UNLV coach Barry Odom is turning to Oregon’s Dan Lanning for inspiration.
Odom’s Rebels take on Boise State and Heisman frontrunner Ashton Jeanty on Friday night in a huge Mountain West showdown. No one has been able to slow Jeanty down so far this season as he’s been the most dominant offensive player in college football. But Odom now has a new idea. He joked Monday at his news conference that he would try to replicate what Lanning famously did at the end of Oregon’s win over Ohio State.
“Nobody’s really had a great answer for it yet,” Odom said. “Because they’ve got good players elsewhere that can make you pay if you put everybody inside to try to stop the run, there’s going to have to be a balance. [Oregon coach Dan] Lanning’s getting all kinds of credit for playing with 12 [players] on that last play so I want to see if we can sneak 12 or 13 out there and see how long we get away with it.”
Oregon’s 12-men penalty with 10 seconds to go in their 32-31 win drained four seconds off the clock in exchange for five yards. The game ended on the next play when Ohio State ran out of time. The tactic was so successful that the NCAA even issued an in-season rule change to ensure that no time would run off in the final two minutes of a half if a team tried to duplicate what Oregon did.
If Odom was actually serious about his idea to slow down Jeanty, there’s no guarantee it would work, either. The junior has 126 carries for 1,248 yards and 17 scores through six games this season. He’s rushed for just 29 fewer yards than Boise State starting QB Maddux Madsen has thrown for and he’s averaging 9.9 yards a carry.
Lanning and his coaching staff also couldn’t slow him down with 11 players on the field, either. In a 37-34 loss to Oregon in Week 2, Jeanty had 25 carries for 192 yards and three scores.
Jeanty has also excelled against lots of defenders in the box. According to TruMedia’s advanced statistics, Jeanty has 44 carries for 347 yards and eight scores when opposing teams put between eight and 10 players in the box to try to slow him down. Stats like that are why Odom ran out words to describe how good Jeanty has been.
“He runs so hard, he runs behind his pads, he’s got great vision, he’s got a good offensive line and tight ends that block for him,” Odom said. “He’s got great strength, body control, leverage, he’s tough, he’s fast, he’s quick, he’s strong. I don’t know descriptive words — if I’ve touched on enough to give him the respect of how great a player he is.”