Jones looking to rebound after fumbles
UCLA freshman running back Malcolm Jones will look to put his recent fumbles behind him this week as the Bruins take on the Longhorns in Austin on Saturday.
By Eli Smukler
Sept. 23, 2010 1:21 a.m.
It’s the walk back to your own sideline that’s the worst.
Momentum is the fuel of a football team and when you fumble away the football, you drain the gas tank that every one of your teammates has worked hard to fill up. Then, you have to go and face them.
“It really gets in your head sometimes during the game,” UCLA freshman running back Malcolm Jones said. “Going back to the sideline, knowing you lost the ball for the offense (and) that the defense has to go back on the field. It’s kind of tough to watch them play.”
Jones fumbled the ball twice in UCLA’s game against Houston last week at the Rose Bowl.
Thankfully for him, his teammates had already posted a two-touchdown lead that held out for a 31-13 Bruin victory, but those fumbles are tough to deal with at any time.
“That is the original f-word,” running backs coach Wayne Moses said.
And he’s serious, too. Moses doesn’t use the word while being interviewed.
“It saps your team’s energy,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
Yet it happens, even to the best, and it always hurts.
In his first two games wearing the blue and gold, Jones showed promise.
As a freshman, it is difficult to quickly adjust to the speed of college ball, even if you were the Gatorade National High School Player of the Year as a senior at Oaks Christian as Jones was.
But despite UCLA’s feeble overall offensive effort in a 35-0 loss to Stanford in week two, Jones managed to post 52 yards on seven carries, including a 20-yard run that got the Bruins into the red zone for the only time that game.
That’s not a bad performance for the team’s supposed third-string runner.
But Saturday against Houston, Jones had moved up to the No. 2 spot on the depth chart while UCLA’s opening day starter, junior Derrick Coleman, was out with a concussion.
“I think I put a little too much pressure on myself, knowing that I was the No. 2,” Jones said. “I think I was trying too hard to really stick out.”
It would have taken quite a lot for anyone to stand out next to redshirt sophomore Johnathan Franklin’s 158-yard, three-touchdown performance. But Jones’ humble 29 yards on 12 carries were made worse by the fumbles, which came at key points in the game.
“You can’t put the ball on the ground, particularly in that situation,” Moses said. “There isn’t a good time to do it, but those times were killers.”
Redshirt junior linebacker Akeem Ayers’ second quarter interception at the Bruins’ own end zone was a huge momentum lift for UCLA, and his subsequent 77-yard return put the offense in a great position to score. But on the next play, Jones ran seven yards with the ball and then another without it because a Cougar defender had stripped it from his grasp.
Then, at the end of the third quarter, UCLA redshirt sophomore linebacker Patrick Larimore forced a Houston fumble that was recovered on the Cougars’ 16-yard line ““ prime real estate for the Bruins, who were looking to put the game away.
But just two plays later, Jones lost the ball again, and this time Houston turned the drive into a touchdown at the other end of the field.
As detrimental as the fumble is, it’s not an easy thing to eliminate.
“It’s not like I don’t know how to hold the ball right,” Jones said.
“The (other) players have been trying to comfort me and tell me not to worry about it. It happens to everybody. So, I’ve just been working on keeping the ball high and tight and making sure it doesn’t get loose anymore.”
One of those players was Franklin himself, who struggled so much with fumbles last season that he carried a football around with him on campus and challenged his teammates to try and strip him of it.
It may have worked: Franklin has not lost a ball so far this season.
For Jones, this is just one of the many lessons he will learn on the run as a true freshman in a position of necessity for the Bruins.
“He’s just got to grow up fast,” Moses said. “We all know he’s a young guy and all that, but the facts are that nobody really cares that you’re a young guy. If we give you the ball, you’ve got to take care of it because your teammates are expecting you to.”
For what it’s worth, feeling that responsibility to his team appears to be something Malcolm Jones has got a tight grip on.
