Tarean Folston Gains Appreciation From 2015 Injury
Having a season wiped out only seven snaps into the first game can make you miss some surprising aspects of their 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.”