Tulane running thin on offense

• By LES EAST
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Oct 31, 2008 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

NEW ORLEANS — Tulane’s offense is built around the halfback, and the Green Wave goes into Tiger Stadium on Saturday starting a halfback who has 29 carries in his collegiate career.

True freshman Nate Austin of Lake Charles assumes the role of featured back, with another true freshman, Albert Williams of Beaumont, Texas, in a supporting role.

Austin was thrust into the lineup when Andre Anderson, the leading rusher in Conference USA, was lost for the season after suffering a fractured and dislocated shoulder during a 42-17 loss to Rice last week.

Anderson had rushed for 864 yards and was well on his way to becoming just the fourth Green Wave player to rush for 1,000 yards in a season.

He entered the Rice game with a string of four consecutive 100-yard games, thriving in a role that was played last year by Matt Forté, who rushed for more than 2,000 yards before graduating to the Chicago Bears.

Coach Bob Toledo’s West Coast Offense is based on a commitment to a physical running game — featuring the halfback — to set up play-action passes.

Now Austin, who has 29 carries for 126 yards, will be counted on to replace Anderson, who was averaging 28 carries and 142 yards per game through six games. Against Rice, Austin had 25 yards on 13 carries and caught five passes for 73 yards.

“He’s a big, strong, physical back and did a nice job,” Toledo said. “He runs with a lot of power. He has the tendency to want to turn back inside too often because he wants to go north to south fast. He’s got to stay on his track and he’s got to avoid some contact too. He hits some people pretty good; he runs into a lot of people.”

Toledo said his new halfback tandem features “a big guy” — Austin (6-foot-2, 226 pounds) — and “a little guy” — Williams (5-11, 178) — and both will experience some growing pains.

“They made some mistakes (against Rice),” Toledo said. “They don’t hit the hole where they’re supposed to. There’s some learning experience that hurt us in this last game. Hopefully, they’ll continue to get better. They are two really good freshmen players. They’ve got ability, but they’re inexperienced.”

Toledo said the hardest part for the young players will be understanding pass protections.

“If you talk to a guy like Matt Forté, the one thing that helped him in pro football was he knew protections,” Toledo said. “Protections are hard. It’s very easy to want to play, but when you have to do a protection that’s the hard part, particularly when you have several different protections because it’s a pro scheme.

“Sometimes you have to block a linebacker, sometimes you get a free-release. It’s just different all the time and you have to recognize defenses and you have to see the blitzes and that’s the difficult thing with a young running back — they have to recognize whom to block and then they have to block them.”