Spring camp seems like it was ages ago, especially to Alabama’s running back room. Following the A-Day game in April, the concern coming out of the Crimson Tide’s backfield was that there was only one football to share amongst an overload of talented options.
Back then, Alabama’s running back room featured six scholarship backs who were all rated as four- or five-star recruits coming out of high school. That wasn’t even counting five-star freshman Camar Wheaton, who was set to join the team in the summer as the top back in this year’s class. Even after losing the reigning Doak Walker Award winner in Najee Harris, Alabama had an embarrassment of riches unrivaled by nearly every team in the nation.
That depth was always expected to dwindle a bit. Keilan Robinson ran off to Texas in June while Kyle Edwards also left the program over the summer. Those departures weren’t necessarily surprising considering Alabama’s crowd of talent and the NCAA’s new relaxed transfer rules. However, no one could have predicted the attrition to continue as it did over the season.
Wheaton’s debut season has so far been delayed as he is still dealing with a meniscus injury he suffered over the offseason. From there, Alabama’s first significant setback came in early October as sophomore Jase McClellan suffered a season-ending knee injury against Ole Miss.
The hits kept coming last weekend as Roydell Williams also injured his knee during a run in the second quarter of the game against New Mexico State. This week, Nick Saban said the injury required surgery, stating the sophomore will miss the duration of the season.
At the moment, Alabama is left with two healthy scholarship backs in starter Brian Robinson Jr. as well as Trey Sanders, who is coming off of back-to-back season-ending injuries himself. After that, the Tide has been forced to get a little creative with its backfield options.
Following McClellan’s injury in October, Saban dipped into his depth at other positions, converting freshman wide receiver Christian Leary and sophomore linebacker Demouy Kennedy into emergency options at running back. At the time, the likelihood of that duo seeing significant action seemed slim. Now, the Tide will need to get used to seeing a couple of unusual faces in the backfield.
Kennedy carried the ball seven times for 16 yards over the weekend while Leary picked up 22 yards on three rushing attempts. While it’s likely Brian Robinson and Sanders will see their workloads increase moving forward, Saban said he’ll also need his two converted options to put in a shift here and there throughout the rest of the season.
“We moved Demouy Kennedy from linebacker, who had played some running back in high school,” Saban said following last weekend’s game. “He’s kind of a big, heavy, athletic guy that has made progress there. And Christian Leary’s a wide receiver, smaller, quicker guy but still has played running back in his past. We’ll need those guys. … We’ll be a little thin, but we’ve gotta keep the guys that we’ve got improving and get those other guys even more ready to play in the future.”
“He’s built different”
Eric Collier walked into the Theodore High School field house to find his star linebacker sitting with a bloody gauze bandage in his mouth. Kennedy had recently undergone a dental procedure in which he had seven of his teeth removed, but that didn’t stop him from suiting up for practice all the same.
A bit taken back the sight, his head coach paused.
“I turned to him and said, ‘Demouy, you all right? Are you sure you’re OK to practice?” Collier recalled.
Kennedy nodded his head.
“Yes, sir, I’ll be at practice,” he said without hesitation.
Moments like that are why Collier is seldom surprised by Kennedy. During their four years together in high school, the head coach watched as his prized athlete developed into a five-star prospect, ultimately becoming the No. 1 player in the state of Alabama in the class of 2020.
When Theodore needed a big play on either side of the ball, Collier generally wound up looking Kennedy’s way. During his senior season, the star linebacker recorded 69 tackles, including eight for a loss, to go with two pass breakups and an interception returned for a touchdown. He was also used as a Wildcat quarterback in certain packages, chipping in three scores on the ground.
“I’ll be honest with you, Demouy is probably the best athlete I’ve ever coached,” said Collier, who also developed former Alabama linebacker C.J. Mosley. “He’s just so explosive, and his speed is amazing. You see that whether he’s on offense, defense or special teams. He can fly.”
Kennedy was a receiver when Collier first got his hands on him. Needing an agile linebacker on his scout-team defense, the coach figured he’d chuck his promising freshman into the role.
“Well he goes and makes about four or five plays, flying all over the field,” Collier recalled. “I said, ‘OK, well I guess this is where he needs to be.’ From there on out, he was a ’backer for us. Demouy’s the kind of kid, he’s going to stay locked in on what you want him to do, and he’s going to go do that.”
Collier believes Kennedy could line up just about anywhere on the field. He sees the 6-foot-3, 220-pounder as an ideal outside linebacker but says he could also work as a safety or even a cornerback if he were to drop some weight. And, yes, he believes he’s also more than capable of filling in at the running back position for the remainder of the year.
Ideally, Collier would rather Kennedy get more reps on defense where his future almost certainly lies. However, the high school coach admits he can’t blame Saban for doing what’s best for his program and deploying the five-star athlete’s athleticism where it is needed at the moment. After all, he did the same thing during Kennedy’s high school days.
Needing an explosive option out of the backfield, Collier created a package for Kennedy, using him out of the backfield roughly three or four times a game. Sometimes the defender would line up as a Wildcat quarterback in a zone-read scheme. Other times they’d line him up as a true running back for stretch or isolation runs. More times than not, it resulted in a big gain.
Kennedy’s most memorable run came during a game against McGill-Toolen during his senior season in 2019. While Theodore came away with a 17-6 defeat, the five-star talent provided the play of the game, scoring on a 96-yard run.
After bobbling a snap out of the Wildcat formation, Kennedy scooped up the ball while evading a defender behind the line of scrimmage. From there he broke through an arm tackle and turned on the jets down the left sideline.
Kennedy’s first college carry went for a gain of 7 yards as he cut through a wide-open hole in the line before barrelling into defenders last week. His second carry saw him rush for 6 yards and a first down after taking a handoff.
While no one is going to confuse the converted linebacker with Shaun Alexander, who famously donned his No. 37 jersey for Alabama, Collier is confident Kennedy will be a serviceable option for the Tide moving forward.
“I’m sure this move isn’t what Demouy had in mind at the beginning of the season, but knowing him, he isn’t going to show any frustration,” Collier said. “He’s the hardest-working kid I’ve ever had. He’s just going to show up every day and work his butt off. And I think he’s going to end up doing a pretty good job for them.”
“A surprising amount of power”
Looks can be deceiving. Standing in at 5-foot-10, 175 pounds, Leary does not appear like someone who is able to bang bodies with SEC linebackers on a regular basis. His former high school coach will tell you otherwise.
“He’s a powerful kid,” said Cameron Duke, who coached Leary at Edgewater High School in Orlando, Fla. “I know he’s not a big kid, but he has a surprising amount of power. He’s strong in the weight room. He really learned how to break tackles, especially arm tackles. He’s not someone you can just bring down easily. Then, he has the ability to take it the distance with his speed every time he touches the football.”
Leary is best known for that speed. During his junior year of high school, the former track star posted a school-record time of 10.5 seconds in the 100-meter dash. For perspective, former Crimson Tide receiver Henry Ruggs III set an Alabama state record with a 10.58 time in the event as a senior in high school.
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Leary has been clocked at 4.39 in the 40-yard dash. Generally, that elite agility is used to zip past defenders in open space, but anyone unlucky enough to stand in the way of the speeding bullet on the field is likely to feel it in the morning.
During Leary’s time at Edgewater, Duke did everything he could to get him the ball in open space. The speedy playmaker lined up at both slot and outside receiver but also carried the ball quite a bit out of the backfield. Primarily, that consisted of direct snaps as a Wildcat quarterback, but Leary also took handoffs on sweeps and traditional handoffs as well.
“We moved him all over the place,” Duke said. “I always liked getting him the ball in different areas, even if it was from the receiver position. When he caught it in open space, he ran the football like a running back.”
Duke always figured he’d deploy Leary at multiple roles. However, the athlete’s potential out of the backfield began to emerge during the summer heading into his junior year. Perhaps the first sign of that occurred during an offseason camp as Duke dialed up a quarterback power run with Leary behind center in the Wildcat formation.
“I’ll never forget it, he took the snap and hit that hole at 100 miles an hour,” Duke recalled. “He burst right through the A-gap where we like to hit the power. He made a guy miss at the second level and then took it the distance.
“I remember our whole staff looking at each other after the play like, ‘Wow, he’s got it.’ When you have great speed like he does, it’s easy to always want to get to the perimeter, but he learned quickly that the fastest way to get anywhere is straight ahead. You could really see that he understood the position at that point.”
Normally a midseason switch of positions would be a big ask for a true freshman, but Duke believes Leary’s advanced offensive knowledge should ease the transition. Due to his multiple offensive roles in high school, Leary would often spend time with his offensive line, familiarizing himself with the different blocking schemes in order to best hit his holes out of the backfield.
“He understood everything perfectly,” Duke said. “He understood where the kick [block] would be on power and on counter where the seal [block] would be.
“He’s an extremely quick learner, a very intelligent kid. He always works hard to understand things. He picked up our entire offense. He really understands the mental aspects of the game.”
Like Kennedy, Leary also displayed plenty of potential during his debut as a running back over the weekend. According to Pro Football Focus, he forced two missed tackles on his three carries while picking up 19 of his 22 yards after contact.
“It’s a been a journey, but I think he’s growing and maturing every day he’s been up there,” Duke said. “I’ve talked to Coach [Holmon] Wiggins about that, and he said the same thing. They are really impressed with Christian so far.”
Up next
No. 2 Alabama will look to clinch the SEC West on Saturday as it hosts No. 21 Arkansas for its final game of the year inside Bryant-Denny Stadium. The Razorbacks rank 68th nationally, allowing 151.2 rushing yards per game but have held their last three opponents — LSU, Mississippi State and Arkansas-Pine Bluff — to an average of 96 yards on the ground.
It remains to be seen how many opportunities Kennedy and Leary will receive as Alabama enters the home stretch of its season. Either way, the duo appears to have earned the trust of its teammates moving forward.
“Those guys have grown a lot in the running back room over the last three weeks,” Brian Robinson said. “Running back’s a hard position to play. It's a hard position to learn all the details. ...That’s exciting for them to be in the running back room for only three weeks and learn as much as they've been learning and you know, get a chance to go in the game and play hard also.”
