South Carolina football coach Steve Spurrier admits he discovered freshman tailback Marcus Lattimore was special at the same time everybody else in the Southeastern Conference did.
“In practice and the scrimmages, he would just get seven or eight carries and other guys would get five or six,” Spurrier said. “He would make some nice runs in the scrimmages when they were live, but we didn’t leave him out there too long.”
Lattimore didn’t start the season opener against Southern Miss but had a respectable debut with 54 yards and two touchdowns on 14 carries. It was the next week against Georgia when Spurrier realized what he had, specifically the third play from scrimmage.
On third-and-12 from South Carolina’s 19-yard line, Spurrier called for a draw.
“He broke through, broke a couple of tackles and made about 15 yards,” Spurrier said. “We were like, ‘Let’s give it to him again and see what happens.’ So he breaks a couple more tackles at the line of scrimmage and makes about 8 yards. Now I’m thinking, ‘Man, this ain’t bad here. It’s easy calling plays just handing it off to him.’
“The Georgia game was when we realized, ‘Hey, this guy can really play.’ He can play running back as well as anybody I’ve ever been around, so you sort of live and learn as you go.”
Lattimore had 50 yards on the first possession against Georgia and finished the Sept. 11 game with 182 yards on 37 carries.
That he has made an impact is not a shock considering the 6-foot, 218-pounder rushed for 6,375 yards and 104 touchdowns during his career at Byrnes High in Duncan, S.C. He was Rivals.com’s No. 1 tailback prospect nationally last winter, yet nobody could have envisioned him being a handoff away from compiling 400 yards against Georgia and Florida.
Lattimore has rushed for 964 yards and 107.1 yards per game this year – he missed a game and a half with an ankle injury – and totaled 394 yards on 77 carries against the Bulldogs and Gators. He pounded Florida for 212 yards on 40 rushes last Saturday to deliver Gamecocks fans their first SEC East crown.
“I know it feels good for them,” Lattimore said. “They’ve stood by us these past few years. We’re just going to try to play with passion the rest of the season, finish out and give them something else they want.”
Lattimore isn’t the only SEC freshman making his mark.
Auburn tailback Michael Dyer has rushed for 859 yards, breaking the school’s single-season mark for freshmen held by Bo Jackson. Tyler Bray took over as Tennessee’s starting quarterback at the start of this month and has completed 37 of 67 passes for 648 yards the past two weeks, racking up eight touchdowns and no interceptions. And Aaron Murray, Georgia’s redshirt freshman quarterback, is on track to tally more passing yards than any freshman in SEC history other than Jared Lorenzen.
Spurrier believes more and more freshmen are breaking through because older players don’t stick around like they used to.
“I remember in the ’80s and ’90s when Bobby Bowden at Florida State said, ‘We like to get a quarterback in and redshirt him for about three years and then by his fourth and fifth years, he should really be ready to play,’ but that doesn’t work anymore,” Spurrier said. “If a kid sits around now for one or two years and it doesn’t look like he’s going to play, he’s going to go somewhere else. We’d all like to have fifth-year guys, but it seems like the offensive line is the only area where you see many of those nowadays.
“Even Joe Paterno has a freshman quarterback, and he used to say, ‘You can’t play freshmen.’ If they’re your best players, we all play them.”
Spurrier asked Lattimore last week if he was ready for a 40-carry game and then gave the ball to him 40 times. Only 11 Bowl Subdivision players have more carries than Lattimore’s 202 this season, and then there is this stat:
Marcus Lattimore has experienced an SEC East title before he has experienced a fumble.
“That’s one of those things you’re not supposed to talk about,” Spurrier said, “but he has the ability to run elusively and maintain a tremendous hold on the football.”