The UNM football team’s running backs are playing a game of musical chairs — all four are dashing for the starting seat.
Surprisingly, freshman Demond Dennis created a buzz during fall training camp and might be the clear-cut favorite to take the field Sept. 5 in the Lobos’ season-opener against Texas A&M.
Offensive coordinator and running backs coach Darrell Dickey said Dennis has been the best running back day-in and day-out. He’s been poised when catching the ball out of the backfield, something Locksley and Dickey like their running backs to be able to do in the spread offense.
“Bottom line: Demond has been the most productive,” Dickey said. “And that is what we’ve based a lot of things off of. When he has touched the ball, more things have happened.”
Dennis has been explosive between the tackles during fall camp, in addition to maneuvering his body artfully and finding open space on the field. And he said he’s having a great time doing it.
“I am enjoying running the spread offense here at UNM,” Dennis said. “It is the same offense I ran back at my high school in Georgia.”
Even so, Dickey did err on the side of caution, and urged people not to make assumptions about who will start in the backfield for UNM. Just because Dennis has impressed the coaching staff doesn’t mean he’s the favorite to win the starting position, he said.
“They’re day-to-day, like I am,” Dickey said. “We are preparing for Texas A&M, and we are seeing how everything goes.”
Three other running backs, A.J. Butler, Kasey Carrier and James Wright, have shown promise in camp, and all have seen a fair number of offensive reps.
“They have all shared time with the first-team offense against the first-team defense and the second-team offense against the second-team defense,” Dickey said. “They have all been given an equal opportunity to show what they can do.”
In particular, Wright, who carried the ball 54 times for 348 yards and two touchdowns in limited action last year, seemed like the Lobos’ best option to replace Rodney Ferguson and Paul Baker. But on Wednesday, he worked with the scout-team offense, though Dickey said it was just to simulate Texas A&M’s ground attack.
“We had James simulating plays that Texas A&M might run, because we have a lot of similar plays to their offense,” he said. “The coaches and I feel that a player can learn more from doing instead of just watching on the sideline while the other players are on the field working in drills.”
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While Wright was on the scout-team offense, Dennis, Butler and Carrier participated in seven-on-seven drills with quarterbacks Donovan Porter and B.R. Holbrook and a group of wide receivers.
