C34's position review and look ahead- the RB's

[Coach34]

RB's

LaDarius Perkins- Grade C. Had a decent Sr season- nothing more. He played banged up a good part of the year. Made some big catches this year- which is his strength- just not enough of them. I think everybody that owns a maroon shirt agrees he wasnt used in the best way to maximize his strengths. Is simply not an every down RB, but is a helluva 3rd down RB. NFL will give him a look because of his hands, intelligence, work ethic, and toughness. I think he ends up on a roster or a practice squad.

Josh Robinson- Grade A-. Did all you could do as the back-up TB. Runs hard, blocks, runs hard, improved catching the football but still needs work. I'm ready to watch him RTGDF and get the carries he deserves.

Ashton Shumpert- Grade B+. Solid year by the true Freshman. He got experience, played hard, ran hard, blocked hard. Has good hands and will be solid #2 guy next year- but should also be used more in different packages moving forward.

Nick Griffin- Grade C- plays hard but injuries have left a little slower and unable to cut like he needs to. Hopefully he is still getting stronger and can play a role next year in the offense.

Derrick Milton- Grade F. Being 5th string TB sux. Fumbling when you get a big chance sux even more.

Moving forward:

This group will be better next year. Perkins wont be there as an every down back anymore. Robinson is a load and will benefit greatly from more carries. Shumpert will be a year older and carry a bigger load also. 4-star recruit Aeris Williams will mostly likely assume the role of 3rd TB. Can Griffin do anything next year? Milton is an afterthought at this point.

Should be a very productive group in 2014.

[HoopsDawg]

Overall, we have a good, but certainly not great group of RB's heading into 2014.

Mullen's use of Perkins is near the top of the most frustrating things he has done as our head coach.

[justwin]

2013 was the first time in a long time that MSU didn't have a RB approach or eclipse 1K. Stats:

Dak Prescott 134 829 6.2 75 (TD) 13
LaDarius Perkins 137 542 4.0 35 2
Josh Robinson 78 459 5.9 51 (TD) 3
Ashton Shumpert 46 190 4.1 14 3

I'm thinking that Robinson getting 150 carries next year and he gets 1K. He still needs to work on convincing Mullen that he can be an every down guy though as he misses making some big plays like the pass over the middle vs Rice, missing the hole vs UK with Pollack pointed it out, etc. He's capable of making the 50 yd TD run vs ATM every game (multiple times), but he just needs to decide to do it when presented ala Jeremy Hill @ LSU.






RB's

LaDarius Perkins- Grade C. Had a decent Sr season- nothing more. He played banged up a good part of the year. Made some big catches this year- which is his strength- just not enough of them. I think everybody that owns a maroon shirt agrees he wasnt used in the best way to maximize his strengths. Is simply not an every down RB, but is a helluva 3rd down RB. NFL will give him a look because of his hands, intelligence, work ethic, and toughness. I think he ends up on a roster or a practice squad.

Josh Robinson- Grade A-. Did all you could do as the back-up TB. Runs hard, blocks, runs hard, improved catching the football but still needs work. I'm ready to watch him RTGDF and get the carries he deserves.

Ashton Shumpert- Grade B+. Solid year by the true Freshman. He got experience, played hard, ran hard, blocked hard. Has good hands and will be solid #2 guy next year- but should also be used more in different packages moving forward.

Nick Griffin- Grade C- plays hard but injuries have left a little slower and unable to cut like he needs to. Hopefully he is still getting stronger and can play a role next year in the offense.

Derrick Milton- Grade F. Being 5th string TB sux. Fumbling when you get a big chance sux even more.

Moving forward:

This group will be better next year. Perkins wont be there as an every down back anymore. Robinson is a load and will benefit greatly from more carries. Shumpert will be a year older and carry a bigger load also. 4-star recruit Aeris Williams will mostly likely assume the role of 3rd TB. Can Griffin do anything next year? Milton is an afterthought at this point.

Should be a very productive group in 2014.

[Barking 13]

I'll give Perk the benefit of the doubt and give a C+ to a B-, simply for being a senior and for his leadership. It wasn't his fault he was thrust into obvious failure scenarios. Gotta love the guy, true Maroon...

I get pretty dadgum wooly thinking about "Dak and the diamonds" next year...

[justwin]

Completely agree. If there's one criticism I have of Mullen's offense is that he's clueless on how to use a big RB in an offense almost as much as he's clueless on using a guy a dropback passer. Mullen comes from the school where the QB is the big Back in the backfield and he's never had the stable of RBs like he has now and will continue to have @ MSU as MS produces big RBs disproportionately more than any other state. Think about it...

year 1: Dixon. He didn't start to give him the rock until the last 6 games of the year.
years 2 & 3. Ballard should've had 1,500/year easy. Go look at the stats of the Colts this year and last and tell me that Ballard isn't better than Richardson.
year 4: Complete mindf*&k using Perk exclusively. Everyone knew he would get stuffed inside vs bigger teams and he did vs Bama, TXAM, Northwestern, OM. Insert Griffin and we have a solid shot of knocking off LSU. Same deal when they finally put in Robinson vs Nwestern. Griffin should've had at least 50 carries thorugh the first 5 games in 2012 to get him ready for 2013. The original knee injury was well over a year old, but Mullen kept the kid gloves on him.
year 5: you nailed it about Perk. Left 2-3 wins out there by consistently using him 15+ inside carries/game.

bottom line: Mullen needs to "trust" his RBs more and allow them to go make plays and get into a rhythm. A running QB isn't going to last a whole season.



Overall, we have a good, but certainly not great group of RB's heading into 2014.

Mullen's use of Perkins is near the top of the most frustrating things he has done as our head coach.

[Coach34]

2013 was the first time in a long time that MSU didn't have a RB approach or eclipse 1K.

True- but we did rush for 600 more yards in 2013 than 2012 on only 100 more carries.

[FlabLoser]

I doubt we have split in the past as much as we did this year.

[blacklistedbully]

This is probably the single biggest reason I switched this year to the anti-Mullen side of things. I simply cannot fathom how a HC could not see that running Perk inside over & over & over again was a huge mistake that cost us games, particularly when we had at least 3 other guys on the bench better equipped for that.

Perk was a 3rd-down back, period, and could have been a great one, particularly if we'd passed to him more coming out of the backfield or from the slot. 100% agree we quite likely lost 2 or 3 we could have won by this obvious screw up. The fact that it was obvious to just about everybody is what still worries me about Mullen going forward. How could he not see it, or how could he see it and still keep doing it?

I'm just really thankful the personnel brain-farts he had are no longer an option for him, making it far less likely we step on our own dicks next year. Am really happy with just about everything he does except the aforementioned and clock management.

[dogshiek]

Perk is true maroon. Relentless effort. I'm going to miss watching him play for the dogs. Maybe we will see him on Sundays.