Joe Kerridge
Name: Joe Kerridge
Height: 6’0″
Weight: 249 lbs.
High school: Traverse City (MI) St. Francis
Position: Fullback
Class: Redshirt senior
Jersey number: #36
Last year: I ranked Kerridge #47 and said he would be the backup fullback. He started at fullback and had 3 carries for 56 yards, plus 6 catches for 53 yards.
Kerridge had an exciting season in 2014. He had just one carry going into last year, but he busted a 52-yarder against Maryland. Granted, it was a fake punt that saw him burst through the line unmolested, but that’s a rare opportunity for a fullback. As the season wore on, he seemed to get more involved in the offense and average 8.8 yards/catch, which isn’t bad for a lead blocker. Going into the year, I had him pegged as a backup to Sione Houma, but that was not to be.
This year I have no such illusions about Houma beating out Kerridge. I do think Houma is a quicker and more elusive runner, but Kerridge is a bruiser who can lead up through the hole, catch the ball well, and run pretty decently (for a fullback, anyway). Houma’s case isn’t made any stronger by the fact that he had surgery in the spring that would keep him out until fall camp. There is certainly a role for a fullback in Michigan’s offense with Jim Harbaugh at the helm. It’s worth noting that Stanford fullback Owen Marecic had 31 carries for 61 yards and 9 touchdowns on the ground in 2009-2010. Michigan has a few good-sized tailbacks to slam the ball up inside near the goal line and on short yardage, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Kerridge get a couple of those short touchdown runs.
Prediction: Starting fullback; 7 carries, 15 yards, 3 touchdowns
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I think I mentioned this in the Houma write-up, but Borges and Nussmeier both publicly gushed about Kerridge. Nussmeier was more of a single-back guy, but he still found ways to get Kerridge on the field (even if awkwardly). Harbaugh is arguably more FB-friendly than the previous to OC’s, so there is a chance for Kerridge to become more of a key contributor. Carries will not be super significant, as he won’t get more than one or two per game. But if his blocking game is up to snuff and he can be a respectable receiving threat, he should see his snaps increase.
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I don’t think there’s much of an argument re: Harbaugh’s FB -friendliness. Especially compared to single-back guys. I’d expect Kerridge/Homo snaps to go up dramatically. Maybe not carries, but I think they’ll play a bigger role in the pass game.
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I think Harbaugh’s going to love Kerridge and I think Kerridge is going to have a great season and be one of the most memorable full-backs we’ve had in a while.
That said, Houma could do the same thing. While his skillset is a little different, I don’t see Michigan losing a lot if Kerridge tweaks an ankle or whatever. For that reason, I think this is way too high for Kerridge. By the nature of the countdown, you can’t rank a guy who has a backup that replaces him (more of less with the same production) as highly as a guy whose abscense will be truely felt. In other words, it’s not just about the quality of the player (and Kerridge is a high quality player IMO), but the context as well. It’s kind of funky that we have two senior fullbacks who are able to do the job but we do. I don’t think Houma’s injury should factor into the discussion too much since he should be fully recovered by the start of the season and I doubt he missed much (anything?) by recovering in the offseason.
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To be honest, it’s been a very, very long time since we had a “memorable” fullback, i.e. one who was anything more than a battering ram, and I doubt that Kerridge will end that stretch. It’s a shame, too, because the second back could actually be an offensive weapon in their own right, if our offense ever became imaginative and non-predictable. The strategy of “we’re going to telegraph our plays and try to make them work anyway with brute force” has not been a winning recipe for us.
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I’d be surprised if Harbaugh is viewed as lacking in creativity by the end of the season. I don’t know if FBs or TEs will play a big part in that but I would guess they do.
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How many memorable FB’s are there from anywhere? If you are expecting explosive numbers out of the FB position, it ain’t happening. Owen Marecic was an excellent, well-known college FB at Stanford, and still only got 31 carries over two seasons, as Thunder points out in his post. Even on pro-style teams, they are only playing at most 50% of offensive snaps from scrimmage. Number of snaps from shotgun increases every year both in college and in the pros. FB’s are primarily weapons as blockers on and to a much lesser extent secondary receivers. Using FB’s in this way is not un-imaginative, it is logical. Blocking is underrated!
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I don’t think it’s about the total numbers as much as it’s about making some highlight plays. The FB doesn’t have to run for 500 yards to be memorable, he just has to break off a 30 yard TD here or catch a game-breaking screen pass there. The other piece would be allowing the offense to execute a scheme. The way Harbaugh used his FB and Hbacks at SF helped Kaepernick be a major run threat.
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Well, there was actually a time when fullbacks were used as actual ballcarriers in their own right. Was Leroy Hoard not memorable? Jerome Bettis?
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Those guys were memorable because they were RBs. Hoard played some FB, but Bettis never played much (if any).
I would say Askew and Shea are the most memorable recent FBs, but again, they were memorable in part because they played more glamor positions – RB and H-back respectively.
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Yes, Bettis did. Go look at his college highlight films on You Tube. He ran a great deal out of the classic FB position in the I or T formations. Same with Hoard. And yes, they were memorable as fullbacks because they were actually used as ballcarriers and not just blockers on 95% of their snaps.
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Yeah – I guess he did get the rock out of the FB position. He earned the move to RB, where he played most of his career, but he established himself at FB. Nobody expects that to happen for Kerridge or anything, but it’d be nice if he got a few plays a la those future RBs.
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Joel Mackovika and Mike Alstott are a couple more, but guys like that–fullbacks who are effective as featured ball carriers–are exceedingly rare. I’ll bet a lot of the athletes capable of doing that wind up on defense instead.
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Those guys did not rack up numbers from the traditional FB alignment. They were just FB-sized guys who could handle playing the RB position.
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