Thank you, Nebraska football fans, for this opportunity to ponder a dying breed.
Say goodbye to the fullback position as you once knew it.
This doesn’t have to be a tearful farewell, mind you. Fullbacks generally are tough dudes. Most of them wouldn’t want you to mope around on a gorgeous Sunday. So, save your tears for genuinely sorrowful matters, like if “Sirius†is replaced as the Tunnel Walk song.
But shed no tears for the fullback position. It's as simple as this: New Nebraska head coach Scott Frost’s spread offense generally eschews a traditional fullback, which is why Ben Miles last week announced his plans to transfer, saying via Twitter that NU "was no longer the right fit for me schematically."
Yes, a heartfelt goodbye is in order, for Nebraska fans long have held an affinity for burly, hard-charging fullbacks.
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Ron Brown can help with this. Boy, can he help. He was an assistant coach at Nebraska for a quarter-century, including the glorious 1990s.
“Especially the people I met over the years who were born and bred in Nebraska, they identified themselves with the fullback position,†said the 61-year-old Brown, now an assistant at Liberty. “The fullback is a guy who’s not necessarily loud or ‘out there’ — not necessarily even popular. But he’s extremely effective, extremely hard-working. Behind the scenes, there was a grit and a grind and an everyday challenge — an every play challenge — and yet there was a skill set that was very unique, developed, and it combined a number of positions.
“The fullback in our system was really kind of an offensive lineman, a tight end and running back. He also had to have the mind of a quarterback, in that he had to be able to read defenses. He often had moments, particularly in the option offense, when he could be called upon to block any one of three or four different defenders depending on how the play unfolded.â€
In other words, Nebraska fullbacks had to think on the move. This acknowledgement is important in the context of the rather brutish characteristics that initially came to mind as I reflected on some of the school's all-time greats at the position:
Watching Cory Schlesinger, I pondered the notion of bulging neck muscles for the first time.
As for Tom Rathman, as he evolved into an NFL star, it appeared he developed muscles in his … jaw line.
And please excuse me for saying this, but Joel Makovicka had one of the biggest backsides you’ll ever see on an otherwise normal-sized male.
Meanwhile, I'll long remember Tony Davis for something one of his childhood friends once told me: As Davis bulled through defenders, he would make audible crashing sounds that you might associate with a car slamming through heavy objects.
Then along came Andra Franklin, nicknamed the “The Big Pill,†a nod to a Parliament lyric: “The bigger the headache, the bigger the pill.â€
As for Mark Schellen, he wasn’t nicknamed “Scha-boom†because of his prowess in chemistry class. But he was a thinker. His position required it.
As Brown told of the intricacies associated with the fullback position in those days, he kept returning to a critical name in Nebraska football lore: "Fearless" Frank Solich. Before Solich became the program’s head coach in 1998, he coached both I-backs and fullbacks.
Solich, of course, was a tremendous Husker fullback himself in the 1960s.
“In my opinion, as good as Frank was as a coach of the tailbacks, he was especially superlative in coaching fullbacks,†said Brown, who coached receivers and tight ends under Tom Osborne. “There was a lot of times the fullbacks had to block the final guy that would send our guy into the end zone.
“Let’s say we were running a perimeter play, a running play, and my receiver's job was to double-read between the corner and safety. My guy couldn’t get both of them; he had to decide who was most dangerous. So there always was going to be one defender left, particularly if someone missed a block up front.
“Whatever defender my receiver didn’t get, Frank’s guy got the other one. He was like 99 percent on it!"
Brown’s voice rises as he ponders why fullbacks are important in Nebraska football lore.
“Nebraskans are people who are able to fix anything, they can figure stuff out,†Brown said. “Think about an agricultural economy. You never know which way the weather is going. It can be anything. But the people always adapt and adjust, and that’s what the fullback did. He adapted and adjusted, and he usually was right.â€
The fullback sometimes even carried the ball himself, as Andy Janovich did on Oct. 10, 2015. He roared through the arms of a safety who had a clean shot at him at the line of scrimmage, and rumbled the remainder of the 55 yards untouched to the end zone. Memorial Stadium was up for grabs. Following Solich’s tenure (1998-2003), the fullback wasn’t exactly a staple in the offense, so Janovich’s run took many Husker fans back to another time.
Perhaps some fans had visions of Makovicka, a starter in 1997 and ’98, seemingly punishing tacklers with his thick legs. Makovicka last week recalled Solich’s first game as head coach, Aug. 29, 1998, versus Louisiana Tech.
“The first play was a '32 trap' to the fullback, and the crowd went nuts,†he said. “I think it went for 8 yards. …"
It actually went for 12. No surprise Makovicka underestimated the length. Fullbacks can be understated.
But it’s hard to overstate their importance in Husker football history.
“With those national championship teams in the 1990s, we always had a few great players on offense,†Brown said. “A lot of the other guys weren’t going to make All-American status. But they were so good at what they did — and the fullback was the epitome of that.â€