Florida State looking to emphasize run game with talented running backs, veteran offensive line

Florida State will look to run the ball more often and more efficiently this season with two running backs expected to share the backfield. Alabama transfer Roydell Williams joins Lawrance Toafili, who is back for his fifth season in Tallahassee as the players expected to lead the Seminoles in carries.

That and the fact that offensive line returns three starters, including All-ACC players Darius Washington and Maurice Smith, leads Jeff Cameron of Warchant to believe FSU will find success on the ground.

“When I hear back from the fan base when we do the daily show, they’re all uncomfortable almost saying, ‘could it be that the offensive line is the strength of the team?’ But it is,” he said on the Andy Staples On3 podcast. “Darius Washington has played six years of college football and he’s your starting left tackle. He was All-ACC last year and I think he’s got a chance to be an All-American this year. You like to see guys like that rewarded because he was on this team at a time when they were just terrible. They just weren’t any good at all. So he’s seen this whole thing through to when they went undefeated in the regular season last year and won the ACC title.

“That’s also true of Maurice Smith at center, who’s been here forever. Played a ton of football. So your left tackle and your starting center, two pretty key positions, are two guys who have played a lot of college football. Gotten a lot bigger and a lot stronger. They know (offensive line coach) Alex Atkins and what he wants like the back of their hand. Again you’re talking about, when you go through this list of guys it’s ‘redshirt junior, redshirt senior, redshirt senior, senior.’ It’s crazy. So I do think the strength of this team is the offensive line.”

Both Washington and Smith are preparing to enter their sixth season of college football with the whole time spent at Florida State. That kind of veteran presence on the offensive line should help the Seminoles in their goal to establish the run last year.

FSU ranked just 77th in the country and 11th in the ACC last season with 150.2 rushing yards per game. It made up with that through the air but this year the offensive linemen and Toafili could both factor in to start thanks to their experience.

Williams should also be featured after rushing for 560 yards and five touchdowns last season, his best in four years at Alabama.

“Mike (Norvell) last year did not like the fact that they could not run the ball,” Cameron explained. “They failed a lot in that aspect. Trey Benson was a great running back and has a chance to do very well with the Arizona Cardinals, but this is a that was a boom-or-bust runner behind last year’s line. …That offense was not that efficient in the second half of the season. Some of that was injury, but some of that was they could never really run the ball the way they wanted to. I think Mike is hellbent on doing that this year behind his veteran offensive line.”

In addition to Williams and Toafili, Cameron also expects Florida State to play a a couple of freshmen at the running back position. He highlighted four-star Kam Davis as being on named that has stood out in spring and fall camp.

“Kam Davis, who’s 235 pounds as a true freshman, there have been jokes and memes around Tallahassee that he looks like Hershel Walker” he said. “I mean, he is massive and fun to watch. Really they can deploy a bunch of different guys depending on what you want to do.

“They’ve got guys who can catch it in space. Toafili has as good of hands for a running back in terms of receiver the football that I’ve ever seen. He catches everything. I really believe he they could just have him line up in the slot and be a receiver and they might at times. So you have the versatility of a Lawrance Toafili, the stability of Roydell and then they’ve got a stable of running backs that they like. Five or six deep. So they’re gonna play a lot of guys. That might include a couple freshmen.”

Florida State kicks off the season at noon ET on Saturday against Georgia Tech.