After a practice last week, Dorian Brown stood firmly, spoke quietly and rested his hands on the collar of his shoulder pads.
He sighed.
“It’s been a rough season, you know?” Brown said. “It’s been a long season.”
He began the year as a backup, but as running back injuries piled on, so did Brown’s involvement in the offense.
That didn’t last long, though.
While playing at No. 15 Tennessee, Brown went down and took a few weeks to get back up. Since his recovery, however, he’s altered coach Frank Solich’s offensive approach, now favoring a one-back system with power.
Brown packs the power.
Against Kent State two weeks ago, he rushed for 110 yards and a touchdown on 12 carries. Against Toledo last week, he had 29 carries for 212 yards and a touchdown.
In the Toledo win alone, he ran for more yards than he had all of last season, when he finished with 204 yards and no touchdowns.
“When a guy gets a chance to get a number of carries and begins to get on a roll, then you get to see what they’re truly all about,” Solich said Monday during his weekly press conference.
While Solich admitted Brown has played well recently — 322 yards in two games — it’s important to acknowledge how seldom a running back has been so prolific under the coach’s 12-year tenure.
Brown was the first running back to exceed 200 yards since Chris Garrett in 2008 and Beau Blankenship in 2012. That day, Garrett ran for 222.
“I remember it very clearly, at Miami,” Tim Albin, the offensive coordinator and running back coach of Garrett’s achievement, said. “Against a rival, that was a big day. I do remember that.”
Albin will also remember Brown’s big day.
The Bobcats use a system of evaluating running backs with the term “knockdown.” Basically, if a running back jukes a defender or breaks a tackle, that’s considered a knockdown and one less defender to block.
Brown, a 5-foot-11, 207-pound back, had 38 at Toledo — the most in Albin’s 12 years in Athens. Brown had 17 knockdowns in the forth quarter alone.
“He had a real good night.”
The question now is if it continues.
Brown, a redshirt junior from Pittsburgh, sat out during Monday’s practice in an effort to get healthy for Thursday night’s game against Buffalo (2-6, 1-3 Mid-American Conference) at Peden Stadium. Kick off is 6 p.m.
Even if he’s fully healthy, Albin said Maleek Irons returns as rushing option. Irons has 308 yards and four touchdowns in five games this season.
“I personally like to give a really good running back a ton of carries,” Solich said Monday. “I’m not a committee guy, but when you have a lot of really good running backs, and they all have their pluses, you want those pluses to be seen.”
Regardless of who’s seen Thursday, at this point, winning is crucial for Ohio.
A Bobcat win keeps the program atop the MAC East Division with a two-game lead over Akron. Ohio has three regular season games remaining and hasn’t won the division since 2011.
“It is certainly a one-game at a time approach,” Solich said. “That will continue with us. That’s what kind of got us here, and we don’t really want to deviate from that.”
