that every year people expect us to be in the fight, even though we lost 17 starters…”
“There’s a lot of respect for our program.”
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Media Day has to be the only event on the planet where a player can go directly from A. talking to an ESPN broadcaster to B. competing as themselves in a college football video game to C. trying to blindly identify an unknown item for a social media feature, all in a matter of minutes. (“It moves, but it doesn’t bite,” Finn was told, immediately before he gingerly stuck his hands into one such mystery box with a camera following his every move.) Over a fast-paced few hours, the Miami contingent draped themselves in #MACtion pirate flags, tested their grip strength and reflexes, and were quizzed on everything from state capitals to school logos, all with ever-present smiles on their faces.
“I was a free safety, but I look good throwing it,” Martin remarked as he went through yet another photo shoot, this one with a football in hand.
“Weren’t you a kicker too?”, Walters asked.
“Way to bring that up, Si,” chuckled Martin, who was an All-American player at Division III Millikin 35+ years ago. “We try to keep that under wraps.”
Speaking of successfully tossing footballs…
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The previous night, Walters and Finn had teamed up to take part in a ‘fowling’ event for the players in attendance at the aptly-named Fowling Warehouse in nearby Hamtramck, Mich. The activity, which involves teammates taking turns throwing footballs to knock down bowling pins (similar to how a cornhole game would function), pitted each school against one other MAC program with bragging rights on the line. Miami was assigned to compete against Bowling Green (or would that be ‘Fowling Green’?!?), and the RedHawks ultimately prevailed with ease in each of the three contests (while even managing to grab a few bites of barbecue in between).
“We were both dominating the whole time,” Finn laughed. “He [Walters] had his game, I had my game, and we were winning, so it was fun!”
“We’re now the fowling champions against BG,” Walters added. “It was good to talk to the players though; it was a good time.”
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Light-hearted ‘fowling’ results aside, the success that everyone associated with Miami Football is hoping for this year will of course be determined on the gridiron, not in a warehouse. That begins in exactly five weeks, when the RedHawks’ season kicks off against the Wisconsin Badgers in Madison, Wis. on national television (Thursday, Aug. 28 at 9 p.m. ET on Big Ten Network).
And while there will be plenty of new faces on both sides of the ball (Martin joked that fall camp would involve taping players’ names on the front of their helmets ‘like Little League’ so the staff knows who is who!), the RedHawks are excited to unveil the potential of their 2025 group. After racking up 20 wins across the past two years, Miami expects to build on its sustained success in the coming seasons, while hoping to take the next step as a program and earn a coveted spot in the College Football Playoff.
“I want fans to be ready for the amount of talent that we have,” Walters said confidently. “It’s probably going to look different than years past; we obviously had a lot of longtime seniors leave that had big roles. But our culture is so good and we jell well together. I’m really excited to see what we can do. We have more than enough talent to go out and be the best team in the league again, like we’ve been competing to do the last several years.
“I feel way more confident,” Finn said of his comfort level in the offense after getting a full spring under his belt with his new program. “Not just saying that, but actually believing it – and the guys around me believe it as well.
“Coach Martin is a great coach, and he’s going to help us as well. As long as we jell together, which we’re doing right now, the sky is the limit for us.”
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