Beaver Falls’ Hough has rare combination
Some running backs rely on their ability to run around defenders and make them miss, while some choose to run right through them.
Others, like Beaver Falls senior Josh Hough, are capable of doing both.
More often than not, when Hough gets the ball in his hands, any defender attempting to bring him down is at his mercy. The Syracuse recruit, who also plays outside linebacker for the Tigers, runs with a combination of quickness, decisiveness, speed, power and sheer ferocity rarely seen at the high school level.
Perhaps Hudl might want to consider adding an “R”-rated stamp to his game film, because Hough is one violent runner.
“To have the power, and then once he breaks through, to be able to run away from defensive backs, it’s pretty special,” said Beaver Falls coach Nick Nardone. “He just has it all.”
At 6 feet 2, 230 pounds, Hough is one of the biggest running backs in the WPIAL, capable of overpowering linebackers and even some defensive linemen before breaking away into the secondary, where most defensive backs are almost helpless to bring him down.
Sometimes, Hough said, he prefers to let the defender in front of him decide his own fate.
“I just want to see what he’s going to do,” Hough said. “Is he going to fall to the ground and I’m just going to go around him? Or if he just wants to try to tackle me head-on, I’m just going to run him over.”
That open-minded approach helped Hough run for 1,273 yards and score 18 touchdowns on only 135 carries in 2019, and his 9.4 yards per carry average ranked third best in the WPIAL among players with at least 1,000 yards rushing.
Together with fellow senior and 1,000-yard rusher Shileak Livingston, the Tigers could have arguably the best tandem of backs in the WPIAL this season.
“Shileak does things really well and Josh does things really well, so we have plays and packages for each of them. They’re both great running backs,” Nardone said. “I feel bad for our quarterbacks, because we don’t throw the ball as much, but when you’ve got two guys like that, you’ve got to feed them.”
In order to be a great running back these days, versatility is a must, and Hough is well aware of that. Last year, he caught 11 passes for 116 yards, and he’s expecting to contribute even more in the passing game this year on top of what he brings to the table as a runner.
“I can play in between the tackles, and I can go out for routes and stuff,” Hough said. “I can do it all, basically.”
This season, Beaver Falls will transition down to Class 2A after spending the past four years in Class 3A. That means two of the Tigers’ fiercest rivals, Aliquippa and Central Valley, are no longer standing in between them and a WPIAL championship.
Warriors coach Mark Lyons’ defenses have made several appearances on Hough’s highlight reel over the past two seasons. That’s no easy task considering Central Valley allowed only three of its 15 opponents to score more than 15 points on its way to a WPIAL title and trip to the PIAA championship last season.
“Whenever he was getting recruited, I would pull up a clip from his sophomore year against Central Valley. It was one of the most impressive runs I’ve seen, because we didn’t block it great,” Nardone said. “There were two guys in the hole waiting for him, and he ran them both over, and took off. And there was a safety chasing him, and by the time he scored, he had probably gained five or 10 yards on the safety chasing him.”
Although Lyons said he’ll miss his team’s rivalry with Beaver Falls, he certainly won’t be issuing any complaints about the schedule, either.
“His footwork, for a big guy, is really deceiving,” Lyons said. “I think his speed, or should I say his quickness, jump cuts and things of that nature that all good running backs do, really caught us by surprise. And obviously, we didn’t want him to spend a lot of time in our secondary, because that’s a complete mismatch.
“I think he’s going to cause havoc for every opponent that they play.”
Speaking of the Warriors, Hough has a longstanding friendship with Central Valley senior quarterback Ameer Dudley, whose father, Ameer, runs the GameChangers Training facility where Hough works out four days a week for up to three hours a day.
Hough said he began training with the Dudleys when he was about 14, just before he started high school. Ever since, he has transformed his body and improved his speed and agility, allowing him to choose between making defenders miss with a nifty jump cut or simply trampling them and leaving them in his wake.
Syracuse coach Dino Babers and his staff certainly took notice, as the Orange were the first Power Five school to offer Hough a scholarship and promise him that he could play running back all four years for them.
Hough knows all about the long list of legendary Syracuse running backs who came before him, none more notable than the iconic Jim Brown. Hough, though, said he was always drawn to 1961 Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis, the former No. 1 overall draft pick who died of leukemia at the age of 23.
“It probably played a lot [into my decision], because I used to watch ‘The Express’ a lot,” Hough said, referencing the 2008 motion picture based on Davis’ life. “People used to try to compare me to Ernie Davis.”
While it’s certainly far too soon to start calling Hough the next Jim Brown or Ernie Davis, it’s hard to ignore the resemblance he bears to the two bruising backs when watching him bulldoze helpless safeties in the secondary.
“I wouldn’t want to have to tackle him. I wouldn’t want to have to game plan against him, I’ll tell you that,” Nardone said. “When you give him the ball, you know you can trust he’s going to do good things with it. In big situations, you want to get him the ball and let him do special things.”