The first time former Gilman head football coach Nick Bach watched Rayuan Lane III compete was on the basketball court.
Then a high school sophomore, Lane was focused primarily on hoops at the time.
“When I first got to Gilman, he wasn’t even playing football,” Bach said. “I noticed him playing defense, and he was very aggressive — right up in guys’ faces. He had superior quickness and agility, and then some explosiveness, too. He could jump really high and dunk. I knew he’d be great on defense.”
Lane is now a sophomore on the Navy football team, only four years removed from being a basketball-first high school athlete. He entered his second preseason camp atop the free safety depth chart. It all started at Gilman.
“We have several positions on our defense — some safety positions that blitz a lot, and I knew he’d be great there. I started him there, and then eventually worked him back deeper once he started to really train his footwork and work on his backpedal,” Bach said of how Lane came to play the safety position. “He’s such a hard worker. It happened pretty quick.
“He got to the point where he could play corner or a deep safety and track the ball and cover really anybody. Sometimes we’d put him up in press man coverage as a corner, and he would just blow the guy up and the receiver would never even leave the line. I said, ‘We could definitely use him all over the place.’ And that’s what we did.”
The jack-of-all-trades defender starred in the other two phases of the game at Gilman as well. That versatility helped Lane when he was thrust into a starting role as a freshman for the Midshipmen last fall.
“High school and college, there’s a big difference, but still remembering the confidence I had and the kind of juice I played with in high school and just trying to bring it to college,” Lane said.
Lane made his first collegiate start against powerhouse Cincinnati. The 5-foot-11, 197-pound safety made four tackles as the Midshipmen held the College Football Playoff-bound Bearcats to their second-fewest points of the regular season.
Lane remained in the starting lineup for the final six games of the year. He recorded 37 tackles, including two for a loss, broke up four passes, intercepted one and forced a fumble.
Like any true freshman forced into a starting role midseason, there were ups and downs through the 4-8 campaign. But one particular play sits in Lane’s mind as he prepares for his sophomore campaign — a late stop that involved the entire defense and helped seal the season-ending win against Army.
“Definitely one of those last plays against Army. We had all 11 guys hitting the runner, so he couldn’t get past the first-down marker to continue the drive,” Lane recalled. “That was pretty much the end of the game, so that play definitely plays in my mind all the time. Just seeing how everyone was flying around, everybody was working toward this common goal, because that’s what we do in practice.”
The Midshipmen held Army scoreless after halftime to come from behind for a 17-13, season-defining win. The Black Knights entered the contest as the nation’s second-ranked rushing offense, averaging 301.2 yards per game on the ground, but managed just 124 that day. Lane made three tackles and broke up a pass in the victory.
Lane recognizes the significance of the game experience he earned as a freshman as he prepares for the upcoming season. He’s familiar with the pace of the game and knows a little more about the tendencies of college offenses. He says the trust his coaches and teammates had in him to anchor the back end of the defense as a freshman only adds to his confidence.
Besides having valuable game experience under his belt, Lane, a quantitative economics major, has the added benefit of understanding what life is like as a student-athlete at a service academy.
“When I got there, it definitely hit me in the face. I didn’t expect all of it, but looking back, I would say it really just builds character,” he said. “To go through that and then have to go through football and everything, you can be able to look back and say, ‘Man, I got through that.’ And you can just think about what you’re capable of doing after you complete a task that rigorous.”
His high school coach knew all along that Lane was up for the challenge.
“His sister’s in the military, and his family is very strong mentally and physically. They’re a very tight group,” Bach said. “The challenges of Navy aren’t going to be anything that anybody in that family couldn’t handle. They’re a very strong group, and Rayuan’s a very strong guy, and his younger brother is as well. There’s great leadership in that family, and those children will emerge as great leaders as well because they have great examples in the home.”
Though only a sophomore, Lane will be among the more experienced players on another young Navy defense. His goal is to instill the confidence in his teammates, like last year’s leaders did in him.
“Just being there as a support system for anybody,” Lane said.
Lane said expectations are high for the defense and the entire team, which has many young contributors on offense as well. The Jessup, Md., native spent his summer locally, training to enter the preseason already in game shape. Another emphasis is training to keep his “eyes straight.”
“Really every position takes a lot of eye discipline, but especially playing in the back as a DB, you’ve got a lot of different things to look at,” Lane said. “I’m focusing in on those certain tendencies that you see on film and different things like that and seeing how it works out for you on the field.”
Navy’s new safeties coach, Ryan Crawford, noted Lane’s eye discipline as an area to improve upon from his freshman year. But mostly, Crawford saw the athleticism and raw talent the sophomore possesses.
“There’s no question, he is a super special talent. I think anytime you come from high school as talented as he was, he probably got away with playing with a lot of bad technique — high pad level, not great eye discipline, which is obviously extremely important at the safety position,” Crawford said during an April media session. “He’s shown a lot of progress this spring. Talent-wise, there’s no question he’s really, really special. We can just continue to work with him to put it all together. He’s a guy that we obviously have high expectations for and I’d be disappointed if he didn’t have a breakout season.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Navy Athletics