Literally from the 1st carry. Next thing i know he has 4 rushes for 38 yds. I swear imma get a random text from a neighbor saying "let Mark run the ******* ball" sometime this week. He played great like we knew he could. Buddy might go for 200 against HoState.
Especially in the first half since they didn't give him enough carries lmaoHe looked like Derrick Henry yesterday
That's exactly what I'm saying. When he got to the lbs he kept ******* running forward hard. That's what he's needed to do the entire time. It turned 8 yard runs into 12-15 yarders and that 50 yarder obviously.That was 100% an all-time Canes game from Fletcher
He picked a great time to have his best career game
Since off season I've said Fletcher would be our best RB this year. He proved it vs Texas A&M
But...I've also been very critical of Fletcher's open field running. What I saw Saturday was a lot of open field, and he only did his normal jump + stutter step move once. The rest of the runs he continued running like a big back in the open field. He got forward with momentum, power and purpose. It was a beautiful thing to see.
Bleacher Report had Andre Johnson mic'd up on the sidelines and him and Edgerrin James both said the thing. They said he was notably more explosive on the field. I don't know what it was, but we know big time players step up in big time games!Mark Fletcher had a game yesterday that will go down in history and I'm so happy for that young man. He was a man amongst boys yesterday. However did anyone notice how much more explosive he looked yesterday? From the beginning, the friend I was watching the game with immediately noticed the difference. He looked at me and said, "Whoa! Fletcher looks like a new man. Did you see that explosiveness?". Indeed I did! At first I commented that the time off obviously did him good. Then as the game wore on I thought to myself "Is this Mark Fletcher or Willis McGahee?". Then on the last drive where he took the game over I said, "It looks as though the medical team used the 3 weeks off to give Fletcher bionic legs lol. I know it's been said a million times but Mark Fletcher just wrote himself into Miami Hurricane Football Legend with that performance. 17 carries 172 yards at 10.1 yards per carry on the road at Kyle Field in College Station against an 11-1(Now 11-2) ATM team that was arguably the best the SEC had to offer. What a stud! What a legend! I want to know if anyone else noticed what I saw yesterday.
I was pretty frustrated that wasn't the game plan from the start. The one game that should be an "A gap for life" and "Inside Zone to their Dome" game and we don't do it until the 2H. Really, 4Q.Let’s not forget, the SMU game was November 1, and he got hurt.
From November 2, the day after SMU, to kickoff of this game (December 20), was a total of just about 7 weeks.
In those 7 weeks, Fletcher had a TOTAL of 19 touches. 9 against VT and 10 against Pitt. So basically a game’s worth of wear and tear in 7 weeks. Fresh legs. He looked fantastic. But shoutout to the OL too. I come on here every single week and spout numbers about YBC. Yards before contact. We sucked at it all year. It was WAY worse than last year. And I attributed a lot of the run struggles this year to the lack of room our backs had before the got hit. Go back and watch his 17 carries and tell me how much room he had to get a head of steam before he was touched.
A ton of folks said in the ramp up to the game, @Lance Roffers included in the pod with Danny, that A&M was pretty poor at time in run fits. And I said the biggest reason for optimism on offense for us was their absolutely awful metrics in explosive runs allowed. They STUNK this year in this regard. Because they sucked at fitting gaps against the run. Welp, we hammered the **** out of that weakness, didn’t we??
Lance, maybe this is the wrong thread, but would be the best approach to attack OSU's run defense? We have to establish some semblance of a run threat, or I suspect it'll be a long day.I was pretty frustrated that wasn't the game plan from the start. The one game that should be an "A gap for life" and "Inside Zone to their Dome" game and we don't do it until the 2H. Really, 4Q.
TAM plays all kinds of games with their front and if you just let them wash themselves out you can hit explosives straight ahead.
Fletcher was a dude in this game.
Need to watch them more and evaluate what I would do. Normally go through it on the Friday pod.Lance, maybe this is the wrong thread, but would be the best approach to attack OSU's run defense? We have to establish some semblance of a run threat, or I suspect it'll be a long day.