Wednesday, November 13, 2013

A Jack of All Positions

At the moment, Myles Jack is the talk of Westwood and West Coast football. Jack is a freshman linebacker who set the Pac-12 Conference spinning last Saturday in Tucson when he scored two touchdowns against the Arizona Wildcats--as a running back.
UCLA Coach Jim Mora gave the OK for Jack to carry the ball for the offense and No. 30 from Bellevue, Wash., responded in a spectacular way.
Because of injuries to his starters on both the offense and the defense, Mora has been forced to play more freshman than he had planned at the beginning of the season.
On Friday, Jack is expected to be inserted into the offense against the Washington Huskies, who visit the Rose Bowl at 6 p.m. Pacific time on ESPN2.


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add two-way performers: Obviously, it is unusual to see players going both ways on offense and defense. The most recent to have success was Owen Maceric of Stanford, who started at linebacker and fullback as a senior in 2010 for then-Coach Jim Harbaugh. In the Cardinal's game at Notre Dame that season, Maceric scored two touchdowns within 13 seconds of each other. The first came on a running play, and the second on an interception.



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last add two-way performers: Probably the most well-known person to play on both offense and defense was Frank Gifford of the N.Y. Giants. Gifford played both ways at USC in the early 1950s, but was strictly a defensive back in New York until Vince Lombardi, who was the offensive coordinator for the Giants, put Gifford on the other side of the ball as a flanker and running back. Plucking Gifford away from the defense helped Lombardi develop the famed "power sweep" which became the signature play for the  Green Bay Packers.

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