Florida’s running back position is a place of uncertainty for next year. In Dan Mullen’s first year in Gainesville, Jordan Scarlett and Lamical Perine led the way with just over 130 carries each. Perine was the clear lead back last year with 132 more carries.
As a few people have pointed out, Perine had more attempts than the rest of the Gator running backs combined last year. I would add that Dameon Pierce had more carries as the third string back in 2018 than as the second string back in 2019.
The latter fact points to how much UF went away from the run last year. After all, Perine had two fewer carries as the lead back than he did in a platoon the prior year. He had seven rushes against Georgia to begin November, and he had just four in each of the last three games of the regular season.
Perine’s workload bounced back in the bowl with 13 carries. That was after a month of bowl practice with the new-look offensive line with Richard Gouraige and Ethan White mixing in instead of the old line with Chris Bleich and Jean Delance going the whole way while underperforming.
The offensive line improving will be the most important thing to sorting out the running backs. Everyone at the position was either a 4-star or 5-star except Malik Davis, who ran for almost seven yards per carry as a freshman.
You see, the lead running back in Mullen’s offense having more carries than the rest combined is not a new phenomenon.
In Mullen’s first year as a head coach in 2009, Anthony Dixon actually had more than twice as many carries as the rest of his position room. The only years of Mullen’s head coaching career where the leading running back hasn’t had more carries than the other tailbacks put together were 2013, 2015, and 2018. In 2013, Dak Prescott took a bunch of the rushing load as LaDarius Perkins, who ran for 1,024 yards the prior season, dropped in effectiveness. There wasn’t a lead back type on the roster in 2015, and then in ’18 he had two lead back types.
Florida got some good news at the end of last week with Miami transfer Lorenzo Lingard getting his waiver to play right away this year. He’s the former 5-star of the bunch, and to be clear upfront, it’s better for the team that he’s eligible than he’s not.
I think it is worth remembering the 3-star in the position group as we look forward to Lingard’s performance.
Again, Davis was terrific in 2017 as a true freshman before a terrible knee injury cut his season short. At the beginning of the next year, he looked tentative and maybe not quite all the way back. He broke his foot early in that season, and that was the end of that year too.
Lingard had last year as that tentative year where he wasn’t all the way back after his own terrible knee injury in 2018. He didn’t have a subsequent season-ending injury like Davis did with his foot, but he and Manny Diaz agreed he needed more time. Lingard redshirted after barely appearing on the field and registering no carries in 2019.
After plenty of time to get both his knee and foot right, Davis got back on the field in ’19. Fumbling an option pitch in the opener surely didn’t endear himself to Mullen, but he still didn’t perform as he did in ’17. That season, he ran for 2.5 yards per carry more than Perine did. He didn’t make it to even three yards per carry for the season in 2019, and he didn’t get to four yards per carry in any single game.
I really hope Davis figures it out, because he’s a ton of fun to watch. However, it’s hard to overcome missing that much practice and dealing the with mental side of injury recovery.
I also really hope that Lingard won’t have a 2020 that’s reminiscent of Davis’s 2019. I think Pierce can handle a good load as the lead back, but it’d be great if he didn’t have do to it alone.
We can’t count on Davis, apparently, after how his last two seasons went. Iverson Clement is hanging around, but as a redshirt freshman in 2019 he had fewer carries than Nay’Quan Wright did while the latter was redshirting. Lingard is probably the best shot at having a second lead back unless Davis can finally recapture the magic.
I am less worried about the paucity of returning carries after looking up Mullen’s history with running backs. In his head coaching career, the bell cow model of 2019 is far more the norm than the platoon of 2018. Still, having only one lead back is having a single point of failure. You don’t want there to be a disaster if Pierce goes down where suddenly Emory Jones is having to do a lot of predictable QB draws move the ball on the ground.
Lingard getting to play this year gives the team a better chance. I am not banking entirely on it given the cautionary tale of Davis.