Rocket Sanders had to pause a little bit. How could he not, really?
After the superstar running back had nearly all of his 2023 campaign wiped out by a torn labrum — the same injury which knocked him out of spring football after transferring from Arkansas to South Carolina — it was finally time to get back on the practice field last Friday.
“The first day was like, I was nervous a little bit,” Sanders said. “But when I got going, that was pretty good on the first day. And then when I went out there with pads, I wasn’t even actually as nervous as what I thought I would be. I feel like when it came down to getting back in a routine, doing handoffs with the quarterbacks and just getting back in that rhythm, I feel like that helped me out.”
By any reasonable expectation, he will be the focal point of the offense. He already was the center of a successful SEC offense, when he ran for 1,443 yards and 10 touchdowns with Arkansas in 2022. This, combined with the inevitable growing pains of breaking in a new quarterback and replacing a 1,000-yard receiver, figures to skew the offense ground-based at least early.
“The run game is our main thing,” offensive lineman Jakai Moore said. “We’re going to run the ball, man. I feel like that’s all we really want to do. There’s nothing that I would really tweak, I feel like we’re having a great fall camp.”
Just getting in position to take reps in practice and feel all those natural football emotions again was a task itself for Sanders, though. It was a journey through the summer of regular 5:15 a.m. wake-up calls, getting into the building by 5:30. Hot tub, shoulder rehab, weight room, all before even approaching any meetings or team work for the day.
It was the only way, with the interconnectedness of a running back’s body. The shoulder was injured, of course making it tougher to work through contact and fight for yards between the tackle. But missing so much action meant having to retrain everything else, too. The legs to get driving in the right direction, the ankles for cuts in the open field, even arms just for the muscle-memory of taking a hand-off.
“Not just working on my shoulder, but working on my mobility of everything else,” Sanders said. “My hips, my knees, I feel like that was the main thing. It wasn’t about just my shoulder.”
Of course there is no way of knowing for sure how he will react until week one. Aug. 31 against Old Dominion will be the first time in nine months he has taken any kind of a snap, and the first time in almost a full year he has done so with a clean bill of health. This Saturday will be the closest thing since, though, when South Carolina has its first scrimmage of fall practice.
“It’s getting the feeling of getting tackled again, taking on blocks,” Sanders said. “I just want to figure out the offense standpoint of it, because I’m still learning and studying.”
Right now, he is all systems go. T-minus 25 days until rocket launch.
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