He makes a cutback to avoid a tackler at the 45 yard line, and keeps going. As he approaches the redzone, the running back attempts to stiff-arm the defender chasing him down from behind, eventually being pulled down at the opponent’s three yard line.
The 71 yard run by Linfield running back Aaron Williams in the season opener against Cal Lutheran in 2010 is a play that best exemplifies what Williams brings to the running back position: Speed, cutback ability, vision, and toughness.
After having a sophomore season where he was a first-team Northwest Conference selection, rushing for 852 yards and 10 touchdowns with a 4.4 yard per carry average, Williams’ junior season came to a screeching halt when he suffered a season-ending injury in the Willamette game. Watching from the sidelines was not easy for him.
“It was just hard not to be out there and to be sitting around on my own, not being able to move,” Williams said. “The toughest part, other than not being physically out there, was having so much time to myself, thinking about negative things, not knowing what to expect.”
After averaging 159 rushing yards per game in the 2009 season, Linfield upped their running game to 187 yards per game in 2010, increasing the team yard per carry from 4.3 to 4.8.
The biggest difference was seen in the jump in yard per carry averages for Williams and graduated senior Simon Lamson: Williams jumped from 4.4 to 6.5 before his big injury against Willamete. Lamson went from 2.9 to 6.2 as he picked up the slack in Williams’ absence.
The common theory of why a team’s running efficiency would improve that much from one year to the next is improved play on the O-line, or the running backs made major off-season improvements.
While both theories were true of Linfield last season, the biggest reason behind the running backs major improvement in yards per carry may have been Aaron Boehme’s ability to make the right reads on the zone-read option last season. While Boehme’s yard per carry average dropped from 6.8 to 4.7 due to defenses keying on him more, Williams and Lamson’s yard per carry average went rocketing up.
"I hope that our running game continues to progress and get better," Linfield coach Joseph Smith said. "As for what we want it to look like, we'd love to have the big chunks of yardage in the running game, everyone wants that. Having to methodically get eight yards a pop, move the chains, and consistently get third down conversions, it's a hard way to make a living in football."
“It helped having Aaron Boehme,” Williams said. “Anytime you have a quarterback like that, and receivers like we did, most of the teams are going to gameplan for that, and that really opens up the run.”
“It helped having Aaron Boehme,” Williams said. “Anytime you have a quarterback like that, and receivers like we did, most of the teams are going to gameplan for that, and that really opens up the run.”
Winning a national title is the ultimate goal for the Linfield football program, and Williams wants to do more than just help the team out in a statistical way; becoming a better team leader is at the top of his priority list.
“Winning a national title is more of a team goal, but the personal aspect of it for me is showing up every day, doing the intangible things, being diligent, and leading the best I can,” Williams said.
With the graduation of Aaron Boehme, the quarterback position is a bit of a question mark heading into the season. Some might wonder if Linfield will still pass as often as they did last season, or if the running game will be relied upon more than in the past two seasons.
"One thing we did in our recruiting is that we made sure everyone we recruited at that position could do the zone read and be adaquete at it," Smith said. "Aaron was electric at it, and he was a gamebrteaker at times when he would run. I think all our guys are profficient at it, and they've been working hard at it, so I think they'll do just fine."
"One thing we did in our recruiting is that we made sure everyone we recruited at that position could do the zone read and be adaquete at it," Smith said. "Aaron was electric at it, and he was a gamebrteaker at times when he would run. I think all our guys are profficient at it, and they've been working hard at it, so I think they'll do just fine."
“We’ll do some new things like we do every year, but we stick to the same principles,” Williams said. “We still got some good runners and some good lineman, so we’ll be sticking with some of that stuff. It’s obviously a big hit when you lose someone like Boehme, but we have good quarterbacks, and they’re going to do a good job.”
Ninth-ranked Linfield’s home opener against 17th-ranked Cal Lutheran on September 10 will be the first chance to see how different or similar the offense will be from the last two seasons.
No matter if Linfield puts more emphasis on the run from last season or not, if he stays healthy, look for Linfield running back Aaron Williams to lead the wildcat running attack in all-conference fashion as he did in 2009.
No comments:
Post a Comment