There was a clear difference between Damien Harris and Bo Scarbrough in 2017.

One of them looked like a featured back, and one of them didn’t. The numbers show that, too. Harris racked up exactly 1,000 rushing yards while Scarbrough finished with 596. Still, they finished just 11 carries apart, which was just less than one carry per game.

Now, ironically enough, it’s Scarbrough who is off to the NFL while Harris is back in Tuscaloosa. We learned that Harris’ motivation for his surprising return was just that he wanted to be part of a special program for one more year. That’s what you’d want your senior leader to say.

You’d also probably want him to say that he doesn’t care about stats or if he splits carries with former 5-star recruit Najee Harris. But I’m not advocating for the senior tailback to say that. In fact, I’ll go in a different direction and say something that isn’t so politically correct.

It’s time to give Damien Harris the work that he deserves.

Credit: Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports

Really, it should’ve been time for that last year with how much Scarbrough struggled. I get why the Tide couldn’t completely wash him out of the game plan with his ability to wear down a defense even when he wasn’t breaking off big chunks of yardage.

But with Scarbrough gone, there’s no reason for Alabama not to lean on Harris a bit more. Unlike Scarbrough, Harris hasn’t had durability issues in his career. And at 221 pounds, it’s not Harris lacks the size to get somewhere between 15-20 carries per game. Keep in mind that in the 13 games Harris got double-digit carries, he racked up an average of 92 yards on 12 carries (7.67 yards per carry).

Still, Harris has yet to rack up 20 carries in a single game in his entire career. The closest he came to that was when he got 19 in last year’s Sugar Bowl win against Clemson. Even though Harris was held to just 77 yards (4.1 per carry), I thought he ran well against a Clemson team that allowed the fewest rushing touchdowns in America (via Cut Up Corner).

With the season on the line with a relatively tight lead throughout that game, Alabama finally trusted Harris to move the chains. I thought game flow prevented Harris from getting involved in the national title game with Tua Tagovailoa mainly throwing to try and cut into Georgia’s lead throughout the second half.

Speaking of Tagovailoa, my guess is that he wins the starting job. My other guess is that he doesn’t carry the ball 173 times like Jalen Hurts averaged the past 2 years. My final guess is that a lot of Hurts’ carries will go to Harris.

That’s why Harris and Scarbrough weren’t ever 20-carry guys the last couple years. Alabama would have been foolish to deviate from Hurts’ strength as a rusher because it was arguably the safest way to pick up yards. I don’t think Alabama wants to follow that same mindset if and when Tagovailoa becomes the guy.

Do I think that Alabama follows the 2015 offensive dynamic again? Of course not. Tagovailoa is still going to have more of a running presence than Jake Coker, and Harris isn’t Derrick Henry.

But think about this. Harris has never had HALF as many carries in a season as Henry had in his Heisman Trophy season when he toted the rock an FBS-leading 395 times.

There can be a happy medium for Harris. Well, at least there should be. Few tailbacks in the country — if any — have his experience playing in big-time games. I like the idea of pairing that with a young, first-year starting quarterback who is going to have all sorts of pressure on him in 2018.

Yes, I understand that Alabama fans are excited about Najee Harris, especially after he took over in the fourth quarter of the national championship. Any time a former 5-star recruit performs like that to end the season, the assumption is that superstardom is imminent. It might be.


Even if Damien Harris gets the 15-20 carries per game that he deserves, though, there will still be plenty of work for the sophomore-to-be. You can also still have Josh Jacobs rotate in on some obvious passing downs and get Brian Robinson Jr. a series here or there.

I’m just more of the belief that Damien Harris deserves a majority share of the backfield. He has the right balance of patience and explosion to run between the tackles, he can make people miss outside the tackles, he can bust the big play and he takes care of business in short-yardage situations. There’s no need for a guy like that to rotate in and out so frequently.

Former Alabama offensive coordinator Brian Daboll loved to rotate his skill players, which I thought hurt the offense at times during the regular season. It might sound nit-picky to critique a national champion, but this was still an offense that averaged 23 points against teams with winning records in 2017. By the ever-high Alabama standard, that wasn’t good enough.

The only thing that’ll be good enough for Harris this year is another national title. He won’t spend much time thinking about trying to become the first running back in Alabama history to record 3 consecutive 1,000-yard seasons, and he’ll focus on the NFL Draft when that time comes. For now, all he can do is keep maximizing his opportunities.

But it’s about time that he got some more of those.