riding 1 rb all year...exception, not rule

F

Foval21

Well-Known Member
i dont have any numbers for this so if people want to help out and post numbers for each year we can investigate together.

during my time watching the kf era my perception has always been that they try to run a 2 rb system. this year being the exception (because of a perception that the coaches had this year they havent in others).

in 2011 coker and mccall were going to be used like greene and hampton had been (my opinion...no inside knowledge). but because of an injury coker was the only option they were comfortable with. so they went with him.

there are others but some notable rb tandems under kf:

greene and hampton
arob and wegher
young and simms

help me out with others but i know hawkeyenation is making a mountain out of a mole hill when it comes to the fact that we used coker so much this year. i know it is mainly because we didnt develop any depth and then lost the 2 guys that we would have leaned on in 2012 but weve had that happen before and made out ok.

my take is we see a 2 rb combo made using canzeri and garmon or johnson being used instead of one of those two.

please help me on the rb tandems and percentage of carries for the year. and we will see this is an outlier and not what we should expect.
 
of course. the people who complain about this, use this as just another way to attack the coaching staff.

thanks for posting.
 
Not an entire season, but 2010 was pretty god awful in spots. We started that year with ARob and Hampton, with what I can only assume were plans to redshirt Coker. Then Hampton goes down...KF burns the shirt on Coker vs. Ball State, and then Robinson racks up about 90 carries in the next 3 games while Coker does not play. It backfired on him in the MSU game, keeping ARob in there too long and he got injured, thereby anointing Coker as the new RB by default. He performed well in a starting role the next week vs. Indiana, then went back to being invisible to following week. It was just very bizarre how he handled that situation...
 
Correct 2679. Last year was basically a one-back year, too. It's certainly not the norm for the Ferentz era (can't forget Russell/Lewis), but hopefully these past two years will have renewed the staff's faith in the two-back approach. If one of those guys gets hurt and will be out for awhile, get another guy ready to go so that the burden isn't all on the other guy.
 
See this is one thing that I guess I don't understand.....I see a staff who regularly played 2 plus backs (as the OP said) and naturally assume for whatever reason, there were issues internally that lead them away from this. Be it injury, practice, scheme, ball security, whatever...

Others for reasons beyond me....I assume some are bitter and anti-staff and others I really don't know, choose to see something different.

It really is just a complete difference in processing the information available too us all. Yet as I look back over time, the critics are notoriously made to look pretty silly.
 
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I know both are gone but the year we went to the Orange Bowl we had two RBs who were freshman - AROB and Wegher and we did a nice job of rotating them in and out. Both had some injuries so each had to tote the load a few games themselves but we were at our best when both rotated. Need to find that again
 
Coker his freshmen year was sidelined the 1st half due to a broken collar bone,
the following year Coker carried the load because the only rb that appeared to step up broke his ankle, that should be a clue that the coaching staff had no confidence in who was left.
McCall came back, the staff was being careful with him a break is nothing to rush, when he came in he fumbled was taken out do to KF's stance on ball security,which he does not play favorites with, even Coker got yanked after fumbling, he then broke team rules and did not play again.
to rotate players you have players you feel comfortable with playing.
Canzeri will get carries but will not be the primary RB unless he gains 15-20 LBS to get up to 190-195 lbs
 
i did some research (numbers might be a little off) and what coker did this year isnt unprecidented in kf era. but it is the exception not the rule. i will show what i found in this setup:

yr - name - carries (% team carry) - yds (% team yds)

11 - coker - 281 (63%) - 1384 (76%)

10 - arob - 203 (46%) - 941 (48%)
coker - 114 (26%) - 622 (32%)

09 - arob - 181 (41%) - 834 (54%)
wegher - 162 (37%) - 641 (42%)

08 - greene - 307 (60%) - 1850 (75%)
hampton - 91 (18%) - 403 (16%)

07 - young - 206 (47%) - 968 (64%)
sims - 100 (23%) - 499 (33%)

06 - young - 178 (41%) - 779 (42%)
sims - 132 (31%) - 654 (35%)

05 - young - 249 (57%) - 1334 (64%)

04 - brownlee - 94 (22%) - 227 (26%)
lewis - 57 (13%) - 200 (23%)
simmons - 51 (12%) - 194 (22%)

03 - russell - 282 (53%) - 1355 (60%)

02 - russell - 220 (40%) - 1264 (45%)
lewis - 123 (22%) - 709 (25%)

01 - betts - 220 (50%) - 1056 (55%)

00 - betts - 233 (58%) - 1090 (98%)

99 - betts - 189 (56%) - 857 (81%)

from the numbers i found coker was basically the same as greene was in his season (percent wise). young had a similar season and so did russell. each season i found had players not get many carries or yards (similar to canzeri and johnson numbers) yet a year or two later they would put up good numbers. did our offense lean on coker? yes. but this has been the case in good and bad years (record wise).

*note: lost yds (such as qbs) are accounted for in my numbers. this is what makes betts have such high yard percentages with between 50% and 60% of the carries.

hopefully this shows all the chicken littles to cool it and be ready to see 2 or 3 young backs emerge this year.
 
that has been my point all season Coker was not overused they really didn't have a backup to get carries, sorry i still maintain 23 carries a game avg is not a heavy workload
 
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