National Football League

Bama's backs can make run at history

Published Oct. 4, 2010 5:00 p.m. ET

Peter Schrager

Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy is a graduate student currently going through the Rhodes Scholarship application process down in Tuscaloosa. The young man who hasn’t lost a game in which he’s been the starting quarterback since the eighth grade got his degree in business administration in just three years and finished his undergraduate course load with a 3.86 GPA. He earned A's in every single class he took at Alabama except one, a freshman management course in which he got a B.

And yet, you don’t need to know any of this to realize Greg McElroy is a smart dude.

After all, whenever the going gets tough, he seemingly always knows exactly what to do. It’s logical, it’s pragmatic, and it always works. Hell, it’s borderline genius.

He just hands the ball off to one of his two world-class running backs. It never fails.

And the more I watch Alabama decimate Top 25 opponents this season, the more I begin to realize the undeniable: Alabama’s unstoppable running back duo of Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson might just be one of the best backfield combinations college football’s ever seen.

Whoa.

I know. You read that sentence, you spit your morning coffee out all over your keyboard, and you dismiss it as just another example of 2010 sports media knee-jerk crazy talk.

But it’s not. It’s reality.

How could anyone really argue with the claim? Watching Ingram and Richardson complement each other the past three weeks, it’s difficult to recall any running back duo being so physically imposing, so dominant -- and yet, so thoroughly interchangeable in the backfield -- in recent memory. In just three games this season, Ingram, the defending Heisman Trophy winner, has 355 yards and six touchdowns. And yet, you could make a very strong argument that he’s been the second-best running back on the Alabama roster.

Through five games, Richardson is averaging an eye-popping 7.4 yards per carry. He’s had at least one 30-yard run on every Saturday he’s stepped on the field. It’s been a game of pick your poison with these two ... except you’re not given any option at all. You’re forced to swallow whichever pill Nick Saban feels like shoving down your throat.

Think of all the great backfields of college football history: “The Pony Express” of Eric Dickerson and Craig James at SMU, Army’s “Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside” duo of Doc Blanchard and Glenn Davis, Reggie Bush and LenDale White out at USC, Darren McFadden and Felix Jones at Arkansas. No duo has been so punishing, so straight up in-your-face, and yet, so evenly balanced both as inside and outside runners as these too. Ingram and Richardson aren’t quite “Thunder and Lightning”. They’re “Thunder and Thunder”. Except, they’re also “Lightning and Lightning”.

The scariest part? They’re really just getting started.

Though he had his shining moments as a freshman, Richardson was more of a change-of-pace “X” factor last year, splitting carries with Roy Upchurch as the secondary guy to Ingram’s alpha dog. This season, he and Ingram are darn near impossible to account for. As the ’09 Heisman winner pounds opposing defenses, Richardson comes in and dashes one outside for a 20-yard gain. Then, the very next drive, the roles will be reversed. Richardson will hammer it up the gut and wear you down, and Ingram pops it outside for the big gain. The end results have been pretty consistent -- time-sucking, turnover-free drives with touchdown scores at the end.

Though Saturday’s box score did nothing to challenge the record books or get the fantasy football geeks hot under the collar, the manner in which Alabama’s two backs contributed to the victory was noteworthy.

Ingram and Richardson combined for "just" 115 yards and two touchdowns in Alabama’s 31-6 win at Bryant-Denny Stadium, but it wasn’t so much their work toting the rock that left you speechless. Rather, it was the way in which Florida was forced to alter their entire defensive game plan, completely sacrifice their pass defense, and leave themselves so vulnerable downfield because of it that made you realize just how dangerous these two really are.

Florida defensive coordinator Teryl Austin joked last week that the only way the Gators stood a chance in stopping the duo on Saturday night was if the Crimson Tide’s bus got lost on the way to the stadium. Underneath the jokes, though, Austin had a well-devised plan nine months in the making. Or, at least he thought he did.

Over the off-season, Austin concocted a defensive scheme known as “The Heavy Package” with the Crimson Tide’s backs in mind. Ingram and Richardson torched the Gators’ No. 3-ranked defense last December in the SEC Championship Game to the tune of 193 combined rushing yards and three touchdowns. When Austin left the Arizona Cardinals last winter and made the move to Gainesville to replace Charlie Strong as the new DC, he studied the SEC Championship game film and went to the lab. His Frankenstein was this scheme.

Essentially a 5-2 defensive front, the package was designed to stack the box with an extra defensive tackle on the line. Technically, a defensive end -- in this case, Gators DE Duke Lemmens -- moves to outside linebacker in a 4-3 scheme, but he still rushes into the backfield like he’s playing the end. Then, up front on the line, big boys Omar Hunter (6-7, 307 pounds), Terron Sanders (6-1, 309 pounds), and Jaye Howard (6-3, 302 pounds) all stack the middle with a combined 900 pounds of rush defense up the gut. Maybe Ingram and Richardson could run over one NFL-sized defensive tackle. But could they run over two? How about three? “The Heavy Package” was an all or nothing gamble, and given his choices -- McElroy through the air or Ingram and Richardson on the ground -- Austin was willing to roll the dice on the brainiac quarterback’s arm.

In a glorified trial run against Tennessee a few weeks earlier, the 5-2 scheme held Volunteers running back Tauren Poole to 23 yards on 10 carries a week after he ran all over Oregon for 162 yards. Against Kentucky, it worked wonders again, muzzling the Wildcats run game from the get go.

How’d “The Heavy Package” work out on Saturday? Well, it’s safe to say the bus didn’t get lost on the way to the game. When Florida went to its 5-2, McElroy recognized it early and calmly picked the helpless Gators defensive backfield apart. When they didn’t, Ingram and Richardson got their yards in bunches and ate up the clock in the process. ‘Bama tinkered with the Wildcat (both with Richardson and Ingram taking snaps), spread the ball around evenly to a host of receivers, and even dipped into the Saturday night bag of tricks, having receiver Marquis Maze take a direct snap and throw a first half touchdown pass to tight end Michael Williams. Once Alabama grabbed a comfortable 24-0 first half lead, the defense did the rest.

Game over.

The offense sputtered at times in the second half, but there was no reason for concern. Why show your cards to future opponents when you’ve already won the hand? “Heavy Package” or not, the Tide rolled out of Bryant-Denny as 25-point victors.

With having played in just three games together this season, it's safe to say we haven’t even come close to scratching the surface with Ingram and Richardson. Nick Saban and offensive coordinator Jim McElwain know what they have at running back and soon enough, that 400-yard rushing day -- 200 from Ingram, 200 from Richardson -- is coming.

I’ve heard pro scouts and NFL draftniks compare Ingram to Emmitt Smith time and time again. It’s an apt comparison (and a generous one), but the bowling ball that is Maurice Jones-Drew comes to mind, too. Richardson’s game, however, actually reminds me of Emmitt Smith’s a bit more. The upper-body strength, the deceptive blinding speed, the vision in the open field -- you could put Richardson in a number 22 Cowboys jersey and I wouldn't blink.

Two running backs that draw legitimate comparisons to the NFL’s all-time leading rusher? Yeah, that’s not a bad backfield.

Relatively "quiet" in Saturday night's conquest over Florida, look for Ingram and Richardson to do some very bad things to South Carolina this weekend. Steve Spurrier's Gamecocks were on the wrong end of a 321-yard rushing day from Felix Jones and Darren McFadden in 2007. Saturday could be déjà vu for the Ol' Ball Coach.

Is it too early to put Ingram and Richardson in the same conversation as Blanchard and Davis? Too soon to give them a “Pony Express”-like nickname?

Maybe.

But they’re certainly knocking on that door.

And trust me, they haven’t even gotten started yet.