The return of the running back
Rushing yards are up 12% over last year in the Canadian Football League, but it’s still just a two-horse race to the top.
And the players going neck and neck down the back stretch aren’t exactly yearlings.
With 1,141 yards through 13 games, Ottawa’s William Powell, 30, holds a 113-yard edge over Winnipeg’s Andrew Harris, who is 31. Another 30-year-old, C.J. Gable of Edmonton, is a rather distant third with 733 yards, and behind him is a field of relative youngsters — 20-somethings James Wilder Jr. of Toronto (665), Calgary’s Don Jackson (603) and Saskatchewan’s Tre Mason (602) — who aren’t nearly as likely to hit the 1,000-yard mark.
“I feel like I’m in my prime right now,” said Powell. “I just feel 30 is the new 20.
“It’s 2018. We’ve got a lot of new techniques and new methods to train, a lot of different philosophies on training and keeping the body up. There are a lot of avenues to keep you going for a lot longer these days.”
He has gone farther than anyone else in the CFL and has been incredibly consistent about it, racking up six games with 100 yards or more. Harris is second with four, Jackson third with three.
Powell topped out at 148, while the single-game leader this year is Gable with 165.
If Powell hangs on to that lead over Harris, who was injured early in a win over Montreal last weekend, the CFL will crown a fifth different rushing leader in five years.
Harris played all 18 games and took the title last season with 1,035 yards, while Powell was limited to just 12 games because of injury and still put up 1,026.
Before that, there was Calgary’s Jerome Messam with 1,198 in 2016, Montreal’s Tyrell Sutton with 1,059 in 2015 and Calgary’s Jon Cornish with 1,082 in 2014. He’s the last back-to-back-to-back winner, having turned the trick in 2013 and 2012 as well.
“That would be great but the more important goal is winning the Grey Cup,” Powell said of a rushing title. “That’s the main focus in my mind.”
Powell, a Houston, Texas native who played 12 games with the Arizona Cardinals in 2012, said his main attribute as a running back is his vision.
“A lot of times you have to be patient, you have to see all the moving parts and you have to be able to get there.”