Tre Mason: “If Emmitt Smith was a great, Why can’t I be?”

Tre Mason adds to Rams’ running back committee
By Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/12736/tre-mason-adds-to-rams-running-back-committee

EARTH CITY, Mo. — By his count, it had been 10 months since St. Louis Rams running back Tre Mason had played in a regular-season football game.

So when the opportunity finally presented itself on Monday night against the San Francisco 49ers, Mason made the most of his limited chances.

“It was great to be out there the other night, get my feet wet and get back to playing football,” Mason said. “It was pretty frustrating, but I do what I’m told. I just had to wait it out. It was waiting, and then it was time. It was time, my name was called, and I had to show what I could do.”

With special teamer/running back Chase Reynolds out because of a hip ailment, Mason found himself on the active game day roster for the first time in his young career. The Rams didn’t have grand plans for him, but they wanted to work him in the mix with fellow backs Zac Stacy, Benny Cunningham and receiver Tavon Austin.

Mason played nine snaps but got to touch the ball on six of them and made something positive happen on nearly all of those half-dozen touches. He finished with five carries for 40 yards and added another catch for 12 more yards. His 24-yard run early in the game was the Rams’ first rush of 20 more yards on the season and might have gone longer had Mason not run into receiver Brian Quick.

“I liked the way he handled his first opportunity and made some explosive plays,” coach Jeff Fisher said.

Of course, Mason didn’t make it through without at least one noticeable hiccup. As you’d expect from a player who hadn’t played much in the first four games largely because he wasn’t up to speed in pass protection, Mason missed on one of his chances in pass protection.

But Mason says he’s progressed quite a bit in that area from the time he left Auburn, where he was rarely asked to pickup blitzes.

“I came a long way,” Mason said. “Most of the time you probably weren’t asked to do much in college and stuff like that so it will probably be something they have to key on when they get here but definitely attack it.

“I’m getting a hold of things and knowing my targets and where to be. It’s getting a lot easier. The game is slowing down, and I’m ready to roll.”

That part of the game will be important for Mason moving forward. Earning the trust of the coaching staff for something like pass protection goes a long way in determining how many snaps a running back will get on game day. Even more important, if a team knows a back is not capable of holding up in pass protection, it can telegraph what the offense is trying to do.

“It’s critical, obviously, got to be able [to be] in there in both situations,” offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer said. “We certainly have that ability with Tre. We trust him. Again, he’s really gotten better. If you can only do one thing then certainly it’s a big tell for the defense. He’s a guy that wasn’t asked to do that a whole lot at Auburn, but he’s picked it up in a hurry working with [running backs] Coach [Ben] Sirmans. Again, it’s easier in a classroom then when you’ve got people moving around, that’s the hard part.”

But even with a miscue or two in pass protection, there’s no denying that Mason was the most effective of the Rams’ running backs against the Niners. Adding Mason to the mix, the Rams have now offered at least a handful of carries to Stacy, Cunningham, Austin, Trey Watts and Mason. That approach hasn’t been an overwhelming success for a run game that ranks 18th in yards per game (106) and 19th in yards per rush (4.14).

Stacy’s 19 carries against Tampa Bay in Week 2 are the most by a Rams runner this year, and aside from that, no back has had more than a dozen opportunities in a game. Earlier this week, Fisher said he was OK with continuing the running-back-by-committee approach. Schottenheimer echoed those sentiments with a caveat.

“Well, early in the game we try to get guys multiple touches,” Schottenheimer said. “That’s part of the deal. Then we try go with the hot hand late in the game. Most places that I’ve been that have really good running games, they had the people to spread the ball around. Different backs bring different types of plays. We try to get them all touches early. Then whoever has the hot hand will certainly get the balls late in the game.”

That seems reasonable, but so far there hasn’t appeared to be any rhyme or reason to how the backs are deployed. Beyond that, who is to say that a back who has the “hot hand” early in the game will still have it later on if he’s missed a few series in the meantime?

For the Rams to become the consistent running team they claimed they want to be, they’re going to first have to figure out how to share the carries.