We’ve discussed the TEs and the WRs over the last two articles so let’s stick with the offense and address what is always an important part of any productive gameplanning – the Running Backs.  Let’s look at what our RBs did last season:

RUSHING STATISTICS
NAME	CAR	YDS	AVG	LONG	TD
Darrin Hall	128	628	4.9	92 (TD)	9
Qadree Ollison	90	398	4.4	32	5
Chawntez Moss	42	116	2.8	11	2
A.J. Davis	16	40	2.5	12	1

What they contributed to was an overall NCAA ranking of 84th out of 129 teams in Rushing Offense with 148 ypg and 21 total TDs on the ground… pretty poor all around.  How do we get better as quickly as possible? I say back to the future with that.

I’ll say right off the bat that I think rsSR Qadree Ollison has been mishandled by this coaching staff over the last two years and I can’t figure out why.  If you remember he did a bang-up job in relief of James Conner when Conner was undergoing his cancer treatments and missed the 2015 season.

That season Ollison carried the ball 212 times for 1,121 yards (5.3 ypc) and 11 TDs – a great outing for a rsFR and done under pressure to produce because a star RB was unable to play.  Actually his was a better season that Conner’s return in 2016 when Conner ran for 1,092 yards at a 5.1 ypc clip.

Ollison’s work in ’15 was impressive to this writer, that’s for sure…not so much to the coaching staff apparently because they never trusted him at that level of involvement carrying the ball again.

Instead of Ollison returning as a featured back last season we saw now-SR Darrin Hall become the primary and Ollison relegated to the FB position to cover George Aston’s absence due to injury.  Ollision did a good job at FB but he would produce more elsewhere.  Well, Aston looks to return this season so who does the staff want to be the bell cow of RBs?

Last year Hall’s production looked OK on paper with 128 carries for 628 yards (4.9 ypc) and 9 TDs, but that is very misleading.  The fact is that Hall had one monster day against Duke where he ripped off two huge runs of 92 and 79 yards.  No one is complaining about that as we won that game on the backs of those runs so credit is due, but when you are trying to project what a player will do in the future it is important to understand what he truly did in the past.

Continue reading “POV’s Take: Spring Drills – Running Backs” →