With Pettaway, WVU RB Depth Impressive
August 14, 2017 09:08 AM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - Martell Pettaway was just hanging out on the sideline, walking up and down the field with the coaches when he heard the words that sent a jolt of electricity through his body.
“Pettaway, get in there!”
To anyone who has ever participated in sports - and sat the bench - those words can be defining. How you handle that one moment can sometimes define your career.
For Martell Pettaway, a sophomore running back from Detroit, his big moment came in the first quarter of a critical road game at Iowa State late last season.
The 19th-ranked Mountaineers were still in the Big 12 title hunt and needed a win over the Cyclones to remain in the race.
“I was thinking, ‘Man I was supposed to redshirt this season. It’s a year gone,’” Pettaway recalled last Friday. “But I was excited though, while still nervous at the same time. I didn’t want to mess up. That’s what was going through my head.”
Starter Justin Crawford, coming off a monster rushing performance against Oklahoma the week before and expecting to have another big game against the Cyclones, lasted just seven carries before his ankle gave out.
No. 2 back, Kennedy McKoy, already nursing a bad shoulder, carried just twice before he couldn’t go any longer, putting WVU in a major bind.
By that point in the season, the Mountaineers were predominantly a run team and needed someone other than quarterback Skyler Howard to carry the football to help fend off a fired-up, nothing-to-lose Cyclones team playing one last time in front of the home fans before putting the equipment away for the season.
Fortunately for West Virginia, its third-string running back stepped up and gave it the big boost it needed.
Pettaway ended up carrying the ball 30 times for 181 yards, scoring once, in WVU’s 49-19 victory. The final score was not really indicative of the closeness of the game, or Pettaway’s big role in the victory.
His first carry came when West Virginia was leading just 14-10, and it wasn’t until early in the third quarter when the Mountaineers finally began to take control of the contest.
Had WVU not had a quality third-string tailback such as Pettaway ready to go, who knows how that game would have turned out.
I can remember one occasion several years ago when West Virginia ran out of tailbacks and was forced to send an injured player back on the field in a game it eventually lost when he was physically unable to get a first down as WVU was driving for a go-ahead score late in the fourth quarter.
Having a backup as good as Pettaway would have won that game for WVU.
Through the years, having tailback depth has usually meant big things for West Virginia and its coaches.
Take Bobby Bowden, for instance. He once rode a big offensive line and two terrific college tailbacks in Artie Owens and Dwayne Woods all the way to Tallahassee, Florida, in 1976 - six years after Jim Carlen did something similar by using his great stable of running backs to land the Texas Tech job in 1970.
Would Don Nehlen’s 1988 team remained perfect if the Mountaineers didn’t have Undra Johnson and Eugene Napoleon behind starter A.B. Brown?
Would WVU have been able to have the tremendous year it had in 2007 under Rich Rodriguez without Noel Devine backing up Steve Slaton, who limped through most of the season with a bum hamstring?
Think back to 2002 when Rich Rod used predominantly a ground game with Avon Cobourne and Quincy Wilson in the backfield at the same time because WVU had great difficulty throwing the football down the field?
Had Wilson not been available, would WVU have had enough offensive firepower to upset 11th-ranked Virginia Tech in Blacksburg that season?
Probably not.
One good tailback is not going to get a team through a year. Even with two good ones you are still considered thin, unless you’ve got a Samaje Perine and a Joe Mixon as Oklahoma did last year.
Yet even then, two bad breaks and the Sooners would have been down to their No. 3 guy.
That’s why top-shelf backup tailbacks such as Martell Pettaway are so vitally important to the success of a football team, especially this one this year at WVU when you consider Crawford or McKoy have yet to prove they can get through a grueling 12-game regular season unscathed.
Pettaway, at 5-feet-10 inches, 208 pounds, is a little bit thicker and much more physical than the other two, and even he felt beat-up after carrying the ball so many times against the Cyclones last year.
“I was hurting,” he laughed. “I had to order up a massage on Sunday.”
Nobody appreciates the value of having running back depth as much as Tony Dews, West Virginia’s first-year backfield coach.
“It is unique that you have those guys all the way down capable of playing significant snaps on Saturday,” he said last week. “That has helped us. Maybe it has taken a little of a load off. We have a bunch of guys that are capable of playing so we have to be able to distribute the carries pretty equally among them so far.”
All three bring something a little different to the table. Crawford is the home run hitter more in line with a Slaton or a Devine, capable of making one cut and breaking into the open and using the extra gear he has to take it the distance.
McKoy more closely resembles a Wendell Smallwood with his tremendous ball skills and versatility, enabling West Virginia to use him in many ways other than just lining him up in the backfield.
Pettaway gives the Mountaineers that between-the-tackles power presence reminiscent of Cobourne two decades ago. Avon wasn’t really a burner, but he consistently gained positive yardage and always kept the sticks moving. And, when he got into the red zone, he usually figured out a way to get the football across the goal line.
That is what the coaches hope Martell Pettaway can bring to the table this year.
“Yeah, I’m pretty physical,” Pettaway said. “They say I’m going to be ‘the bruiser’ so I guess that’s what they envision me as.”
Pettaway understands his role, and the value of having more than one or two proven runners suited up ready to go.
“It’s shocking how many running backs went down throughout the course of a season,” he said. “I realized that it’s a long season so you have to be prepared for anything.”
That’s the message he’s been delivering to West Virginia’s No. 4 and No. 5 tailbacks, Tevin Bush and Alec Sinkfield, two promising youngsters just getting their feet wet in the college game. After one practice last week, Pettaway noticed Sinkfield getting a little discouraged with the lack of reps he was receiving.
“I told him, ‘Man, it’s a long season and you don’t know what can happen,’” Pettaway said.
Pettaway knows, as does Dews, who continues to seek creative ways to utilize all of his talented tailbacks from No. 1 all the way down to No. 3, and even beyond.
“Yeah, we have been well documented as having some depth in that group,” Dews said. “I am enjoying that.”
So are we.
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