UW Football | Rankin off to another flashy start

Louis Rankin has been here before.

Fresh off a 100-yard rushing game in the opener, crowds of reporters the following Monday asking if this is finally the year he will break out.

It's happened three years in a row now.

The last two, the party pretty much ended right there for the Washington running back.

In 2005, Rankin ran for 112 yards in the opener, but only 373 yards the rest of the way, battling a toe injury. In 2006, he led the Pac-10 in rushing after two weeks, but had barely more than 400 yards the rest of the season, finishing with 666.

But this, says Rankin — who rushed for a career-high 147 yards against Syracuse on Friday — feels different.

"I feel like if I get the ball like I did last game, that those are some of the things I can do every game," he said. "That's an average game for me. I feel like I can do a lot better than that."

And he's not the only one.

This, everyone seems to agree, is finally Rankin's time.

"He's maturing," said UW running backs coach Trent Miles. "The longer you are doing it, the more you are doing it, the better you are going to get."

Rankin, a 6-foot, 205-pound senior, is in the best shape of his life; he won the team's conditioning test on the first day of fall camp.

He also feels more comfortable in the team's offense, which features several new spread-option wrinkles that not only perfectly suit the talents of quarterback Jake Locker but also those of Rankin, allowing him more opportunities to get free on the outside.

"That was a lot of room I had against Syracuse," he said. "I can't think of a game where there has been that much room."

The only question now is what happens when the room closes in just a bit.

Nobody has questioned Rankin's ability to run outside, something he honed during his years at Lincoln High School in Stockton, Calif., where he set a city record for touchdowns in a season with 41. But most of those came out of Lincoln's wing-T offense.

"It was run wide and outrun everybody," Miles said of Rankin's high-school offense.

Running inside and running over anybody didn't happen too often, and old habits can be hard to break.

On several occasions last season, Rankin got the ball in short-yardage situations and failed to get the needed yardage, sometimes because he was too quick to bounce the play outside rather than plow straight ahead.

That's not something UW coaches think will be a problem anymore. Lots of time spent in the film room helped reinforce for Rankin the value of going straight ahead.

"He's making a concerted effort to run behind his pads and just press it in there and put his foot down and get vertical," Miles said.

Rankin agrees that his decision-making is better, saying "that comes with experience" but he thinks the problem wasn't quite as great as sometimes portrayed.

"I looked back and some of the runs I made, I felt like I didn't make a good decision," he said. "But some of the runs I felt like I did make a good decision. I stand by some of the decisions I made, even though people didn't agree with them."

In fact, he said he spent a little too much time the past few years worrying what others were saying.

"It used to hurt," he said. "A lot of times I used to let it get to me and I would try to do something different, and then I'd look back on film and say, 'Man, I should have went back to doing what I was doing in the first place.' "

So Rankin isn't completely giving up the old ways — just trying to pick his spots better. Proof came Friday when he took a pitch and ran to the left, appearing hemmed in for about a 7-yard loss, then evaded a tackler and sprinted to the right for a 17-yard gain that helped jump-start the offense.

"It's no different than the guy who shoots the 35-footer and the [basketball] coach is over there saying, 'No, no, no. Yes,' " said UW coach Tyrone Willingham. "That's what all of sports is. You want your athletes to be disciplined but yet comfortable enough to take advantage of an opportunity. And that's what he did."

Rankin, once known as a quiet player who rarely spoke, also is emerging as a team leader. He gave an impassioned talk at halftime with UW ahead of Syracuse 14-3, imploring teammates not to relax. They didn't, going on to a 42-12 win.

"This is my senior year and I feel like I'm not looking to anyone else to get this team going," he said. "I feel like, if I have something to say, I have to say it."

Note

• There are still "a couple thousand" tickets left for Saturday's game, UW officials said.