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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1226510, member: 289"] The Running Game Then: [I]Prince-Tyson Gulley isn’t big, (5-8, 193). He has some speed and some moves. He’s a veteran back capable of having some big games. In the Pinstripe Bowl vs. West Virginia, he ran for 213 yards and two long TDs and caught passes for 56 yards and another score. For his career, he’s gained 1,449 yards on 272 carries, (5.3) and 14 scores and caught 53 passes for 375 yards and 3TDs. Being the most experienced back, he’s probably the best blocker, something the fans ignore but coaches stress. And he’s become one of the leaders on the team and was elected one of four co-captains Behind him George Morris and DeVante McFarland have shown obvious talent: good size, (both about 6 feet and 200 pounds), excellent speed and great instincts. Morris rushed for 334 yards and scored twice while McFarlane ran for 292 yards and a score but averaged 6.1 yards per carry. They are clearly the future of the position and will get a lot of touches this year. Adonis Amin-Moore has a great name and a big body- too big. He was thought to be a major recruit. People thought he might start and star as a freshman but he ate his way out of job, blowing up to 5-11 and at least 260. He was used primarily in goal-line situation where his bulk might move the pile. He’s down to 246 this year and back in the mix at running back. He might make the kind of fullback I talk about each year but I promised I wasn’t going to get into that. And he hasn’t done enough to warrant such thinking, anyway. A lot of people are talking about 5-11 179 speedster Ervin Phillips. It remains to be seen how much we’ll see of him this season with the people he has ahead of him but he’s a name to remember. Coach Shafer on his radio show called him “really explosive”. Maybe the fans will need helmets. For years we were plagued by mediocre and then lousy offensive lines. Doug Marrone, a former All-East tackle, decided to change that and one characteristic of Syracuse in this decade is that we’ve had good offensive lines. Once you start having good lines you can get to a situation where 3-4 guys return each year who know what it takes and you can maintain that strength. We seem to be in that agreeable situation. We’ve got four returning starters, Sean Hickey, (named to the preseason All-ACC team), Ivan Foy, Rob Trudo and Nick Robinson. Robinson is nursing an injury to start the season and Omari Palmer, who seemed to be beating out Trudo, caused Rob to be moved to replace Robinson. It was thought that center Mackey McPherson would be replaced by Jason Emerich but he got beat out by John Miller. Hopefully, the rise of Palmer and Miller are due to their abilities, not due to weaknesses in Trudo or Emerich. I think it is and that we’ll have another fine offensive line. Hunt should have time to check down his receivers and throw to them against most opponents and the running backs should find holes waiting for them when they get to the line of scrimmage. That could not only lead to big plays but it means that our guys will having a running start when they get hit and will be more likely to “win” those collisions and gain extra yardage. [/I] Now: We should have had a strong running game, particularly with Hunt in there. Early on, we did. We rushed for 289 yards against Central Michigan and 370 against Maryland. But then we lost Hunt and our offensive linemen went down like wheat before a thresher. At one point we had no starters in the offensive line. We also played some of the better defenses in the country. Louisville wound up #3 in the country in rushing defense. Boston College was #4. Clemson was #7. It didn’t give us a chance to mount much of a rushing attack, at least not enough to win games. Gulley had a solid year with 607 yards in 127 carries (4.8) but his only touchdown of the year came on a 65 yard burst in the first quarter of the opener against Villanova. Who, watching that play, would have thought that they’d seen his only score of the season? Ameen-Moore actually had a pretty good year with 337 yards in 62 carries, a 5.4 average that beat Gulley’s. But his only score came in the second quarter of that same Villanova game. And his most memorable play was a sweep from his own end zone that never got to the playing field against Louisville. People wondered why we were running a sweep from the end zone with a 234 pound back rather than someone faster. We did have someone faster in freshman Erv Phillips who showed plenty of zip and good running instincts, although his stats weren’t spectacular at 42 carries for 192 yards and, of course 0 touchdowns. He became our leading kick-off returner with 25 for 476 yards but, again we couldn’t spring him for the big one. Meanwhile the highly promising DeVante McFarland and George Morris seemed to fade, although McFarlane had an 86 yard burst against Wake Forest that tire James Mungro’s strange record for the longest non-scoring run in SYU history, (vs. Kentucky in the ’99 Music City Bowl). MacFarlane never did score this season and in his other carries, he gained only 55 yards in 27 carries after getting 292 in 48 carries last year. Morris actually did somewhat better than that with 101 yards in 35 carries but that’s only 2.9 and he never scored, either. The line will lose tackle Sean Hickey and center John miller so the line will need some rebuilding. The “ Hyphenated Backfield” of Prince-Tyson Gulley and Adonis Ameen-Moore, (ideal for an old fashioned HB-FB combo but of course we never used them together), will be gone. MacFarlane and Morris have to live up to their potential and Phillips needs to get the ball more. Then: [I]George MacDonald has promised that his offense will rev it up this year. We are going to get off more plays and get the defense gassed. That’s what we did two years ago. But that requires an efficient passing game and tends to put the running game, which will probably be our real strength, into the background. But a dynamic passing game can also open things up for the running attack. Stay tuned. [/I] Now: We were tuned in but to the wrong station. [/QUOTE]

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