Cooper's Job To Lose

For all the bluster about Miami's talent at Running Back, only one back really is a game breaker.

Most Miami Football fans continue to amaze me. The majority of fans I speak with don't have any sense of reality related to the future of the program. They don't seem to acknowledge with big athletic budget public schools spending more on football than ever before that Miami's road back to the upper echelon of College Football is littered with peril and may quite frankly never be completed. Many want to write off any player associated with the last several years of Miami Football as a "bum" or a "loser." It's ironic that the few fans who overlap with Miami Basketball all seem to think Darius Rice, to whom the "loser" tag should rightfully apply had some great legacy. These fans spend way too much time obsessing on recruiting rankings and then watching Sports center highlights.

That brings me to the subject of Graig Cooper. This offseason I've heard many fans complain that Coop lacks an extra gear and doesn't have the breakaway speed of Shawnbrey McNeil or potentially of Lee Chambers. These same fans have written Javarris James off totally. This to me is totally amazing.

Most of our readers know my prediction for Miami's upcoming season. Like the last several it will be worse than the previous season. This year their will be no victory over Florida State or Texas A&M to celebrate. Perhaps if we get lucky we can celebrate a victory over Duke, but even that I am unsure of. Regardless of how poor the ACC is relative to the SEC or Big Ten, you cannot turn over 40% of your roster from an already uncompetitive team (a fifth place team in your six team division) and expect to be competitive. Now that we've established that let's get back to Cooper.

For a small guy Cooper is amazing tough between the tackles. Many times last year when the offensive line collapsed he was able to push his way for extra yardage even if it meant losing only one yard instead of four. In addition, Cooper has the sort of evasive moves to avoid tackles near the line of scrimmage that few if any running backs posses. Towards seasons end we saw more and more of Derron Thomas a back similar in style to Cooper. From my vantage point, backs like Cooper and Thomas with some degree of shiftiness are more useful on a team with an inexperienced QB and a bad line than flat out burner like McNeal or a power back like Javarris James. What we've seen with James is he can break tackles once he is past the line of scrimmage, but with Miami's poor blocking schemes and general offensive malaise, he seems to be trapped quite often behind the line of scrimmage and then has nowhere to go. Cooper on the other hand can make people miss in the backfield and make something albeit sometimes a small something out of nothing.

Graig Cooper is Miami's go-to back. Spring and Fall practice is about finding out who that #2 guy is or that change of pace guy is.