I found this whole exchange very frank and revealing. No coach speak here, it all made sense.
Funny how when we finally find our single franchise backs, all of a sudden the league trend is to go RBBC, which we vilified back in the '90's?
Quote:
Q: The league trend at running back is to go with two guys. Where do you stand on that?
EDWARDS: “Yeah and we did it that way in New York with RBs Curtis Martin and LaMont Jordan. We did it that way in Tampa too with RBs Mike Alstott and Warrick Dunn. RB Michael Bennett is a guy who we feel is a change-up hitter. He’s a guy who we have to get the ball to more and he’s going to have to be more involved in the offense. RB Larry Johnson can’t be carrying the ball 400 times. To me, both of them have to be better ball catches, but Johnson in particular. We can get him the ball on the perimeter in space when he becomes a better pass receiver. We need to get him in space and match-ups outside of the box. That’s what made Martin so good. Martin carried the ball about 25 times a game, but then he caught passes. When you can get him outside the box in space he’s one-on-one with a linebacker. That’s what you want and that’s what makes RB LaDainian Tomlinson so great; they get him the ball in space. You’re talking about a guy who can catch 60 balls, and then he doesn’t have to run it 400 times. ”
Q: Do you have to convince him to work on stuff like that?
EDWARDS: “He wants to be a complete back. His process was first to become a starter. He became a starter this year. The next thing we have to do is get him in positions to catch passes. He’s got good hands, but we don’t want him only running check-downs. We want him actually running some routes against linebackers and getting him open. When you do that, it allows you to throw behind the linebackers. The backers will have to play Larry tighter and it opens up the window behind the backers and in front of the secondary. That helps you offensively.”
Q: As of right now, do you have a number of carries that you would like Bennett to get each game?
EDWARDS: “We ran the ball almost 500 times last year. At the end of the day, you’re talking about at least 100 carries with the balls in his hands. That’s how it should work and that’s what Lamont was able to do in New York. He took a lot of the load off of Curtis.”
Q: Did you have to run Larry more than you would have liked last year since Bennett was injured for part of the year?
EDWARDS: “No doubt, it was compound and I think everyone loses sight that the quarterback got hurt too. When the quarterback gets hurt, guess what, (you’ve got to run the ball). I can’t throw QB Damon Huard out there and ask him to throw 40 passes in his first game. That doesn’t work and it’s not fair to the player. Now all of a sudden Larry is sitting up there with eight guys in the box. The other team is obviously going to challenge him. Denver did the same thing with their guy when they put the young quarterback (Jay Cutler) in. They threw play action passes and ran the ball and let him learn to play. As Damon got better we opened the play calling up, but it took a little while for us to get to that stage. Larry had to take the brunt of it. That and having an offensive line that had different guys changing in and out of the lineup makes it hard. We had three starting right tackles and two left tackles. To me, when I look at this, this all came to fruition in the spring. I knew we were going to be slow on offense. You could just tell by looking. We never had our starting offense play together in the entire spring. All of the OTAs (organized team activities), all of the mini-camps, the complete offense was never there. They were either hurt or not there; whatever it was, they never played together. You’ve got no shot; you’re going to start off slow in my mind.”
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