Gophers head coach P.J. Fleck opened his weekly press conference Monday with injury news about a Gophers’ running back for the third time this season. This time he announced that Bryce Williams will likely miss the rest of the season due to a lower leg injury.
“Bryce [Williams] will not be available this week, he did get hurt, it looks like it will be season-ending,” Fleck said.
Williams joins Mohamed Ibrahim and Trey Potts as the third Minnesota running back to have their season cut short due to injury.
“It’s unfortunate, it’s one of those years that’s kinda got us right now,” Fleck said. “It’s next man up.”
Ibrahim suffered an achilles tendon injury in the season opener against Ohio State, while Potts’ season was ended due to an undisclosed injury after nearly a week long hospital stay following the Oct. 2 game at Purdue.
Williams’ 37 carries, for 186 yards and three touchdowns this season, will be seriously missed from a running back position that is now desperately lacking depth.
True freshman Mar’Keise “Bucko” Irving and redshirt-freshman Ky Thomas continue to flourish in their added opportunities, but they are now the only two healthy scholarship running backs on the Gophers’ roster.
After recording 19 carries for 110 yards and two touchdowns against Northwestern, Irving was named Big Ten Co-Freshman of the week. Thomas added 106 rushing yards against the Wildcats, on 21 carries. It was the second consecutive week that Irving and Thomas both totaled 100 yards or more on the ground.
Irving and Thomas will likely continue to dominate the majority of touches from the running back position, but there is always the fear of another injury to the position.
With no other scholarship running back on the roster, the Gophers looked to redshirt sophomore linebacker Derik LeCaptain as a replacement. Highlighted by a terrific 24 yard touchdown run, the former high school running back totaled three carries and 31 yards against Northwestern.
Originally from Gardner, Wis., LeCaptain amassed 5,199 career rushing yards, a Wisconsin state record and added 100 career touchdowns throughout his high school career. Standing at 6-feet-2-inches, he will now likely receive more opportunities at the running back position this season after earning his first career carries against the Wildcats.
“Everybody is on deck, I told the entire team if any of you have ever carried a ball, in any part of your career, if you have a picture of a button from the YMCA league with a ball in your hand, you are going to be available to possibly run the ball for us this year,” Fleck said. “We’re going in, talking to their parents, their aunts and uncles, seeing if they ever did that — diving into some Pop Warner film.”
With redshirt freshman walk-on running back Kendall Moore as the only other healthy true running back on the roster, there is always an opportunity for the Gophers to move other players away from their current position to running back.
“Yes we will, who, I am not going to tell you that,” Fleck said. “We already have, you got a chance to see one of them, we did two weeks ago with another. This has been a contingency plan for four or five weeks now.”
