Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Running back excellence
Former ’Canes expect young players to excel
CORAL GABLES – As Frank Gore prepares for his 14th season in the NFL, he brings with him to the Dolphins a resume full of accomplishments.
National champion at the University of Miami. Five-time Pro Bowler. Art Rooney Award winner. UM Sports Hall of Fame inductee. Fifth all-time leading rusher in NFL history.
To this day, Gore still credits his time as a Hurricane for helping make him the productive, durable back he’s been throughout his remarkable professional career. And now that he’s back in South Florida and able to check in on his alma mater regularly, he sees potential in the young running backs looking to follow in his footsteps on the Greentree Practice Field and beyond.
“I like [DeeJay Dallas], and [Travis Homer]’s a very solid back. can tell he runs hard,” said Gore, who attended UM’s spring game at Hard Rock Stadium last month. “The incoming freshman [Lorenzo Lingard], he had a couple good runs. I think they compete how me, [Clinton] Portis, Willis [McGahee] and Najeh [Davenport] did. That will bring out the best in everybody and I think they’ll be on the right page. I think that [competition] helped me, to this day, right now.
“When I came here, we had those types of guys in our room and coaches to push us and let us know what’s right and wrong. They didn’t care who was mad. They were going to put the best guy on the field. So every day, we had to go out there, practice hard and compete and go play on SatYou
urdays. If we didn’t, we weren’t going to play. I think that’s why I can still play this game, right now, today.”
While depth was an issue the Hurricanes running backs had to deal with last season after starter Mark Walton was injured, things are better on that front as Miami prepares for the 2018 season.
Homer, a former standout at Oxbridge Academy, took over the starting job and finished with 966 rushing yards and eight touchdowns. Dallas, then a freshman, shifted from receiver to running back and has been sparking the Miami offense since, finishing with 217 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Freshman five-star prospect Lingard arrived in January and worked his way into the rotation as the third back this spring, while Robert Burns — who redshirted last season after being hampered by injuries — is healthy and competing again.
Add to that mix the impending arrival of four-star Carol City running back Camron Davis, who signed with Miami and is set to begin practicing this summer, and the Hurricanes have a deep, talented group that both Gore and Walton say can be successful as Miami defends its Coastal Division title.
“That whole group, those guys, I know how [running backs coach Thomas Brown] is going to push them. I know how he’s been pushing them. And I think that’s going to be one hell of a group,” said Walton, who this past weekend was the Cincinnati Bengals’ fourthround pick in the NFL draft. “You have those guys — and two freshmen — Travis is going to be a junior, DeeJay’s going to be a sophomore. They’re young and they’re going to be a dangerous group.”
While Walton will be heading to Cincinnati soon, he said that he intends to keep tabs on Miami’s current group of running backs, much as former Hurricanes players kept tabs on him while he filled the starting job.
It’s part, he says, of the brotherhood fostered at Miami. “There are guys that I never played with, guys I never really saw play in college that always talked to me and treated me like a brother,” Walton said. “You are their brother. They care about you. They care about you even when you leave UM. … Frank, [Edgerrin James], Clinton, they’ve all hit me up. Willis McGahee, Duke [Johnson]. They mainly want you to know what it is to be a running back at Miami and everything they sacrificed to make sure Miami is ‘RBU.’ I wanted to keep their legacy strong and I still want to keep their legacy strong.”