We still haven't proven we have a good running back. And before some says Allen is because he gained 1000 plus yards last year. Look at his actual season.
The 8 games before the wildcat he ran 120 times for 553 yards or 69 per game.
The last 4 games with the wildcat he ran 105 times for 509 yards for 127 a game.
So without the wildcat he basically is an average runner without elite speed or ability to run through people.
A nice player, but has to have really good blocking to be effective, like you get in the wildcat.
Let's look at your numbers a little more.
You didn't include the bowl game, which was another wildcat offense game. Let's start by adding that one in to get a true picture of how Allen did in both offenses during 2023.
8 games pre wildcat:
120 carries for 553 yards or 4.63 yards per carry
5 games in wildcat"
In the bowl game, LeQuint had 20 carries for a net of 2 yards. Ouch. So his wildcat numbers go from
105 carries for 509 yards to
125 carries for 511 yards or 4.09 yards per carry
So he ran for significantly less yards per carry in thw wildcat.
The biggest difference though is the number of carries he got per game. Many of those plays were the team tried to pass running their normal offense became carries for LeQuint.
Prewildcat carries per game: 15
Wildcat carries per game: 25
LeQuint only had 8 carries against Stanford.
I think that if he gets 20 or 25 carries per game, and has even decent run blocking, he is consistently going to end up with over 100 yards rushing.
Will that happen with this offense? It seems like Coach Nixon is making a concerted effort to give other RBs some carries. And he is okay with abandoning the run if the defensive scheme calls for this.
We should have been able to burn Stanford deep repeatedly given how they defended us. We shouldn't have been able to run for big yards. I don't blame LeQuint for this. That is on the OL, the WRs, the TEs and the QB. And the OC.
The ACC has been defending us this way for years. It is the standard way to defend a team with a reasonable good rushing attack and questionable passing attack.
IMHO, you can bank on us seeing this the rest of the season, unless we can prove that defenses have to play us straight up and abandon press coverage and blitzes.
I bet even Holy Cross tries to defend us this way. They won't succeed because they don't have the athletes. but I bet they try. Hopefully we do a better job handling it from this point forward.
