The Running Game

So, I picked a bad day to take off from bloging. Not only did Eric Scott get cleared from his little incident, but Raymond Carter's MRI showed he had a season-ending ACL tear. Ouch! Carter was just coming off another knee injury from his senior year at Crenshaw. Hopefully this isn't a trend for the speedster. With Carter out of the rotation, and Williams and McGee no long in the program, it leads me to wonder how our running game is going to look this season?

In many ways, the Carter injury doesn't have a big impact on this season. He was likely the #3 back with a chance of getting some more minutes as the season progressed. It will set back the running game next season, however, as Carter was supposed to make a big move for playing time in 2008. Now, he'll be in the same boat as Milton Knox and Aundre Dean and the tailback spot will have scant little experience.

For this season, it looks like Carter's slot will be filled by Ryen Carew. He actually had a similar story to Carter, injuring his knee back in 2005 and missing his freshman year. Last year he worked on the scout squad and was very impressive, winning Charles Pike Memorial Award for Outstanding Scout Team Player. He also had a good spring and showed that he might be ready to breakout at UCLA.

Obviously Markey is still the go-to guy with Kalil Bell in the second slot. I'm sure Chane Moline will continue in his short-yardage role. After that, though, there isn't much with Carew holding the third slot. If Markey were to go down with injury then UCLA could be hurting at the tailback slot. Kalil Bell hasn't really proved to me that he can be the primary back and I don't know if Moline can carry the running game either. Unless one of his backups improves dramatically this fall, we're going to have to hope Markey stays in one piece through January.