Chris Rodriguez (SEC Photo)
New Kentucky offensive coordinator Liam Coen wants a balanced offense and knows he has a lot of good running backs. However, Coen knows who is THE running back at UK — senior Chris Rodriguez.
“Chris Rodriguez needs to touch the ball as many times as possible,” Coen said Tuesday. “It’s my job and our job as an offensive staff to find different ways for him to touch the football as opposed to just turning around and giving him the ball.”
Rodriguez led Kentucky with 785 yards rushing and 11 touchdowns on just 119 carries last season and no other SEC player with 50 or more attempts averaged more yards than his 6.6 yards per carry. He rushed for 480 yards and seven scores in UK’s last four games in 2020 and was fifth in the conference in rushing at 87.2 yards per game.
Pro Football Focus graded Rodriguez higher than any other returning college running back. Bleacher Report’s preseason rankings of the returning running backs has Rodriguez fifth overall and first in the SEC.
While saying he didn’t want to have specific touches in mind for any player this season, Coen said he did feel Rodriguez needed at least 25 touches per game through rushes and pass receptions. Coen wants UK’s backs to be much more involved in the passing games, something Rodriguez hopes will happen.
“It’s a part of the game. Obviously, you watch a lot of NFL, you see that those guys catch the ball out of the backfield a ton,” the UK running back said Tuesday. “For me, I like it. I didn’t really do it a lot in high school but now it’s like I got to get used to it,” Rodriguez said.
The best news is that Coen, who came to UK from the Los Angeles Rams, likes the other running backs a lot as well.
“It’s a talented group and we need to get the ball in their hands as much as possible. Screens, jet sweeps, things like that. Get them out on the perimeter to be able to create some leverage and get the ball to our athletes in space and they just do such a nice job of making plays when they are in space,” Coen said.
