Alabama’s odds of having another 2,200-yard rusher this season were always slim to none, but Derrick Henry’s successor is hardly a disappointment.
Sophomore tailback Damien Harris has rushed for 113.7 yards per game and 7.6 yards per carry the past three weekends as top-ranked Alabama dispatched the ranked trio of Arkansas, Tennessee and Texas A&M with relative ease. Harris had 18 carries for 125 yards in last Saturday’s 33-14 win over Texas A&M, which was the fourth 100-yard game of the season for the 5-foot-11, 214-pounder from Berea, Ky.
“I thought Damien was very, very effective,” Aggies coach Kevin Sumlin said. “He’s strong, and he can be elusive. He was able to find any mistake we made in fitting gaps. We have a lot of respect for Damien. We tried to recruit Damien, so we’ve known about him for a long time.
“He did a great job of not only running with a purpose but also being able to be patient in the zone scheme. We respect his game, and he’s going to do nothing but get better.”
Harris leads Alabama this season with 697 yards and is averaging an eye-popping 8.0 yards per carry. The Crimson Tide are off Saturday before traveling next week to LSU, when Harris will take more steps in trying to become the eighth 1,000-yard rusher of the Nick Saban era and the sixth in the past six seasons.
Not that Harris elaborates too much on that subject.
“I didn’t really have any goals coming into this year,” he said. “I just worked really hard in the offseason, because I wanted to be a better running back for this team. If the team needed me to do something in particular, I wanted to be able to handle any situation thrown at me and be the best player I could be for this team.
“Our offensive line has been getting a ton of movement up front. We’ve been winning the line of scrimmage, and they’ve been opening up some huge holes.”
Harris would be even closer to a 1,000-yard season had it not been for the fifth play from scrimmage Sept. 24 against Kent State, when he endured a hard hit to the knee and had to be taken from the field. Though the hit was frightening to watch, he suffered only a sprained ankle and had a couple of carries the following week against Kentucky.
Saban believes Harris is benefiting as much as anybody with this open date.
“There is no question that Damien has played very, very well for us,” Saban said. “He’s been a good inside runner. He’s been able to take the ball outside. He needs to heal up a little bit, because the last two games he probably didn’t have the same juice he had before, and hopefully we’re going to get him back to 100 percent.”
Harris spent the weeks leading up to this season as the second-team tailback behind fellow sophomore Bo Scarbrough, but he burst out of the gate with a nine-carry, 138-yard performance in the 52-6 win over Southern California. In Alabama’s first true road game of the season, a Sept. 17 trip to Ole Miss, Harris rushed 16 times for 144 yards.
There has been a consistency element to Harris, who picked up a first down on nine of his 18 carries last week, while Scarbrough followed up his five-carry, 109-yard effort at Tennessee with eight carries for 33 yards against the Aggies. Scarbrough also had a fumble that the Crimson Tide recovered.
Henry rushed for an SEC-record 2,219 yards last season on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy, but the Crimson Tide’s average of 199.9 rushing yards per game is getting blown away by this year’s clip of 264.8, which ranks ninth nationally and second in the league behind Auburn (302.9). Harris, freshman Josh Jacobs (7.2) and Scarbrough (6.0) are each averaging at least 6 yards per carry, while freshman quarterback Jalen Hurts is averaging 5.5 and ranks second on the team with 521 yards.
Hurts has reached the end zone nine times compared to just once for Harris, but nobody is finding much fault with Alabama’s ground game or its leading rusher.
“I just think Damien does a very good job,” Saban said. “He’s a very instinctive runner. He’s got a little power, he can make you miss, and he’s got a pretty good burst about him. He’s a good receiver, and he’s a pretty good third-down blocker, so he’s a pretty good all-around player.”
Said junior center Bradley Bozeman: “He’s a really good back for us. He keeps running the ball hard, and we’re going to keep accepting that.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.