Published: October 01, 2008 04:41 pm            

Tailback rushes to foreground

Coming out of preseason camp in August, East Central University football coach Kurt Nichols figured to have the same tailback-by-committee he had used in his first two years as coach of the Tigers. The committee just figured to be a little bit bigger.

Since Nichols took over the ECU football program in December 2005, running the football has always been something of an afterthought in his pass-first spread offense. After being one of the best in the Lone Star Conference North Division at running the ball during the first five years of this decade with all-conference tailbacks Jerome Castleberry and King Bennett leading the way, the Tigers in 2006 and 2007 ranked at or near the bottom -- in rushing, scoring and victories -- of a league where success running the football has historically translated into more wins than losses.

This fall, though, Nichols seemed to have the weapons in the backfield to, if not change, at least alter his team’s offensive identity. His tailback rotation was the deepest since he took the ECU job in the fall of 2005 and, while the Tiger running backs didn’t figure to stir memories of Castleberry and Bennett, they at least seemed capable of providing a suitable complement to all-conference quarterback Marcus Johnson and his receiving corps.

Junior Charles Huffman, one of the stars of the spring of 2007 and of the preseason last fall before suffering his second serious knee injury in three years, was due back, along with shifty redshirt sophomore Larry Carter-Holmes. Newcomers included Division I transfer Alex Woodley (a converted defensive back who was reportedly the fastest of the ECU backs); redshirt freshman Josh Dutton, who rewrote the record books at Bethel during his high school career; and Collin Avery, a freshman from Refugio, Texas, who was one of the stars of preseason camp.

Flying below the radar on this long list of tailbacks was Josh Maldanado, who, at 5-6, 190, was one of the smallest and easily the slowest of the group. A former high school teammate of ECU back-up quarterback Josh Phillips at Sachse High School in Wylie, Texas, he also hadn’t played a game in anger since 2005, despite having lost two years of college eligibility in the meantime.

“The only reason I came here was because Josh was my high school quarterback,” Maldanado said amid the celebration on the turf at Norris Field following ECU’s wild 55-49 overtime victory over Northeastern Saturday afternoon -- a victory in which he did something no Tiger running back had done in almost three years. “I didn’t play at all last year. I was just sitting around when (Phillips) called me.”

Maldanado rushed for 111 yards and three touchdowns in Saturday’s win to become the first ECU back to rush for 100 yards and score three times since Bennett turned the track late in the 2005 season. His big day was a longshot, even off a two-touchdown performance in a 34-24 loss at Angelo State a week earlier, and it would have been considered a virtual impossibility less than a month earlier for a player who was understandably looking up at everybody on a depth chart at running back that suddenly had some depth when ECU opened the season at Division 1-AA Sam Houston State on Aug. 28.

But injuries to Woodley, Huffman and Carter quickly changed the picture, leaving Avery, Dutton and Maldanado as ECU’s only healthy running backs by Week 2, when the Tigers absorbed a 44-14 home loss to an improved Texas A&M-Kingsville team in a game where the running game reached rock bottom -- even in comparison to the relative futility of the last two years.

ECU backs averaged less than a yard a carry and had just two runs longer than three yards all night (one of them a scramble by Johnson), and the Tigers wasted two scoring opportunities that could have turned the game around in the first half.

By the time the team traveled to San Angelo last weekend, the running game had dropped to 11th in the 13-team LSC, and it appeared once again that any success the ECU offense was going to have this fall was going to come from Johnson’s legs and his strong right arm.

But despite the loss to the Rams in Week 3, Nichols’ running game suddenly reappeared, and Maldanado was mainly responsible. He ripped off a couple of nice runs and scored twice from in close to account for two-thirds of the ECU touchdowns, and, although every tailback on the roster was available for the Northeastern game, Maldanado was without question Nichols’ first option.

Woodley, seeing his first real action of the fall, got the first of four -- that’s right, four -- rushing touchdowns the Tigers recorded Saturday, but Maldanado was the workhorse in the ECU ground game. After losing five yards on his first carry of the day, he came back into the lineup late in the first quarter with ECU at its own 1 following a punt and promptly ripped off runs of six and 33 yards to get the Tigers out of the hole.

In the second quarter, after Woodley’s run and Johnson’s first touchdown pass of the day had tied the score, Maldanado had a 21-yard scamper to highlight a drive that ended with a missed chip-shot field goal. ECU’s first defensive touchdown since 2006 gave the Tigers a 21-14 lead at the break, though, and, although Johnson -- who finished with a school-record 427 yards passing -- got the yards in the second half, Maldanado got most of the touchdowns.

His first, a tough four-yard run midway through the third quarter, put the Tigers up 28-14, then, after NSU answered, he broke two tackles in the backfield to score from 10 yards out and cap a 23-yard drive set up by a 58-yard kickoff return from Dominique Brooks.

Maldanado’s 19-yard run was one of the big plays in a 62-yard march to ECU’s sixth touchdown of the day, and he capped his coming-out party with a one-yard scoring burst to put the Tigers up 49-35 with 8:34 left and set up one of the wildest finishes in the history of the conference.

Despite Maldanado’s success, his performance was lost a little bit on a day when Johnson set another passing record and ECU not only got its first defensive touchdown in two seasons but also its first special teams score in recent memory -- a blocked field goal in overtime by freshman Charlie Burks that was returned for the game-winning touchdown.

In the overall scheme of things, however, Maldanado and the overall resurgence of a running game that has put together back-to-back 100-yard efforts -- in an offense that has piled up almost 1,000 yards the past two weeks -- could be the biggest story line to come out of Saturday’s game.

Nichols had called out his offensive line the past two weeks, and his rebuilt unit responded Saturday, protecting Johnson and opening holes for the ECU running backs. If the Tigers -- who figure to fall to 1-5 when they visit fourth-ranked Abilene Christian this week -- are going to remain in the North Division race, they’re probably going to have to maintain the momentum on the ground they’ve built up the past two weeks.

Maldanado is suddenly the leader of a tailback rotation that is as healthy as it’s been all season, and Johnson remains the division’s most explosive offensive weapon. Together, the ECU running and passing games have a chance to give the Tigers the North’s best offense and make up for the shortcomings in a defense that surrendered 537 yards (437 of it through the air) Saturday.

As for Maldanado, he doesn’t figure to fall out of favor with Nichols any time soon.

His punishing running style and the apparent rebirth of the offensive line gives a physical presence to an offense that has been more finesse than power the past two years.

They could also give the Tigers a chance to compete for a title in what, at this point at least, appears to be a wide open division race.

        

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