The Southern football team doesn’t know who its starting quarterback will be against North Carolina Central at 6:30 p.m. Saturday in Atlanta.
Coach Terrence Graves said Tuesday he isn’t completely sure who will be the starting running back or what the rotation might look like. Regardless of whether he’s withholding that information for gamesmanship, he’s allowing his assistants to take control of that decision.
“I work for the football coaches, the assistant coaches,” Graves said. “Those guys are going to tell me how we’re going to do this thing and, you know, I trust them. And again, if you don't trust your assistant coaches, then why have them?”
Graves did share who he thinks was the most likely to start.
“Mike (Franklin) has been getting the brunt of the payload the last couple of days,” he said. “So if I was to say, it would probably be Mike starting off.”
The 6-foot-2, 225-pound Franklin is a Jacksonville State transfer and the only senior at the position. Last year, he appeared in four games and finished with 55 yards on eight carries.
Franklin is the Jaguars' heaviest back and weighs 30 more pounds than all but two players in the room.
Running backs coach Marcus Bradley said the starter for the opener hadn’t been determined during the last week of preseason camp.
“The guy that gets the snaps will be earned each week throughout practice,” the first-year assistant coach said. “Those guys know that I don’t give anything, and so they’ll have to come in and put in the work throughout the week of practice and we’ll see who trots out there first.”
Southern has eight running backs, including five transfers and one true freshman. Graves was confident, saying that the Week 0 game would be “running back by committee.”
The biggest name in the committee is LSU transfer Trey Holly. The 5-foot-7, 192-pound redshirt sophomore was the last addition at the position to join before camp and Graves said that despite joining later, he’s been learning quickly.
Other ball carriers who have been noted for their explosiveness during the offseason have been redshirt sophomore Princeton Cahee (Louisiana Tech transfer), redshirt freshman Jason Gabriel and sophomore Barry Remo.
Graves did not indicate how many tailbacks will be given a chance to play. He said the team will be willing to make whatever in-game adjustments are necessary.
The initial running back plan that his assistants craft could be unrecognizable depending on how the game unfolds. It’ll all be based on the “flow of the game.”
“There's no secret to how that works, you know, it's the flow of the game and a hot back,” Graves said. “The hot back will always continue to get the carries and that's the thing that we do. We try to make sure that we don't outthink or outsmart ourselves.
“You’re gonna have a number of guys carrying the ball, but if the guy's hot, you're gonna run them until they adjust, and then you go to something else.”
The players in the running back room understand that process and are focused on proving.
“Those guys understand that it’s a long season, and it’s going to take each of us and all of us to obtain our common goal,” Bradley said.
Remo, one of two returners, is content with his coaches’ approach and is excited to be a part of a talented group.
“Our running back room is everything somebody can imagine,” Remo said. “The competitiveness that we go through right now, we push each other every day and (try) to get an edge on one another. Really strive to be the best that we could possibly be.”
As much as they will continue to fight for playing time, they are also getting better, stealing each other's moves, for example, Remo said.
Whichever running backs are in the backfield against North Carolina Central, the No. 2 team in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference preseason poll, they’ll have to use all they learned to contribute to a victory.