Summer Outlook: Running Backs, Part I

The first time Josh Adams touched the football in his collegiate career, he scored a 26-yard touchdown. Even that play paled in comparison to his 98-yard jaunt against Wake Forest as part of a brilliant rookie season with the Irish.

Now, Adams is looking toward building on his first-year success this fall.

“I just know how much more I need to improve because as a team, we have that place we want to get to, and we didn’t get there,” Adams said. “I know that if we want to get there I know much harder I need to work, how much harder we need to work as a unit to be the best. We were almost there, but we don’t want to settle for almost. We want to be great as a unit.”

It’s easy to characterize last year’s rushing effort as “great,” considering Notre Dame finished eighth in the nation in yards per carry with a pair of new faces at running back. With senior Tarean Folston back in the mix along with Adams and sophomore Dexter Williams, the rushing attack could again power the Notre Dame offense.

“[The potential is] great,” Adams said. “Especially Tarean, who's been here for longer than we have and with me and Dexter getting experience last year, we should all be able to help each other out and get better and help each other as a group.”

“Josh Adams' confidence level was sky high when he got to Notre Dame,” running backs coach Autry Denson added. “It didn't do anything but continue to grow, but that's because he's confident. He's not cocky. He puts in the work.”

Even with Adams’ first-year season that included 835 rushing yards — which broke Denson’s Notre Dame freshman record — the running backs coach said he was not surprised by the production.

“He didn't [exceed expectations] and I'm going to tell you why,” Denson said. “I spend so much time with him. Once by the time we got two or three practices in at Culver, you knew you had something from a maturity standpoint. That's just who he is. He didn't surprise me because I get to work with him several times throughout the day. He did very well.”

Denson hopes the cadre of running backs means there will be multiple voices in the running backs’ room, whereas one year ago it was Folston, freshmen and a player switching positions in Prosise.

“You now have multiple guys, Josh that can contribute a lot, you have Tarean, so what it allows you to do is have more people and resources that they can go to,” Denson said. “Let's say Tarean's not available. You can get just as much from Josh. If Josh is not available, you have Dexter as well. It's the law of numbers. We have more opportunities to get it right for the younger guys because they have more guys they can go to.”

One year ago at this time, it looked like Notre Dame’s freshman running backs would not be needed in their first year on campus.

Just the opposite turned out to be true.

Following the suspension and subsequent transfer of Greg Bryant and season-ending injury to Folston, the Irish suddenly faced a depleted running back corps with a receiver-turned-ball-carrier in C.J. Prosise and freshmen Williams and Adams.

Among the freshman duo, Adams received the more extended playing time from the coaches and responded with 835 yards and six touchdowns. Williams expects his breakout to come this fall for the 2016 Irish.

“Really I wasn't too focused on the difference between Josh playing and me playing,” Williams said. “At the same time, he's a different style of runner and I'm a different style. He brings something different to the table. As a running back group, we all bring something different to the table so at the same time it was his time to step up and he stepped up big time. When it's my time, I plan on stepping up big time as well.

“It just made me humble myself a lot more. I was able to actually experience not playing every down, every second of the game. It was something that humbled me and made me want to get better and improve on my craft and work harder and that's what I've been doing this whole spring since I got here.”

The sophomore rushed the ball 13 times for 43 yards and a score in the Blue-Gold Game, after which head coach Brian Kelly named him as one of the most impressive performances from the spring exhibition.

“What we like about Dexter is his physical inside downhill running,” Kelly said. “That to me is where he’s impressed us in the spring. We’ve had some goal-line, short yardage runs where when he gets his pads down he’s an explosive inside runner. That’s where right now he’s impressed us the most.

“Look, we love Josh Adams and the way he hits the ball outside. We like Folston’s shiftiness inside, but we really like the way Dexter has shown himself to be explosive, downhill in some goal line, short yardage. … I’m not trying to make him sound like a 250-pound back, but he’s been very explosive and downhill with his pads down when he’s assertive and he knows what he’s doing.”

“He's naturally a really fast guy,” running backs coach Autry Denson added. “That's just God-given speed. He can run. Also he's a better pass catcher than he was when he got here and he's getting a lot more comfortable in there so you can see some things. I think his attention to detail, Dexter plays with a high level of attention to detail and his want to. Whatever he's not good at, he really wants to be good at and that's synonymous over the group.”

Notre Dame possesses a solid cadre of running backs entering the fall, a group that will be boosted by the summer arrivals of freshmen Tony Jones and Deon McIntosh.

Just like last fall, however, Williams is only worrying about himself.

“Last year, I see it as a learning experience for my first year in college football,” Williams said. “It didn't go as I expected it to go, but at the same time I'm humble and learning from my mistakes, learning from others and seeing what others have done like Josh and Tarean and C.J. Prosise. It's really a big learning experience.

Having a season wiped out only seven snaps into the first game can make you miss some surprising aspects of your routine. Just ask Notre Dame running back Tarean Folston.

For the Irish senior, who essentially missed the entire 2015 season with a torn ACL, that was practice.

“Definitely. I appreciate practice more. It's crazy,” Folston said. “When you're out for that long, you start appreciating things that you thought you wouldn't.

“I do [enjoy practice]. I do. It's crazy.”

This fall, Folston is expected to form a three-headed running attack with sophomores Josh Adams and Dexter Williams. The Cocoa, Fla., native began the season as a starter. After his injury, C.J. Prosise and Adams rushed for 1,032 and 835 yards, respectively.

“Just knowing you're out for the season and the season didn't even really start, it was really tough,” Folston said. “I was definitely down, but I had to keep my head up and get over it and just start working from then on. That's what I did.”

After losing a season on a cut that did not appear to provide such a devastating injury, he admitted there can be a mental block attached to such plays in the future. Running backs coach Autry Denson, however, said he thinks Folston is past that and ahead of progress.

“It's funny. That's what he said. What we saw is we put him in a position where he had to just run and I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with what he did the first couple times,” Denson said. “It's human nature for someone like Tarean who's highly competitive to be harder on himself, but he's exactly where we want to be. I would say trending actually maybe ahead of schedule in my book.”

Because Folston rushed for 1,359 yards in his first two seasons at Notre Dame, the coaching staff knows what it is getting from the veteran running back. As such, there’s not the usual rush to get him back in contact situations this spring because of the reps he has already accumulated.

“What we're trying to do is really get Folston back into as much of a competitive environment relative to 11-on-11 team work,” head coach Brian Kelly said. “He's got some strengths. He runs the inside zone play very well. When we get into some of our spread offensive sets, he's very, very good at keeping the ball inside the tackles and getting some box looks that are very favorable. He runs the ball extremely well inside where Josh runs the outside zone extremely well. Dexter has the speed that we're looking for.

“It's really all three of those guys and balancing their work over the past couple days.”

Now that Folston knows what it’s like for football to be taken away from him, he doesn’t ever want that to happen again.

“Just knowing that at times I couldn't help my team and just being away from the game [was the toughest part],” he said. “It's the longest I've been away from the game. That was the toughest part.”

It hasn’t clicked for Justin Brent as quickly as many expected when the Speedway, Ind., native checked in with the Irish as a four-star wide receiver as a freshman in 2014.

A freshman season spent on the scout team and on Notre Dame’s special teams units was followed by a redshirt campaign in 2015 while he transitioned to running back.

It’s difficult to doubt Brent’s raw talent — just look at some of the practice cut-ups that the junior sometimes posts on social media — but he hasn’t yet been able to put it all together in South Bend.

“[He’s doing] really good and for JB his next step is actually getting reps,” running backs coach Autry Denson said this spring. “You can only learn so much by being in the classroom. Now he's able to go out and make some mistakes and learn and actually go through the mechanics of what he's being asked to do. For him, it's just getting reps — as many as possible. He knows the information because he's been in the system as a receiver. He's been in it as a running back. Now he just needs to play football.

“It's really happening right now. He didn't get the reps. Now it's real time, having him apply the stuff. He's really going through that progression now.”

A quick glance at the depth chart would not suggest much playing time is on the way for Brent in 2016 as the current No. 4 running back. One year ago at this time, however, Josh Adams would have been considered the fourth-string back and he finished with a freshman record 835 rushing yards.

Even though Brent played running back in high school — he rushed for 1,315 yards and 18 scores as a senior — he has a large build for a player at that position at 6-1 ½, 220 pounds.

“There are very few tall guys that you can say are natural running backs,” Denson said. “That’s in regards to being able to bend your pads. C.J. [Prosise] had that [problem]; he experienced that all year. It’s a little bit different and naturally harder for a 6-1 guy than it is for a 5-9 guy that’s built with leverage and learning to get behind your pads and not take shots.”

With Brent and freshmen Tony Jones and Deon McIntosh, Notre Dame has developed some quality depth behind the top trio of Tarean Folston, Adams and Dexter Williams.

“[Depth] is not just last year,” Denson said. “That has always been my mindset. Everybody in that room has to prepare as if they're going to be the guy. I don't allow them and they do a good job of having expectations. They don't prepare like they're the backup. They wouldn't be in that room if they were. That's something that when you talk about it, they're preparing as if they're going to be the starter and it showed last year.”

Brent will need to adopt that approach in 2016, and the carries might just follow.