Sanders working to live up to name
This is what happens when you’re a running back known more for your elusiveness than your power. This is what happens when you’re the son of one of the shiftiest running backs who ever lived.
When you enter the game, the opposition — along with the Stanford fans in the stands and the TV audience at home — thinks one thing: screen pass.
Barry Sanders said with a laugh that it was true. As a redshirt freshman last year, he was able to connect on some screen passes, but other attempts were stuffed because the other team knew what was coming.
“I know our defense did in practice,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the other guys did, too.”
Sanders is looking for far more than spot
play this year. He’s hoping to replace Tyler Gaffney as the Cardinal’s featured back. The competition won’t be easy; he doesn’t get any points simply for being the son of a Hall of Famer with the same name.
On Saturday morning, Stanford held its first full-hitting session of training camp, a two-hour practice that was open to the public. Redshirt junior Kelsey Young was the most impressive of the running backs, ripping off two long runs.
“Every time you put the ball in his hands, he makes something dynamic happen with it,” running backs coach Lance Taylor said of Young. “He’s got great vision and great long speed.”
On this day, Sanders was called on mainly to pass protect. On one run, he was clobbered by linebacker James Vaughters in the backfield. However, he did turn what head coach David Shaw said “should have been a 2-yard gain” into a 9-yard pickup — “just making people miss by being shifty and breaking tackles.”
Shaw said he’s going to determine the starting tailback based on “the days that we tackle” and there are only four more of those in training camp.
Ricky Seale, Remound Wright (currently suspended for an undisclosed violation) and freshman Christian McCaffrey are also in the hunt. But it’s Sanders who has the obvious name recognition and who showed flashes of his father’s moves last year.
“I think it’s good for all of us,” young Sanders said of the competition. “It gives us a chance to come out here with a purpose every practice. We all want the job. Unfortunately, there’s not enough balls for everyone.
“If it comes down to having to split the carries, that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
Like just about every running back, Sanders thinks he gets better and stronger the more he carries the ball in a game. “It does help when you’re in there a majority of the game, and you’re getting comfortable in the game,” Sanders said. “You just start picking up on the little things better.”
Sanders has put on about 13 pounds since he arrived at Stanford; he’s 5-foot-10 (2 inches taller than his father) and 198 pounds (roughly the same weight as his dad).
He was just 5 years old when his father retired unexpectedly from the Detroit Lions in 1999 at the age of 31. “I vaguely remember going to a few games,” young Sanders said. “I went to a few practices when I went to Michigan.”
He grew up with his mother, Aletha House, and four younger brothers in Oklahoma City. He was a high school AllAmerican at Heritage Hall School, where he scored 70 touchdowns and rushed for more than 5,000 yards in his career.
He has spent a lot of time watching video not just of his father, but also of NFL backs such as Marshall Faulk and Reggie Bush. Sanders said his spin moves are “definitely instinctive” rather than something he learned or copied from his father.
He wore his father’s No. 20 in elementary school, but “I hated it,” he said. “It did not look good on me.” (He has worn 26 since high school.)
He talks to his father on the phone every week or two. “He wants me to come out here and have fun,” he said.
How old was he when he realized how famous his dad was? “To be honest, as I get older, it hits me more and more,” he said. “It’s been so long since he played, and he has so much respect now, and I think that will never change. … He was phenomenal.”