The University of Central Florida’s running game hit its stride last Saturday versus Cincinnati – red-shirt freshman running back C.J. Jones had the longest rush of the season with a 51-yard run and then punched it in for a 1-yard touchdown, the team’s first touchdown by a running back this season.
The freshman had what amounted to a career best of 123 yards on 18 carries. That’s the best performance by a running back this season for UCF and propels Jones into leading the team in rushing with 274 yards.
“C.J. has got a lot of reps because of the injuries to Dontravious and Will leaving the football program,” Interim Head Coach Danny Barrett said at Monday afternoon’s press conference. “So he’s done a good job and it’s really starting to show. Just his confidence level, especially when being able to break tackles on a 50 yard run, we hadn’t seen that all year.”
The Knights had a total of 212 rushing yards; their best mark of the year and only the second time that the team has gone over 100 rushing yards. The last time was against FCS Furman when they amassed 171 yards rushing.
Coach Barrett accredits the success of the running game to going back to the fundamentals, the o-line, and a general focus on running the ball.
“It really came down to the fundamentals of running the football and focusing in on that,” Barrett said. “Our running game kicked in, it just wasn’t as consistent enough to keep them off the football field. “
“Our offensive line this past game put in their mind, ’they really wanted to get in people’s face, keep their pad level down and moving people of the football field,” Barrett said.
Fifth year senior H-back and captain, Joseph Puopolo was also convinced that simplifying the running game back to what was almost second nature to the players was crucial.
“Towards the end of the game when we we’re moving the ball, we were going back to the stuff that we ran a while ago, that we didn’t even really practice this week,” Puopolo said. “So I mean we just went back to the basics of what we were running in this program, what we’ve been running since I’ve been here, five years ago.”
With junior quarterback Justin Holman struggling since his return from a hand injury, the Knights need to continue to focus heavily on running the ball against Tulsa this Saturday.
“We’re gonna continue to run the ball,” Barrett said. “This program has been built on that and we’ll continue to do those fundamental things to give ourselves a chance at the end of the day.”
