PROVO — It has become a rite of fall for BYU’s offensive football coaches: scour the defensive roster for someone who played running back in high school and might be able to carry the rock if another RB on the roster goes down with an injury.
“I do think we have had some bad luck (with RB injuries), yes,” passing game coordinator and quarterbacks coach Aaron Roderick said Tuesday.
That’s putting it mildly.
The No. 22 Cougars, who play host to Louisiana Tech (2-0) on Friday at LaVell Edwards Stadium (7 p.m. MDT, ESPN2), are seemingly cursed at the position, and have been for all but the first season of coach Kalani Sitake’s five-year tenure.
That first season, 2016, Jamaal Williams of the Green Bay Packers and quarterback Taysom Hill of the New Orleans Saints combined to carry the ball 371 times for 1,978 yards and remained injury-free until Hill sustained a season-ending elbow injury against Utah State in the regular-season finale.
“When you look at the average shelf life of a running back in the NFL, it is short, really short. Like two years, I think, at the max. So it is a brutal position, but I feel like we have just had bad luck, especially, in that position room, more so than other schools have had at running back.” — BYU running back Lopini Katoa
Since then, it has been a revolving door at the position, mostly due to injury.
What gives?
“The game of football is hard to predict,” Sitake said Monday. “The guys train really hard in the offseason, then we go through fall camp and practices and you have injuries that happen. … The running backs, they carry the ball quite a bit and have to deal with so many things that are unique.”
Senior linebacker Kavika Fonua is the latest Cougar to make the move over to the offensive side of the ball, logging seven carries for 27 yards in last Saturday’s 48-7 win over Troy, while also making two tackles and breaking up a pass on defense.
“Just like it was high school,” said Fonua, who moved over to running back in 2017 and rushed for 87 yards, including 59 in the opener against Portland State, before sustaining a season-ending injury four games into his sophomore season. He was an LB when he returned.
BYU linebacker Kavika Fonua gives chase during the Hawaii Bowl, Dec. 24, 2019. Kavika is the latest Cougar to make the move over to the offensive side of the ball, logging seven carries for 27 yards in Saturday’s 48-7 win over Troy; he also made two tackles and broke up a pass on defense.
AP Photo/Eugene Tanner
“The coaches just said, ‘Are you ready?’ I said, ‘Heck yeah, let’s get this done.’ So it was an exciting moment for me,” Fonua said.
Freshman receiver Miles Davis also lined up in the backfield, and delivered 22 yards on five carries. Fonua and Davis got in because co-starter Tyler Allgeier limped off with a leg injury, and was seen with an ice pack on his knee in the final moments.
The Cougars entered the season shorthanded at the position because Utah transfer Devonta’e Henry-Cole opted to transfer to Utah State, junior college transfer Alec Wyble-Meza entered the transfer portal, late-signee Hinckley Ropati suffered a knee injury in fall camp and promising freshman Bruce Garrett left the program before playing a down.
Then it got worse. Sophomore Jackson McChesney carried the ball 11 times for 56 yards and a touchdown in the 55-3 conquest of Navy, but said on social media that “due to a few torn ligaments in my foot I am unable to continue with the 2020 season.”
Help could be on the way. Sitake said last week that sophomore Sione Finau, who sustained a season-ending knee injury in practice last November, is “very close” to returning after having had surgery in January. Of course, Finau was the third BYU RB to lose the remainder of his 2019 season due to injury, joining fifth-year graduate transfers Ty’Son Williams and Emmanuel Esukpa on the sidelines.
It’s more than a trend at BYU — it is a landslide.
Another converted linebacker, Allgeier, leads the Cougars with 182 rushing yards through two games, even while leaving the Troy game early. Junior Lopini Katoa has 156 yards. Katoa said the “nature of the position” is what makes injuries pile up throughout the sport.
“When you look at the average shelf life of a running back in the NFL, it is short, really short,” Katoa said. “Like two years, I think, at the max. So it is a brutal position, but I feel like we have just had bad luck, especially, in that position room, more so than other schools have had at running back.”
In 2018, Katoa and Squally Canada carried most of the load until the latter part of the season when they went down with injuries, and Matt Hadley had to be moved over from linebacker. His injury in the season finale at Utah is pointed at by many BYU fans as the reason the Cougars wilted offensively down the stretch, blew a 27-7 lead, and lost 35-27.
“Running backs do things that are different than everybody else,” said Sitake. “They have to block defensive linemen and linebackers and then they have to run (passing) routes on defensive backs and be in space. … And then we hand the ball off to them, too, so they are probably targeted a little bit more.”
Running back injuries contributed to BYU’s downfall in 2017, the year the Cougars went 4-9 and shuffled through hurt quarterbacks as well. Ula Tolutau, KJ Hall, Brayden El-Bakri, Riley Burt and the aforementioned Canada and Fonua missed games that year due to injury.
“It is just a really physical position,” said Roderick, recounting his final year at Utah (2016) when running back Joe Williams quit the team, but was persuaded to return after Henry-Cole and Zack Moss were injured.
“Running backs get hit hard half the plays in the game, and if they are not getting hit hard they are going to hit somebody else hard,” Roderick said. “So it is just a very physical position. … We have worked hard to build up some depth. We have some good young players behind Pini and Tyler that are learning what to do and then we have a veteran player in Kavika who is also a good, solid back who can help us, so I think we are going to be pretty squared away there, hopefully.”