In college football, you get to see future NFL stars match up against future accountants and data analysts. And that’s exactly what we got last Saturday when Ashton Gentry faced off against Georgia Southern’s defense. Gentry runs counter on the second play of the game, and this defensive end is going to try to box this run in, taking on the puller with his inside arm and keeping his outside hand free to make a tackle. He is trying to force this back in to his inside help. The problem is the linebacker over pursues the safety, comes down outside as well, and there is no inside help, allowing Gentry to just be elusive in space. I like how he’s able to take away his near hip here while remaining at speed to reduce the surface area for the safety to hit. He runs by the first man, absorbs a hit from the second, keeps his legs churning, and then switches the ball to his other hand to employ a stiff arm on the final guy to make miss. And he’s dancing in the end zone. On this particular play, there are only six Georgia’s Southern defenders in the box against seven gaps. The defensive end is going to lodge himself inside this B gap with a swim move, leaving the edge to be set by a safety. Coming from depth. It is nearly impossible to do this against a future potential first round pick. Successfully. On second and sixth. Gentry is not even touched until he is five yards down the field. It gets even worse a few plays later. Southern employs a three high safety defense. There are 1, 2, three blockers right of center with only two people in the box on that side. The linebacker takes the A gap, the defensive end the B, and then there are two sides of the tight end that are defended by secondary players. The corner setting the edge in the E gap, and then the safety in the middle running the alley to try to defend the C. Gentry is untouched going to the second level. Of course. He makes the safety look silly and then just runs to open space. Crazy elusiveness. Good blocking by the wide receivers to finish this play. Touchdown! And Georgia Southern never really had a good chance. Once again here, the defensive end is spiking inside the B gap, leaving the edge to be set by a safety against one of the Heisman favorites. And Gentry is just so good at getting the ball to that outside hand and using his inside one to ward off defenders when he’s bouncing this to the sideline. He has an absolutely deadly stiff arm that he shows off here. He takes off down the sideline to pick up a chunk play in a first down. This is a similar split zone play. The 3 tech gets some penetration, but Gentry is able to cut back the Linebackers aren’t in position, and he’s able to use that stiff arm once, twice, three times on his way inside the 15 yard line. This is the last play I’ll show. It’s similar to plays I’ve showed before. It’s split zone with the tight end working across the formation to kick out this backside linebacker. The linebacker tries to box this in, keeping his outside hand free and trying to force this inside to his help, which is the safety. But the safety is slow to react to the cutback. And Gentry has the Jets here taking this all the way for another 70 yard touchdown in this game to cap off what was a masterful performance. Although it’s pretty hard to come away with any real NFL takeaways here, because you will never, ever see run fits that are this bad at the NFL level. All you can really take away from it is how fast and elusive, uh, Jente looks. But really, next week versus Oregon is when we’ll get to see the true caliber of running back that he is. If he can go north and south, make plays between the tackles, instead of making everything a track race down the sideline like he could versus Georgia State, Georgia Southern.