KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Two weeks ago, Ohio was thrilled with its running back depth.
Fourteen days and three injuries later, the Bobcats are now searching for anyone to play that position.
After A.J. Ouellette suffered an injury during the third play of the season, Maleek Irons and Dorian Brown went down in back-to-back weeks with injuries to take the running back depth from an elite to a desolate landscape.
The desolation became apparent in Saturday's 28-19 loss to Tennessee.
"That had some effect on what we planned to do in terms of different formations, different schemes, it took us out of some of those," coach Frank Solich said of the running back carousel. "But I’m not so sure if we would have ran the schemes and formations we wanted to that the outcome would have been any different. We played a very, very good football team and they made some plays, we made some plays.”
Brown left the game in the second quarter Saturday with an undisclosed injury. It is unknown as to how long he will be out.
But with the top three running backs out of the lineup, Ohio had to rely on some unlikely help –– freshman walk-on Vinny Emanuele.
Emanuele, standing at only 5-foot-8 and weighing 180 pounds, found himself taking snaps against the No. 15 team in the country in just his third college game ever.
"You’d like to use Papi (White) a lot as a wide receiver –– bringing him in motion, fly sweeps, do a lot of things with him –– and in order to do that, you have to have Vinny in the game," Solich said. "As you know, that was a true freshman walk-on that stepped into a pretty big situation here today."
Ohio had to rely on the pass for the majority of the afternoon as a result, which ended up with Greg Windham throwing 46 passes. For a team that likes to run the ball for a good portion of games, it certainly threw a wrench into the Bobcats offensive plans.
"Getting Sebastian (Smith) back was a big plus for us in terms of our receiving corps," Solich said. "We have a lot of guys who can go up and get the ball and run good routes. I think we can be an explosive football team, but we have to get ourselves healthy again.”
For now, the Bobcats will have to rely on Windham's arm to get them through games –– sometimes more than 40 throws might be in order.
But Ohio will need its running backs to return — and fast. Or it could devastate the offense rest of the season.
“We thought coming in that we had really good depth at running back, and really good depth at wide out," Solich said. "That has held true, but we are getting to the bottom end of the depth with the running backs."
