ATHENS, Ga. – Texas A&M will use a football concept from yesteryear this Saturday when the No. 24 Aggies visit No. 4 Georgia.
The Aggies will have their share of two running backs in the backfield, especially after the success they produced during last Saturday night’s 30-6 drubbing of South Carolina at Kyle Field. Sophomore Cordarrian Richardson rushed for 130 yards and freshman Isaiah Spiller added 129 against the Gamecocks, with the two taking turns as the lead blocker to help open holes for the runner.
“It’s completely different football,” Georgia coach Kirby Smart said Monday when asked about the 1-2 punch. “It’s like the triple option of today, when you have two backs in the backfield, because nobody knows really how to defend it anymore. You toss the ball and you run a sweep, and nobody knows how to handle a lead blocker.
“They don’t do that all the time, but when they do it, they’re very efficient.”
Richardson is a 6-foot, 240-pounder from Memphis, having transferred to the Aggies after starting his college journey at Central Florida, while Spiller is a 6-1, 220-pounder from Spring, Texas. Given the uniqueness of the situation and given that both are a load from a blocking standpoint, Bulldogs defenders aren’t quite sure what to expect.
“We’ve just got to come in today and see what we’re working with and see what the coaches want to do with that,” redshirt freshman outside linebacker Azeez Ojulari said. “We don’t see this very often, so it will be different for sure.”
Said senior defensive end David Marshall: “We’ve got to look at film and look at what they do, so we can figure it out.”
Spiller leads Texas A&M with 796 yards and 6.0 yards per carry, while junior quarterback Kellen Mond is next on the team with 400 rushing yards and 4.3 a pop. Richardson is coming off his career-best performance, which upped his season totals to 232 yards and 9.3 a carry.
Texas A&M was held to 56 rushing yards against Auburn but has enhanced its total in each of the last six games, with its 319-yard ground attack last weekend a season high. Aggies second-year coach Jimbo Fisher is loving what he’s seeing with his two-back sets.
“In the old days, it was ‘How do you simulate the spread?'” Fisher said Saturday night in a news conference. “Now it’s ‘How do you simulate two-back?’ Teams don’t do it, and all the spread teams have to practice that. It’s a whole different animal taking on these blocks and angles.
“It’s allowed us to be a better football team.”
And it has Georgia getting used to the unusual this week.
“It keeps people honest,” Smart said, “and it keeps you from doing an overload a certain way or doing one of these unsound defenses to go attack the quarterback when they run an option play. They’re very different runners, and Jimbo did some similar things at FSU when he had Dalvin (Cook).
“You can see how they’ve gotten better and better and better at running the ball every game, and it really came to fruition against South Carolina.”
F-bomb apology
Smart dropped an F-bomb in his news conference that followed Saturday’s 21-14 win at Auburn and apologized Monday.
“That’s not indicative of who I want to be or what I stand for,” he said, “and you know you messed up when you get home to your wife and she’s more upset that – you won the game, but she’s more upset at something you said. That’s not what I represent, and that’s not the kind of behavior I want to have, so I want to say that to Dawg fans out there and everybody.
“I’m going to try to handle that a lot better. It was an emotional win, and I was very emotional in that, but I’ve got to do a better job than that.”
Odds and ends
Georgia’s game next week at Georgia Tech will have a noon kickoff on ABC. … Smart wasn’t sure how much receiver Lawrence Cager and offensive linemen Ben Cleveland and Cade Mays would participate during Monday’s closed practice, but he was hopeful that all three could play Saturday.
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.