July 30, 2015
Past Mick McGrane 2014-15 football features
2014
Kaehler: A Thinking Man's Game (Aug. 5)
Whittaker: Long Time Gone, Never Forgotten (Aug. 6)
Life in the Weight Room: Hall's Strong Suit (Aug. 15)
Roberts: A Career Comes Full Circle (Aug. 21)
The Season's in Session, Take Your Seats (Aug. 29)
How Quickly we Forget (Sept. 7)
Looks can be Deceiving (Sept. 19)
O-Line has Aztecs' Running Game in High Gear (Oct. 23)
Falling Short is no Longer an Option for Aztec Football (Nov. 29)
Winds of Change: "Rise To 25" Fuels New Direction for Football (Dec. 23)
Pumphrey in Need of a Playing Partner (Dec. 24)
2015
Football no Longer Needs Sun to Sell Itself (Feb. 4)
Aztec Football is Flush with Experience in 2015 (Feb. 20)
Regardless of the Road, J.J. Whittake's Future is Flush with Success (July 23)
McGrane: Dakota Gordon No Longer Wrestling with Football Future
By Mick McGrane, @GoAztecs Senior Writer (@MickOnTheMesa)
While it may appear that San Diego State's running back corps has clearly reached capacity, rest assured Dakota Gordon has no qualms about cutting line.
Fullbacks who fail to get their way can be like that. Of course, fullbacks who don't get their way can be pretty much anything they please. Maybe even relevant.
Yet being relevant in the Aztecs' running game in 2015 will take some doing. Aside from junior Donnel Pumphrey, who merely ranked No. 4 in the nation last season with an average of 143.6 yards per game, there is also junior Chase Price, who added 674 yards and five touchdowns in 2014. Lengthening the list are sophomore Marcus Stamps, who averaged an eye-popping 7.9 yards per carry last season and sophomore Rashaad Penny, a standout kick returner who is recognized as one of the team's fastest players.
All of which has Gordon, whose average of 4.2 yards per carry ranked third on the squad last season, espousing some silly notion that he may get the ball more in 2015.
It's only when you realize no one is laughing that you wonder if he might be right.
"When he's run the ball for us he's done a good job, and we have to work more on incorporating that into our offense," said associate head coach/offensive coordinator Jeff Horton, who also oversees the team's running backs. "He can be a great change-up guy because he has good quickness and his physicality is off the charts, maybe more than anybody I've ever been around. He's a competitor in every sense of the word."
He is also a fullback in every sense of the word, a dying breed in a game where spread offenses have dictated discarding power in favor of finesse. But Gordon has the papers to prove that classifying him solely as a fullback may be a bit of a fallacy. Before walking on at SDSU last season (he has since received a scholarship), he earned all-North Valley Conference honors among running backs after averaging 6.6 yards per carry at Fresno City College in 2013.
Translation: An absence of sprinter's speed does not place parameters on production.
"I don't know if I've gotten (the ball) as much as I'd like to, but the same thing happened in junior college," Gordon said. "During the first year, they slowly started giving me the ball more. By my second year, even though I was a fullback, I was named all-conference at running back. Based on that, I'm hoping that maybe I'll carry the ball a little more this year than I did last season."
At the very least, he won't lack for opportunity. Throughout the evolution of the college game, one constant remains at SDSU --- the pro-style offense. It's a place where fullbacks can flourish, a place Dakota Gordon knew held promise for his future at a position largely forgotten.
"One of the main reasons I decided to walk on here was because at (Fresno City College) I played in an offense almost identical to the one we run here," he said. "We used a fullback on nearly every play. It was pretty effective for us there and I think it's pretty effective here, too.
"I like running the ball a lot, but making blocks is sort of like a whole different kind of joy. I've never been the kind of player who likes a lot of attention on me, so if I make a key block and the running back scores it's just as if I'd scored myself."
Said Horton: "Fullbacks have become like tight ends; they're hard to find. Nobody wants to use them anymore. Everybody wants to be cute and sexy and spread you out. Nobody wants to be physical anymore. But I think that's our niche. I think it's hard for opposing defenses that play against spread offenses every third game to match up when they have a true power run game coming at them. You've got a fullback leading, a guard pulling and kicking out, and now you're hitting runs downhill instead of going sideways in the backfield. You've also got receivers blocking instead of receivers in spread offenses just faking like they're going to catch the ball.
"That's what we sell to our kids. People who play against us instead of the spread think it might look simple, but once they get a taste of it they're not so sure."
Time was when Gordon himself wasn't so sure, wasn't convinced that a sport in which he greatly excelled --- wrestling --- held enough fascination to forego football. As a senior at Fresno's Clovis High in 2012, he finished second in the CIF state championships at 195 pounds. But his interest in the sport, which had long been waning, was all but gone after he dropped a two-point decision to Robert Marchese of Oak Hills in the title match.
"I was naturally good at it, but football was always a passion," said the 5-foot-10 Gordon, who now weighs 235. "In all honesty, I didn't want anything to do with wrestling after 8th grade; I was just done. It really wasn't fun for me anymore.
"But my dad (Kelvin) pushed me to wrestle in high school and we both knew that wrestling would help me with football because they naturally go together. My high school wrestling team was one of the best in the nation, but when I started hearing about college (wrestling) programs, it just didn't sound fun to me."
Not nearly as fun as the life of a fullback, at least, where head-on collisions and the pain borne of persistent punishment are just one big ball of laughs.
"Dakota has one speed: All gas, no brakes," Horton said. "He's full throttle, every play, every rep. He's relentless. And I think the thing that separates him is that he's a tremendous athlete. When you look at him, you see a guy who might be all muscled up and a little short, but if he ever hits the ground, he's up and going as quick as you can snap your fingers.
"That has a lot to do with his wrestling background. He's up off the mat and looking for the next guy to hit. That's how athletic he is. All he wants to do is win."
And maybe get the ball a little more.