People expected Alabama football running back Bo Scarbrough to be absolutely dominating defenses across the board this season, but that isn’t happening. Why not?
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Under Nick Saban, Alabama has produced a seemingly endless backfield of Heisman-contending, conference-leading talent. It’s almost as if Tuscaloosa houses a secret assembly line for bruising running backs. Derrick Henry replaced T.J. Yeldon, who replaced Eddie Lacy, who replaced Trent Richardson, who replaced Mark Ingram, who replaced Glen Coffee. Henry and Ingram won Heisman Trophies, while Richardson was a finalist for the award. See a pattern?
That sort of lineage may eventually lead to high expectations of the position, especially given the sort of gaudy production each of the aforementioned men have posted. So, when Henry left Tuscaloosa for the NFL, all eyes turned to Bo Scarbrough.
Scarbrough came to Alabama as a mammoth five-star recruit, towering at 6’2” and 228 pounds. He looked as if he was genetically engineered in a lab somewhere – yet another prodigy hopping off the T-Town freak athlete assembly line. His physical appearance may be better suited for the WWE than a football field. I can see him delivering a vicious chokeslam to Aubie the Tiger as I type this.
When he averaged 5.8 yards-per-carry in 2015, most people just assumed he was the heir to King Henry’s throne. Why not? He drew comparisons to Henry from pundits and players alike. He played with the same sort of physicality as Henry and, behind a punishing offensive line, looked set to steamroll hapless defenders come 2016.
Who can blame people at this point? It seems automatic. Under Saban, it’s simply “next man up,” and that’s all there is to it. It didn’t matter that the media began to anoint Scarbrough as “The Chosen One” through a mere 18 carries. Scarbrough for Heisman! Go on and get him a ticket to New York now!
He started at A-Day back in the Spring, but Damien Harris out-rushed him in a better performance. Considering it was still technically just a spring game, no alarms sounded. In hindsight, that was a premonition of things to come.
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Harris may be the most pleasant surprise not named Jalen Hurts on the Alabama roster. He’s leading the team in rushing with 345 yards on 40 carries. In case you can’t math, that’s a yards-per-carry average of 8.6. What’s more, the bulk of his production has come at the expense of USC and Ole Miss. Sure, the Trojans are venturing towards ‘dumpster fire’ status, but it’s a positive sign that he’s not accumulating garbage-time yardage against the likes of Western Kentucky and Kent State.
Even without Harris in the mix, Hurts, Joshua Jacobs, and B.J. Emmons all have more rushing yards on the season than Scarbrough. Emmons and Jacobs have actually done it on less carries than Scarbrough. It’s not just the production that’s causing concern, though. Saban and company just don’t seem to have a lot of faith in Scarbrough.
When Harris went down with an ankle injury against Kent State, it was Jacobs who got the nod. Maybe that was because Saban didn’t want to lose two backs in a game against a MAC opponent. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt there, but when Scarbrough has 11, 5, 7, and 3 carries in four games respectively, it’s a fair question. When two freshmen backs seem more capable of replacing Harris, something may be up. “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” and all that.
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Regarding Scarbrough, Saban recently told AL.com, “I think you all create an expectation to people that there’s no basis for,” Saban said. “You do that for a lot of guys. It puts a lot of pressure on them, creates a lot of anxiety for them.”
Maybe a glimpse into the root issue at hand?
Harris is day-to-day with an ankle sprain, and with the Kentucky Wildcats on deck, Scarbrough has an opportunity to regain the momentum with which he concluded 2015. Whether or not he gets the carries remains to be seen.
There’s definitely a lesson to be learned here: don’t count your chickens before they hatch.