A Little Smash-Mouth Goes a Long Way for Memphis

Can you remember back to earlier this football season, back to before the Memphis Tigers had set foot on the field even once in front of their anxious fans? Thoughts were being bounced around about the effectiveness of head coach Justin Fuente. His leadership was in question. His one-game-at-a-time attitude was viewed as entirely too patient a strategy through which to approach this season.

Why don’t you have a championship in mind?

This is the question I had, forcing the importance of individual game focus out of mind, down into the recesses of long-lost football strategy, with the likes of the run-heavy offenses of the smash-mouth era. Despite what I can only refer to as disbelief from critics and fans alike that this group of men would ever function as a legitimate football team, Fuente never flinched.

“Like coach says, we just are focused on going 1-0. If we do that, then we become bowl eligible,” said senior running back Brandon Hayes following Memphis’ 40-20 win against Tulsa on Friday night. “After that, we are going for the conference. …We are just taking it one game at a time. We’ve been successful doing that, so we will just continue to do what we’ve been doing that’s helped us get to this point.”

It is pretty clear to see after this, the fifth time the Tigers have scored over 30 points in a game in 2014, that Fuente has finally established a strategy that works best for at least this year’s squad.

Now, in weeks past we have discussed the confidence Fuente instills in his players and the opportunities he gives to players like young Sam Craft against Cincinnati in the absence of Doroland Dorceus. We have even talked about how Memphis is rebuilding one week and then failing to show any improvement the next. One thing we have yet to explore, though, is the emergence of the relatively smash-mouth style offense.

This injection of reliance on the “old-school” ground game in an era of college football that highly prefers the spread and west coast pass-heavy offensive styles is a breath of revitalizing fresh air for this team, an effect that is not lost of Fuente. During his press conference following the homecoming win over the Golden Hurricanes, Fuente had nothing but praise to throw in the direction of Hayes.

“I mean, he was fantastic. He’s just a great kid to be around, and he just plays so hard and runs hard,” said Fuente. “He was into the game and into doing things without the ball in his hands. Obviously, he played really well for us on the offensive side of the ball. He was huge for us.”

Sixth-year Hayes notched one of the best performances of his veteran career last night, going 199 yards on the ground over 29 attempts, highlighted by a 51-yard touchdown run, just one of his three end zone visits on homecoming night. To put his performances this year into perspective, Hayes has rushed for 531 yards and five touchdowns on 92 hand-offs. In contrast, over his entire 2013 season, Hayes recorded the same number of touchdowns and 860 yards on just over 200 rushing attempts.

This could mean one of two things: Either Hayes has vastly improved as a player over less than a year, or Fuente has been putting more of the game on his shoulders, allowing Hayes to perform at his maximum level.

By no means am I saying that Hayes is not a better player than he was last year, because the evidence is clear as can be. However, because of Fuente’s introduction of a little “smash-mouth reliance” into this Memphis play-calling scheme, Hayes has been able to flourish, and the Tigers as a whole have been able to reap the benefits. That’s what I call teamwork.