ALL TWENTY-TUESDAY: USF’S MARLON MACK VS. TENNESSEE’S ALVIN KAMARA

Even if the writing on the wall for Doug Martin is true, one of the golden rules in the NFL is that you don’t move on from a starter unless you know who their replacement is going to be.

For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, that would most likely come in the form of the NFL Draft. Due to the value of which running backs are projected to be available at pick No. 19, it’s unlikely that the Bucs to use that first round pick on Martin’s replacement. With wide receiver being a much more pressing need for a passing attack, and both Dalvin Cook and Leonard Fournette projected to be off the board, it would be wise to look more into getting the best possible value (or preference) in picking up a running back somewhere in Day 2 since this class is rich with talent at that position going all the way into the middle rounds.

With that said, keeping in mind that head coach Dirk Koetter is going to focus on getting his hands on dynamic players with big-play potential this offseason, two running backs who I’ve seen get more and more hype for are USF’s Marlon Mack and Tennessee’s Alvin Kamara.

USF RB Marlon Mack – Photo: SofloBulls.com

A lot of Bucs fans are already familiar with Mack, being that he’s from Sarasota and has played the last three years of his career already in Tampa with the Bulls. Listed at 6-foot, 210 pounds, Mack has rushed for over 1,000 yards in all three of his collegiate seasons. His yards-per-carry average has gone up every season, and in 2016, he showed his best stuff as a home runner hitter, a pass catcher and a blocker which led him to declare early for the NFL Draft.

Kamara, on the other hand, was surely the less known to Buccaneers fans out of these two until the offseason rolled around. Though some Florida Gator-Buccaneers fans already knew his name thanks to the Florida-Tennessee rivalry, it wasn’t until later in 2016 that Kamara even got a chance to be the starting running back – but that was a Tennessee problem, not a Kamara problem.

Kamara started his career off at Alabama where he signed to be part of the Crimson Tide’s 2013 recruiting class. The problem for Kamara was that there happened to be another running back in that class named Derrick Henry. Kamara – a four-star recruit and Top 50 player in the country – ended up being just a spectator during his first season. Entering his sophomore year, as Henry solidified himself as the team’s next starting running, frustration began to mount for Kamara. He suffered a knee injury early in the 2014 campaign, and was suspended twice during that season. After the season ended, he asked head coach Nick Saban to be released from his scholarship and Saban obliged. But just two week later he was arrested in his home town for a suspended license. 

Through it all, Tennessee was the first school interested in Kamara when he was released from Alabama. Though he was determined to get back into the SEC, Kamara had to go through junior college first. In the nine games he played at Hutchinson Community College, Kamara ran for 1,253 yards and scored 21 touchdowns (18 rushing, three receiving) and was named the Kansas Junior College Offensive Player of the Year.

After that, it was on to Tennessee, but there was yet another hurdle in the way for this dynamic player to get carriers and that was starting running back Jalen Hurd. To start, Kamara was in a smash-and-dash role with the 6-foot-3, 240-pound Hurd. However, after a frustrating start to the 2016 season, Hurd was eventually left out of future plans, and Kamara was finally given the reigns of a starting running back, four years after his journey has begun.

RB Alvin Kamara – Photo by: UTSports.com

Kamara has never rushed for over 1,000 yards in any season in FBS football, but he’s also never been given more than 107 carries in a single year at that level, either. As a receiver, he’s averaged nearly 10 yards per catch, and has managed to score double digit touchdowns from scrimmage every year at Tennessee despite splitting time.

Kamara came onto Bucs’ fans radars in a big way a few weeks ago when NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah placed him at No. 19 of his most recent mock draft – being selected ahead of Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, Oklahoma’s Samaje Perine and Toledo’s Kareem Hunt. But is Kamara really worth being picked so high? Or an even better question, regardless of where they’re picked, is Kamara worth picking over Mack?

These are two players make a living out of making you say, “wow” on more than one occasion every time they touch the field, but there are differences in how they do that which could sway the Buccaneers to have a preference one way or the other. In a simplified list, for the sake of writing an article, I think the Buccaneers will emphasize these three categories most when evaluating a running back: vision, consistency and big-play ability.

Let’s break down all three with some pluses and minuses for both players.

Vision

Having good vision is an extremely important part of having the ball in your hands. Knowing your blocking scheme, noticing tendencies about defenders throughout the game, and being able to see space before it opens up is something that isn’t teachable. Running backs either have this trait naturally, gain it themselves after years and years of practice, or they simply don’t have it at all.

The first clip above is of Mack, who uses speed as the main weapon in his game. Knowing this, being able to see space and get to it is crucial. USF runs its offense almost exclusively out of the shotgun formation. Though the Bucs run a fair amount of shotgun themselves, the Bulls’ speed-option shotgun-based offense doesn’t exactly translate – because defenders at the next level are so fast. So instead of judging success on plays, we have to judge traits. In the clip above, Mack showed patience when being handed the ball, but then was able to get to top speed off one and two cuts very quickly to turn that run into a big gain.

The second play above is of the same nature, but with even more success. 

As is natural for an option offense, most of Mack’s runs had him going towards or outside the offensive tackles – after all, space is speed’s best friend. The play above could have been designed for Mack to bounce all the way outside, but instead, he saw a hole right before he got outside the tackles, exploded off one cut and was off to the races. There’s no way of knowing just how much of a learning curve there will be for Mack to adjust to less of a speed option offense, but it’s important to know he has the quick feet, explosive cuts and overall athletic ability to do so, as long as that vision goes to the next level with him.

Kamara displayed good vision as well, but there is a bit of a plus/minus element to him when compared to Mack. Kamara is the more patient of the two. He consistently waits for his blocking to develop, getting as much help as the play is designed for, and uses explosive cuts (like Mack) to dodge defenders and turn up-field. But Kamara’s one-cuts are a little different. Where Mack’s running style involves more full-throttle effort and long strides, Kamara’s explosiveness comes from shorter, patient and quicker steps which gives him more control than Mack, but also lessens his “next gear” when hitting top speed – I’ll explain in greater detail later.

Kamara also comes from a spread option offense, and that means his first movements with the ball in his hands is generally laterally towards the tackle or to the outside, as well. However, there are times when he’s asked to run between the tackles, and for a guy who is known as more of a quick-hit, speed player, Kamara does very well, finding holes, adjusting through contact and gaining those extra yards.

The play above is just hard to believe. Kamara is listed at 5-foot-10, 215 pounds, but I’d bet he weighs less than that unless his muscles are as dense as iron. How a player uses their vision as a running back can be seen in relation to the rest of their ability. For Kamara, in order to completely describe how good his vision is, we have to move on to the next category: consistency.

Consistency

For Kamara, consistency comes in the form of jaw-dropping balance. In the play above, and even in the play before in the vision category, Kamara’s ability to stay on his feet through all sorts of contact is hard to believe at times. Whether it’s through arm tackles or big blows to the body, Kamara seems to have this bowling ball running style to him once he lowers his pads, which is very uncommon for a player with his frame. For him, balance is his most consistent trait.

Consistency, as a whole, also has to include those moments where a running back doesn’t have the ball such as blocking and pass-catching. I’ll just get this out of the way right now and say that neither of these players are near the top of this year’s running back class in terms of blocking. I would give Kamara the edge over Mack, but that makes sense given how much balance he has and the knowledge of his center of gravity. I’ve seen Mack either miss blocking assignments or get bullied more times than I’d like, but such is the nature of having a speed back in a speed offense – they don’t as him to block much.

In the clip above, Kamara again showed off that great balance, but also showed his natural ability as a pass catcher. Kamara consistently catches passes with his hands out, rarely letting the ball come into his body. This shows that he is very comfortable grabbing the ball out of the air, and has shown to have reliable hands and a good sense of where to go with the ball after it’s caught.

Consistency is not a part of Mack’s game that I would boast as his strongest.

Mack had some nice catch and run plays throughout his career at USF, but if you’ll pay attention a little closer, you’ll notice that most of them involve him catching the ball with his body; he doesn’t trust his hands.

The clip above gives you a better idea of what I’m talking about. Even though the catch was ruled complete, something like that probably won’t be ruled as a catch in the NFL. When Mack has to catch through contact, or even when losing balance, the ball has a tendency to come loose. You’ll also notice that instead of reaching his hands up to grab it before the defender hits him, Mack instead let the ball come into his body.

Now, some people might be asking, “What’s the big deal if he lets it hit his body? A catch is a catch.” A catch is a catch, but in the NFL, the margin for error is already so low, you never want to be doing something you don’t have to to make it bigger.

When a player allows the ball to get int their body to make a catch, first, they aren’t meeting the ball at its highest point, which means if there is a defender near by, and they meet the ball at the highest point, they’ll either knock it away or take it away – that’s why scouts love when wide receivers “high point” catches on a consistent basis. The second negative is that when the ball hits your chest, it has a tendency to bounce, and since a football is oddly shaped, it’s never predictable where the recoil is going to move the ball. This is why you see passes that hit players in the chest come loose.

Because of some routes and angles, catching a pass with the body is all a receiver can do, and that’s fine, but you want to see pass catchers do what they can to get an advantage more often than not. Mack didn’t display natural hands, and he isn’t as secure as he needs to be with the ball right now.

Another negative in consistency from Mack comes from the nature of the offense he’s in. Mack is a speedster; you know it, I know it, and his head coach Willie Taggart knew it. That’s why most of Mack’s runs went to the outside. But that mentality came back to bite him in clips like the one above. Mack knew the open side of the field was to his left, so when the trench collapsed, that’s where he went. But, if he would’ve seen the field as a whole, he would’ve seen that all he had to do was make one cut to the right and he probably would have gotten the first down. Mack’s dancing feet at the line of scrimmage makes us “ooh” and “ahh,” and sometimes he turns negative plays into 10-yard runs. But on plays like the one above, you question how reliable he can be in short-yardage situations.

Big-Play Ability

Make no mistake. Even through all the little inconsistencies that may exist in Mack’s game right now, the number one thing that is missing from the Buccaneers offense is the best thing Mack can bring to the table, and that is evident in the clip above.

Mack is a home-run hitter. He’s a game-breaker. He can take the hopes of an opposing team and suck it right out of them in a single carry, no matter the distance.

But long distance – or “explosive plays” as Dirk Koetter calls them – are more than just having straight-line speed.

The play above is one of the most incredible runs from the entire 2016 season of any prospect from any team. In it, Mack showed great adjustment with quick feet to get away form the free defensive lineman in the backfield. After that, he showed good misdirection agility to make a man miss right at the first down marker.

But that last part of that sentence is what separates Mack from the other “big-play” running back of this class. Having the ability to make big runs is one thing. Having the mentality to go after them is another. 

When Mack hit that first down marker, he wasn’t done; he was already thinking about how he could make the next guy miss. As the ball bobbled in the air (I know, I know), Mack regained control and simultaneously palmed it in one hand like Deion Sanders while stiff arming another defender. All of this while remaining at top speed and continuing to out run the trailing defensive back.

Unreal.

My final point on Mack is something I referenced earlier, but want to expound upon. What makes Mack such a dangerous weapon is how he combines having quick feet with long, fast strides – something we’ll get to with Kamara, who struggles with it. The second Mack gets in his mind to go full speed, not only can he achieve it with great acceleration, but he’s also getting far down the field at the exact same time. Sometimes you see players who have good acceleration, but just don’t have that top speed after because of shorter strides or just not being as athletic. Mack is every bit of athletic enough to eat up yards and eat them up fast.

If we’re talking about the desire to have a home-run hitter out of the backfield, you won’t find a Day 2 running back better at it than Mack.

It’s going to sound strange reading this, but with Kamara (a guy who is known by mainstream media as a “speedster”) I worry about his home-run potential in the NFL.

Kamara has those shorter strides I was talking about earlier, which goes great with his running style and allows him to be good at what he’s good at (balance and control), but it limits him in how explosive he can be when we’re talking about big plays.

Kamara just had three plays longer than 40 yards at Tennessee, and his longest run from scrimmage was a 63-yarder against Kentucky and he didn’t score on the play. Mack had 13 plays of 40 yards or longer, including five last year alone. He had five runs of 60 yards or more at USF, including a career-long 85-yard touchdown against Navy this past season.

In the play above, Kamara waited for a second to see which blocks were going to form, then got up to full speed knowing he had to beat the defender to the corner. The only problem was, he couldn’t; Kamara doesn’t have that kind of speed, he just gives off the illusion that he does.

The second clip gives more evidence to that.

Kamara scored, but he scored in the way he wins, using great balance and movement through contact. He didn’t score by beating his guy to the sideline up and into the end zone. It’s a good pursuit angle by the safety, but he was lined up as an inside linebacker. For a speed back, beating him to the corner should have been easy.

I saved the best example for last when analyzing Kamara’s home-run ability.

This is a long touchdown run that was smooth in its strides and went all the way for a touchdown. But if you’re being honest it shouldn’t have ended in six. Everything we’ve talked about with Kamara’s running style comes into play here. He showed great vision to bounce to the outside, his quick, shorter strides gave him a good burst to get around the initial pursuit at the line of scrimmage, but his shorter strides also limited how fast he was able to be beyond 30 yards down the field, – and honestly should have gotten him tackled at the 15 or 10.

Kamara is quick, he’s a natural athlete, he is balanced and he is smart. But is he fast? The tape tells us otherwise, and people might be shocked at his 40 time at the Scouting Combine later this month, which might be over 4.52.