Trevor Etienne pens a slogan across his nose strip each week. Earlier this year it was: “Live a Legacy,” inspired by older brother Travis Etienne, the Jacksonville Jaguars tailback who went to Clemson.
“Don’t worry about leaving a legacy,” Etienne said, remembering his brother’s advice. “Live a legacy.”
Enjoy it while it’s happening, in other words. That’s partly why Etienne is at Georgia now, after rushing for more than 800 yards the previous two years at Florida. He wanted to raise his profile, and win more games. He’s doing both, becoming a focal point of the offense in a way a Georgia tailback hasn’t been since D’Andre Swift in 2019.
Georgia’s overall run game, though, is looking a little bit like 2016. And that’s not a great thing.
The ugly stats: Georgia ranks 14th in the SEC in rushing yards per game, after not ranking lower than sixth since Kirby Smart’s first season, when it was ninth. Georgia is doing better in yards per rush, eighth, but that’s down from third last year, and second in each of the national championship seasons. In fact, Georgia hasn’t ranked below fifth in the SEC in yards per rush since 2016.
For all the concerns about quarterback Carson Beck, and he does need to cut down on turnovers, he’s still averaging more passing yards per game than last year (284 vs. 281). The issue is the extra passes he’s having to make to get there, averaging 35 passes per game vs. 29 last year. Some of that is Georgia being behind in more games, but some of it is just a belief that this is a better passing team right now. So if the Bulldogs can get the running game a notch or two better, it would also help the pass game.
Playing Florida could be an antidote: The Gators are second-worst in the SEC in rushing yards allowed per game, and 12th in rushing yards allowed per play.
But then it would get harder: Ole Miss and Tennessee are the top two in the SEC in each of those categories.
Georgia better get it figured out, in other words. The good news: Tate Ratledge, the All-SEC guard, is poised to return after missing the past four games with a high ankle sprain. The better news: Etienne is hitting his groove.
“Trevor’s brought a lot of juice to the offense,” sophomore tight end Lawson Luckie said. “He showed that in the Texas game, but we saw it before that. I’m just glad he’s showing the world that now.”
Etienne had 87 rushing yards and 23 receiving yards at Texas, and is now up to 422 rushing yards, averaging 5.15 yards per carry, with seven rushing touchdown in six games. He’s also been active in the passing game, with 20 catches (fourth-most on the team) for 130 yards. In all, Etienne has touched the ball on 25.1 percent of Georgia’s plays since he returned from the opening-game suspension for a March DUI arrest.
It’s a departure from the tandem approaches of the past few years, closer to when Swift touched it on 23.4 percent of plays in 2019. Then and now it’s much out of necessity: The injuries to Roderick Robinson II, who hasn’t played, and Branson Robinson, injured in the Oct. 12 game against Mississippi State. The inexperience of Nate Frazier, who is averaging nearly 5 yards per carry but still earning the coaches’ trust in pass protection and ball security.
The run game in general is a complex subject, as Smart will tell you. He often refers to short passes to the outside as “extensions of the run game.” Normal runs to the outside have a lot to do with perimeter blocking, and that’s where Georgia has missed good blocking receivers like Marcus Rosemy-Jacksaint, but tight ends like Luckie and Stanford transfer Ben Yurosek have been getting better.
“We think there’s a lot of hidden yards out there,” Luckie said.
Even closer to the box, Georgia liberally uses guards and tackles to pull, and depends on tailbacks knowing where the play is going, where the holes are supposed to be. So the injuries to the tailbacks, Ratledge, center Jared Wilson, and Etienne and Frazier getting used to the offense have all probably had an impact.
So has how defenses have played them, Smart added, and that changes game to game.
“It’s like the pass game, it’s relative to who you’re going against, and it’s relative to how they’re playing you,” Smart said. “Not everybody’s played us the same. Not everybody has the same X’s and O’s. We don’t really change our run game, game-to-game. Nobody does. You can’t put new runs in, so you don’t invent runs. You take the runs you have all year round and say, OK how can these work against these fronts. And in some cases they’ve worked really well.”
And in some cases, obviously not.
One way to measure the blocking on runs, and how the tailback deals with it, is yards before and after contact. This year, Etienne is averaging 1.48 yards before contact, which is below Georgia’s team average (2.11, ranking 47th in the country) and below what Etienne averaged at Florida last year (1.73) and his freshman year (2.22), per TruMedia. In other words, Etienne has not benefited from great blocking this year.
After contact, Etienne is averaging 3.67 yards, which is also below what he did at Florida (4.08 last year and 3.87 as a freshman) but is above Georgia’s team average (2.87, which ranks 98th in the country.) In other words, Etienne is generally doing better after being hit, though he still ranks only 45th nationally in yards after contact. So there’s room to grow, both through Etienne being more explosive but also avoiding second contact (which also has to do with blocking).
It’s all connected, as Smart would say.
“I’m very confident in our game, and our ability to run the ball. Because people have to honor our ability to throw the ball,” Smart said. “That’s one of the things we do well, so they complement each other.”
As for Etienne, now he gets to show off against the team he left. By all accounts he left on good terms, and said he still talks often with former Gators teammates.
“Nothing but love for those guys,” Etienne said. “So I can’t wait to get out there and compete against those guys, my friends, my brothers.”
Etienne said that after the Texas game, when his nose strip had, “Why not us” written on it. The meaning, he said: “Why can’t tonight be the night for us to have our breakout?” And they did.
What the nose strip will say this week, Etienne wasn’t saying. Just another subplot to keep an eye on.
(Photo: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)
