TUSCALOOSA -- Since the ultimate whistle seemed after Alabama’s win over Florida A&M almost Two several weeks ago, the discuss easily moved to the a now-highly-anticipated game between the Violet Trend and No. 13 LSU Lions.
And all of the interest was on Alabama’s nation-leading run protection compared to LSU celebrity operating back again Leonard Fournette. After losing a several of activities with an accident, Fournette torched Ole Skip before the Tigers’ bye 7 days, hurrying for 284 metres and three touchdowns. His version, Derrius Guice, has also created a powerful season with 621 metres and seven touchdowns.
But the LSU duo is not unique to position near the top of several SEC mathematical groups. Damien Harris has been the Tide’s best tailback this season after an offseason that estimated Bo Scarbrough to be the beginner this drop.
(Photo: Nelson Chenault, USA TODAY Sports)
Harris has silently been a big-play risk out the backfield for Your alabama as a real sophomore, and a big purpose for that is his effective use of his sight as much as his legs and legs, according to his go trainer.
“I don’t excellent care how skilled you are with the football in your hands, if you don’t have that natural perspective for making those reduces at the most ideal time, comparative to establishing the establishing the prevents, studying the prevents, operating off the prevents, I don’t think you’re going to be very effective,” Trend go trainer Chip Saban said last 7 days. “And Damien does that very well.”
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Through eight activities, Harris is the team’s major rusher with 697 metres on 87 provides. He brings the SEC with an 8.01-yard regular despite managing ongoing leg damage he continual beginning on in the London Condition activity in Sept.
As a gamer that’s been identified boosting down the joint on several lengthy operates this season, Harris is individual as a sprinter, enabling his prevents to build up before seeing a gap start and using his speed to cut up area and then make a perform.
“I just try to set up my prevents,” Harris said. “Pressing the study, just trying for making the protection do what I want them to do, that way I can make my own operating paths. That’s something that we highlight maybe the most as a team of operating supports.”
Harris, qb Jalen Affects and the most of the Trend backfield will come across the stingiest hurrying protection other than its own Weekend in Baton Vermeil. LSU is rated second in the SEC behind Your alabama, only enabling competitors to hurry for 104.14 metres per activity, 2.90 metres per bring and four touchdowns in seven activities. Harris will need his now-usual big run or two Weekend.
The sophomore brings the meeting with seven operates a longer period than 30 metres, four operates a longer period than 40 metres, three operates a longer period than 50 metres and two operates a longer period than 60 metres. Either Fournette or Guice are linked with the Trend tailback in each of those groups, too, but it talks to Harris’ reliability and skill to implement his perspective to discover a wrinkle that creates a big obtain.
“He helps make the unpleasant range look right,” remaining secure Ross Pierschbacher said of Harris. “He’ll make a cut and if we don’t have the guy obstructed right he’ll make us look right. It’s fun for us. We don’t have to be ideal, although we try to be, but our operating supports definitely make us look excellent. … Not a lot of people can do that (jump cut). Just the way that he does and blows up. I mean, he’s a unique gamer and just a fun guy to be around and prevent for.”
Facing a protection like LSU’s will be a new task for Harris, but according to Trend linebacker Reuben Promote, who has to experience him in exercise, the Richmond, Ky., native’s mixture of abilities creates him difficult to take down.
“Damien is just, we contact him a dog because he’s just sturdy and brief and he just pushes through, operates up under his shields,” Promote said. “That’s a best part for him. He’s a very unique guy, very modest. Like he’s motivated.”
Following a season of acclimation as a newcomer in 2015, Harris can tell the activity has bogged down down for him in his second season. The former five-star probability can now procedure a perform in his mind’s eye and convert that into beneficial distance for top-ranked Your alabama, and the unheralded operating in the past in Saturday’s activity within Competition Ground will be biding his a chance to attack.
“I mean, a lot of the periods you can’t take the first operating road that I see because it’s not in the job information of the perform,” Harris said. “But you try to set up your own prevents and look the protection to the best of your capability. You try to take what the protection gives you and type of get them to do what you want them to do.”
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