Entering the 2014-season, a lot of excitement surrounded the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s running back position. Leading rusher from last year Cam McDaniel returned, as did Tarean Folston – who built up quite a bit of steam at the end of last year.
On top of those two, they would get back ultra-talented Greg Bryant – who missed the majority of last season with an injury. What he lacked in experience (just three carries last season) he more than made up for in raw skill.
Time For a Fighting Irish Featured Running Back
How to use each to the highest effectiveness was the biggest question, along with whether or not there would be enough carries to go around.
So they have responded with an almost three way split among the running back carries. Folston leads the team with 39-carries, good for 37.1% of the running back carries. Both Bryant and McDaniel sit at 33-carries (31.4%).
The carries have been so even that only Folston had topped the 40% mark in any one game, which he did against the Rice Owls, and Bryant’s most recent contest against the Syracuse Orangemen is the only other instance to where a running back has topped 10-carries.
Everyone getting an even split of carries will certainly keep everyone happy for the most part, but is that hurting the team’s running game in the long scheme of things? Each of them are almost switching out at a series per person pace, is doing that affecting them from getting into a real rhythm?
Would allowing one running back to receive the majority of the carries be the best thing for the team’s running game? Bryant received 11-carries against Syracuse, most of which late in the game – even though he fumbled his seventh carry of the game.
But ten of his carries were on two separate drives, and after a carry in the first quarter he didn’t run the ball again until the third. You can see him starting to get in a groove, getting six carries on six consecutive plays leading to the fumble.
The fumble could have been a byproduct of what head coach Brian Kelly had to say about Bryant’s performance against Syracuse,
“I think sometimes he wants to do a little too much… Again, I think what that’s more than anything else is just there’s a lot going on out there, and he wants to make every play a big play and sometimes three, four yards is okay.”
Not that this is a direct endorsement in Bryant being the player to start getting a much heavier workload, anyone of these players have the skillset to do so. But heading into the bulk of the team’s schedule, a matchup against the Stanford Cardinal this week and the Florida State Seminoles in two weeks, having a running back getting into a consistent grove can help an already potent Irish offense.
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