| USC football: Up and running |
Tailback competition is 10 deep at USC
In search of a salve for last season’s oft-ailing running game, USC is turning to a familiar page in its playbook - Student Body Right. As in, line up a veritable student body of candidates at tailback and everything should be right.
When the Trojans, who are finishing up spring practice this week, return in August, there figures to be a line at tailback that runs 10 deep.
Among the options are three players who last season rushed for 100 yards in a game, another who kept Reggie Bush on the bench for a year, and another who might be the next Reggie Bush.
In all, there will be seven candidates who arrived at USC as Parade All-Americans, generally the most prestigious high school honor.
Nobody was throwing any parades for the USC running game at the end of last season.
Relying on two true freshmen - C.J. Gable and Emmanuel Moody - and a veteran who had missed the previous two seasons with poor grades - Chauncey Washington - the Trojans were solid on the ground for the first half of the season. But they sputtered badly in their two losses, to Oregon State and UCLA, being held below 100 yards for the first time since Notre Dame did it in 2004.
In their Rose Bowl win against Michigan,
the Trojans simply gave up on the run, going 29 consecutive plays in the second half without handing the ball to a running back.
The Trojans ran for the fewest yards - and had the fewest attempts - since coach Pete Carroll’s first season in 2001.
Carroll believes there will be more consistency in the running game - and consequently more balance in the offense, which must replace play-making receivers Steve Smith and Dwayne Jarrett - simply because there’s more experience.
Gable and Moody combined for 190 carries, and Washington, fellow fifth-year senior Desmond Reed, and sixth-year senior Hershel Dennis - "the guys who have been here eight or nine years," Carroll said - have seen a lot.
Stafon Johnson and Allen Bradford, another pair of highly touted backs, didn’t play much as freshmen last year, but they too should have a better understanding of the offense.
"They just are barely holding onto the scope of what’s being asked of them in a freshman year," Carroll said.
"Basically, it’s an identification of the defense, an ability to pick out the guys they’re supposed to block in pass protection, the schemes. That stuff comes so much faster in the second year. The first time around they’re worried about their own stuff.
"That’s why we try not to overload guys. We try to spot play them, just to get them as far along as we can and then we go into the second year, third year - now you can really load them up."
That formula applies to most freshmen. Whether it applies to one of the summer arrivals, Joe McKnight, remains to be seen.
| " | If Saturday's scrimmage at the Coliseum had been the season opener, half the tailbacks would have been out of commission. Tyler is two months from being fully recovered from a broken leg and the four sophomores-to-be were in street clothes: Gable with a sore neck, Bradford with an ailing hip, Johnson recovering from shoulder surgery and Moody with a strained hamstring. |
