Knighton is not hurt

[JamesQuall]

the fumbles are what they are but he is hands down the most explosive player on offense. i don’t even remember Knightons last carry prior to the fumble. it’s the most crucial play of the game and you give the ball to your RB who hasn’t had a carry in like 2 quarters. not an excuse.

I really want Knighton to do his thing but he needs to be more reliable. This year he has not proven himself to be reliable or explosive. He is definitely a burner and if he has nothing but green grass and a 3-yard cushion he can house it. His issue this year has been that he always puts the ball on the ground either via a fumble or dropping passes.

He's had 26 rushing attempts with 110 yards and 2 fumbles lost. He has 4 receptions for 59 yards which doesn't include a minimum of 2 (I think it's at least 3) drops in those reception attempts. So out of his 30 times touching the ball, he has ~170 yards. That does not scream explosive.

That's not a problem though the problem is out of the ~33ish attempts to get him the ball he has dropped it 3 times and fumbled it twice. How are we supposed to get someone more involved in the offense that has a higher chance than the others of dropping or fumbling the ball?

I want to see Knighton more involved as well but ultimately he has a lot of work to do.

 

[AUcane]

I'm not sure if Knighton played multiple sports in HS. In any event, whatever we're missing from the other RBs (ball security, speed, running through contact, etc.), Chaney has, we miss Him in the running game badly.

100% agree. Chaney and Citizen are our bell cow backs and they are the best RBs on this roster (when healthy). The healthy part is the critical piece, though. When healthy, those are RB1 and RB2 on this roster. Rooster is a nice back but he's a RB3 type being asked to play RB1/RB2 minutes.

Not having Chaney and Citizen has absolutely impacted our inability to score in the RZ, unfortunately.

 

[GOCANES05]

100% agree. Chaney and Citizen are our bell cow backs and they are the best RBs on this roster (when healthy). The healthy part is the critical piece, though. When healthy, those are RB1 and RB2 on this roster. Rooster is a nice back but he's a RB3 type being asked to play RB1/RB2 minutes.

Not having Chaney and Citizen has absolutely impacted our inability to score in the RZ, unfortunately.

I really want Chaney to be ok physically, mentally he’ll SOLID he’s a tough kid with all he’s been through.
If he’s good to we will have one tremendous RB an Citizen WOW .

Those to getting hurt really kicked us off kilter offensively, with home run threat it really makes it tough.

Especially with a none threatening vertical game, how can anybody expect us to compete.

GOCANES

 

[Jassid82]

Yep and idk if he played after that first quarter fumble against Middle Tennessee and I think he only played like 14 snaps against Unc. If Chaney and Citizen were healthy Knighton wouldn’t be seeing the field going forward in my opinion.

"IF" is a mighty big word there.

 

[twes.305]

Thad needs to lose weight. Knighton needs to work on ball security and picking up his feet when he runs. This is Thad’s 2nd year so he still has time to improve. But Knighton is in his 3rd year and it doesn’t seem to me he has been working on his weaknesses and the longer he waits the chances of him actually doing that decreases.

 

[miamimike305]

I said this earlier in the year that Knighton cannot carry the load n got downvoted bc everyone thinks we have a stacked running back room. Our running backs suck. 2 skinny mofers and one that can’t get on the field.

 

[bshaw28]

the fumbles are what they are but he is hands down the most explosive player on offense. i don’t even remember Knightons last carry prior to the fumble. it’s the most crucial play of the game and you give the ball to your RB who hasn’t had a carry in like 2 quarters. not an excuse.

Knighton had a carry + caught a pass on the previous drive. Even it had been 2 quarters - that's no excuse. I don't mean to direct this at you but it's just time to face facts and stop making excuses.

Knighton averaged 4.0 ypc as FR, 3.9 ypc as a SO, and now 4.2 ypc as a JR. What more do you need to see?

Knighton is simply a straight line speed guy who isn't that good at running (regardless of scheme), and can only makes explosive plays in the passing game - so continue to use him as a pass catcher.

There's a ton of weak run defenses still on the schedule - so I'm sure he has a big run or 2 in him this year - but it's way too inconsistent/too few & far between

We can still improve and gain yards in more solid chunks - but "explosive" plays from any of the 3 RB's isn't really something they can do

 

[bshaw28]

I said this earlier in the year that Knighton cannot carry the load n got downvoted bc everyone thinks we have a stacked running back room. Our running backs suck. 2 skinny mofers and one that can’t get on the field.

Our RB's are just OK - they don't suck, they're just not good. They're average.

We lost our top 2 RB's last year, and debatably again this year. We've been using our #3 & #4 RB's as our #1 & #2 RB's the last 2 years.

This isn't to defend the coaches - but let's not lose sight that they've been dealt a sh*t hand here. Only so much can be done.