It didn't exactly come out of nowhere. After all, the Louisiana Ragin' Cajun football team did rush for 1,680 yards last season, its highest total since 1995.
But nobody - not the Cajun coaches, the players, the fans and for sure the Cajun opponents - expected what's happened this year.

What's happened is a program that had built a reputation for wide-open aerial attacks suddenly shifted gears at midstream. The Cajuns are (gasp) running the ball, and doing it with shocking effectiveness.

A big change? Staunch Republicans turn Democratic more often. Anakin Skywalkers become Darth Vaders on a more regular basis.
UL averaged 30 pass attempts a game in its first four outings, and hasn't come close to that since. The Cajuns had under 200 yards rushing in three of their first four games, and they now rank seventh nationally on the ground.

"I didn't expect it to be this big a change," said Cajun head coach Rickey Bustle. "But the guys love it. Every offensive lineman and every running back wants to run it right at people."

That's not precisely what the Cajuns have done. Instead of running right at people, they're running by, around and past them, all thanks to an apparently magic formula called the zone option.

Option football?

Don't knock it until you try it, apparently.

The Cajuns have rushed for 2,454 yards in their first 10 games, the most of any season in school history. In the last five games alone, they've totaled 1,815 rush yards. They're averaging 5.2 yards per tote - 6.3 in the last five games, when they've scored 19 of their 28 rushing touchdowns.

Freshman running back Tyrell Fenroy could become the school's all-time single-season leader among running backs Saturday when UL plays its all-or-nothing season finale at UL Monroe. Cajun quarterbacks Jerry Babb and Michael Desormeaux have rushed for a combined 778 yards. All three are averaging 5.6 yards per carry.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com