Players to Watch Week 1: Grambling State Tigers

It's that time of year again, thank God.  No more marking an X on every day of your calender until the week of September 8th rolls around.  It's here, and TCU football is a mere 3 days away.  I promise you all most weeks I will have some sort of harebrained and sometimes irrational hate spiel for y'all to read, but usually when it comes to a FCS/DII opponent, finding a reason to hate them is pretty difficult.  Let's not kid ourselves either- Grambling is kind of bad ass.  They had a kick ass old man coach who was the DII version of Joe Pa sans the seedy child molestation cover up scandal and their band has more swag than their football team.  I guess if I really wanted to reach, I could've made some claim that somehow their band behaved the way the FAMU band did, but that would be a serious reach and unfair to paint Grambling into that same corner.  That being said, going forward with upcoming opponents that I truly do hate, I will be making outlandish Limbaugh/Michael Moore-esque accusations and connections like that.  Enough of that though.  Here are a couple of players to watch.

Offense:  RB Jeremy Runner #25 (Fr. 5'10, 205)

NOT Jeremy Runner...

Runner, a true freshman, led the Tigers with 13 carries for 166 yards in last weeks loss Alcorn State, who was playing without QB Steve McNair.  Grambling is not much of a threat passing the ball at all (66 yards last week), but their ground game is potent as they amassed 356 yards total on the ground while averaging 10 yards per carry.  Obviously the level of competition will be a little stiffer this week, so don't expect numbers like that to be duplicated.  Runner is quite accomplished outside of football as well, receiving Oscar nominations for his role in The Town as well as The Hurt Locker, and has recently become the new star of the Bourne movie series.  So chances are if you see him go down on a play grabbing a knee or an ankle, he's probably just acting so feel free to heckle him and call him a faker.  

Defense:  LB Jacarde Carter #54 (Jr. 6', 230)

Probably the REAL Jacarde Carter

With Steve McNair not in action for Alcorn State, they were forced to run the ball against Grambling and had a pretty successful day totaling 224 yards against Grambling.  Knowing that and knowing that GP and Co. will not want to show much to an opponent like Grambling a week before we open conference play, I expect to see a lot of Matthew Tucker and Waymon James (and later Aundre Dean and maybe B.J. Catalon).  If Grambling wants to have any success keeping the Frogs off of the field, they'll have to stop the run on early downs.  Carter was 4th on the team in tackles a year ago with 66, including 6.5 for loss and 3.5 sacks.  It will be imperative for him and others to find their way into the Frog backfield if they have any plans on disrupting the ground game.  Carter had a solid game last week with 5 tackles, 1 for loss and forced a fumble.