TrojanSports - Lincoln Riley expounds on the Trojans' plans at RB moving forward
Lincoln Riley talks about the plans at running back moving forward.
USC.rivals.com
With the reality having settled in that USC will be without injured star running back Travis Dye for the rest of the season, however long it goes, the focus shifts forward to how the Trojans recalibrate their backfield.
Coach Lincoln Riley confirmed that veteran Austin Jones will indeed be the No. 1 back moving forward, but he said he expects freshman Raleek Brown and redshirt junior Darwin Barlow to also have roles in the offense.
When Dye was carted off the field with a lower leg during the second quarter of USC's 55-17 win over Colorado on Friday night, Jones took over and finished with 74 rushing yards on 11 carries while adding 4 catches for 39 yards and a touchdown.
Overall, the Stanford transfer has carried the ball 52 times for 335 yards (6.4 yards per carry) with 12 catches for 134 yards and 4 total touchdowns this season.
"Austin is definitely option 1 right now -- I don't think there's any denying that. He came in and played well," Riley said Monday night during his appearance on Trojans Live. "We felt like those guys were 1A and 1B really throughout the season and he's been tremendous. To have a guy we can turn to there that has his experience, playmaking ability, now knowledge and some experience in the offense makes a big difference.
"And then, we're certainly going to use Raleek and Darwin, there's no question about that. Those guys did some really nice things the other night. It was good to see them both get a lot of carries and be able to go run the full offense with them, not just a few things here or there, and I thought they both handled it well. It's three different guys, they're three very, very different skill sets, which sometimes can be difficult on a defense. So yeah, we'll pump the reps into all three of them, have them all ready and I would plan on using all three."
Brown, the five-star freshman with elite speed, rushed 7 times for 52 yards and caught 2 passes for 38 yards, including a 25-yard touchdown Friday night.
A Week 1 ankle injury limited him this season, as he has 148 rushing yards, 101 receiving yards and 3 total touchdowns.
Barlow got 5 carries for 41 yards and a late touchdown Friday night while also catching 2 passes for 31 yards. He had only 2 carries all season prior.
As for Jones, he opened the season splitting carries with Dye through the first three games, including 110 rushing yards vs. Fresno State, but his role had diminished significantly since then as he had only 12 carries across the previous five games before re-emerging Friday night.
"It [wasn't] hard for me at all," Jones said when asked about the challenge of staying patient during that stretch. "I've got to just continue to work every single day. I'm not going to sit here and pout about it or anything like that. I'm just going to stay ready and be ready. At the end of the day, when an opportunity comes I've got to seize it. It doesn't hurt me at all. Just hard work every single day regardless. I love this game, I love this team and I'm going to keep working."
Jones emphasized how close the Trojans' running back unit is as a whole.
"We're super tight. We always come together like the night before the game, the day of the game, we're in each other's hotel room, joking, messing around with each other. It's a real tight knit group. Before every single game I come to all of them and say 'I love you all, let's go do this,'" he said.
As for Dye, he finishes the season with 884 rushing yards (6.1 YPC), 9 touchdowns and 202 receiving yards. For his career, including four years at Oregon, he ends up with 3,995 rushing yards, 104 catches for 1,071 receiving yards and 38 total touchdowns.
Riley reflected once more on what it was like Friday night seeing Dye, a beloved team leader, have to be carted off the field.
"It's not easy. It's tougher when it's on your side, but even when I've been a part of games where it's been on the other side, nobody wants to see injuries like that -- nobody," Riley said. "The first way I knew on the field was their linebacker [Josh Chandler-Semedo], who was a transfer from West Virginia and I'd coached against him a few times -- in fact, we talked in the tunnel coming down to play the game -- he came over and grabbed me like, he saw and he said 'You all got to get out here now.' It puts everybody in shock for a second and emotions swirling all over the place. ...
"We even talked about it with the whole team at halftime, 'We all hate it, we're all sick about it, but the reality is Travis, the competitor of all competitors, what would he want us to do right now? Would he want us to sit here and sulk about it or would he want us to go out and compete at the level we've been competing at since Day 1 and him being a huge part of that?' You've got to get past it, it's not easy, because yeah, your emotions are swirling."
