Doug Farrar: I wanted to discuss this two-play sequence against BYU in the 2019 season opener because it shows your acceleration. And with most big guys who break tackles, the narrative tends to become that you’re just mauling people and you don’t have second-level speed. This would seem to contradict that. Take me through these plays, and what you’re doing.
Zack Moss: This was late in the half, and I was able to find creases. They were playing a lot of soft coverage, thinking that we were going to throw before the end of the half, and that’s the first play. We just took advantage. That was my first game back from the injury, I had been trying to find my rhythm, and that run pretty much set me up for the rest of the night. It made me feel good about what I was doing.
The second run, that was a simple counter play out of power. I was following the tight end there, just reading my blocks and letting my guys make my life a little bit easier. I try to finish all my runs in a dominating fashion.
DF: One thing that comes up in a lot of your runs is your ability to twist out of tackles. You’re not just bowling people over; you have some agility and body control here. You seem to anticipate the tackling angle.
ZM: I try to be as nimble as possible; I think I have pretty good feet. That gets me out and lets me do a lot of things. I continue to develop that, but I think it’s one of the better things I do.
DF: And as you said, you let your blocks develop here, but then, you can blast off, and it’s one-cut-and-go.
ZM: Yeah. You don’t want to be tip-toeing through holes or waiting too long. You want to be a one-cut back. All the great guys who have played the position were one-cut guys. Once you start dancing, you get in trouble. It’s a belief that you just have to hit it as hard as you can.
DF: Here, we have multiple broken tackles against USC, and it’s a nice combination of you stopping at the line and re-reading what to do, and blasting through once you’ve decided. Almost a Le’Veon Bell thing. When you pause there, what are you reading? What are your thoughts?
ZM: The first read I made was to go outside, because through that whole game, they weren’t playing with any edge defenders. We picked up on that pretty quickly. But the defensive end on this play, the three-technique, decided to jump outside, and he took my first read away. You re-think it really fast on the jump. I saw my tackle’s butt, and how he was turning in, and I went inside of his block. Like I said, once you get past that one cut, if you overthink it, you can get in trouble. And I was able to break a lot of tackles with the momentum I was carrying.
DF: How do you maintain ball security when you’re moving through all this?
ZM: That starts in practice, with our coaches harping on us. You also have to have an awareness to be able to carry the ball that many times — you feel the defenders and how close they are to you. Keep the ball as close to your chest as you can.
DF: About 10 yards out on this play, you’re spun completely backward. How do you re-set your body and get back up to speed so quickly?
ZM: Honestly, I really don’t know. When you’re doing it, and then you go back and try to explain it… it’s like trying to talk about a jump shot. It’s difficult to pinpoint everything, but when I realized that I was still upright, it was just about getting back to going north and south.
DF: Let’s stay with USC and turn to the passing game. What kinds of routes did you run most of the time at Utah? Did you wind up running a full route tree?
ZM: As a senior, I did. I went through three different offensive coordinators, so every year, it was something different in what they asked us to do in catching the ball. My senior year, we ran a lot more routes, and I was asked to catch a lot more passes, and my numbers went back up to what they were in my sophomore year. Usually, it was just screen and swing passes, under routes, and little curl routes. I just tried to make the best of them, as much as I possibly could.
DF: This play is a good example of the two different ways it’s a pain in the butt to tackle you. First, you knock No. 35 on his ear, and I wouldn’t want to be him. And then, that little stutter-step downfield against No. 25, safety Briton Allen. Tell me about that open-field move, and what you were reacting to.
ZM: I definitely was thinking, once I broke 35’s tackle, of what I was going to do next. The stick move was just something that felt like it could be the best thing, because it felt like he was over-running it a bit, and maybe he believed I was just going to run right by him. So, sticking him and getting back to the other side of him just felt like the best move at the time.
DF: Since he’s coming at you from the boundary, could there have been a thought to turn back up to the middle of the field?
ZM: No, the thought there was to continue to stay with my blockers. They did a good job of trying to pin those guys inside, so when I did the stick move, it was more me trying to give a head fake and get back to the sideline.
DF: Here’s another play against USC, and here’s 25 again. He probably doesn’t like you very much. But what I want to talk about here is the quickness to shift gaps with authority. You see No. 94 crashing inside, and you don’t hesitate to bounce it outside and get back up to speed.
ZM: This is just an inside zone play. Usually, you don’t ever get to the front door on these kinds of plays, but I was able to get to the front door, get a quick jump cut, and have a quick burst to get north and south.
DF: So, 94 kicks through to your right, and is that the point where you bounce?
ZM: Yeah, he pretty much destroyed the whole play. Inside zone plays will usually hit exactly where he came through, to the backside of the center. But he blew up the guard and was able to squeeze through. Thankfully, he tripped up a little bit. and I was able to get away from him.
DF: Your left tackle and left guard seal this up well on the backside, but I’m always curious with running backs — with all that chaos going on, how you see that in the moment?
ZM: For one, you always want to know what type of front you’re running against. If it’s a three-down or four-down front (three or four down linemen), that will let you know a lot of things. It allows you to slow down the thinking process, and it lets you just play the game at a faster rate. I was able to ID the front — it was a four-down front with one ‘backer inside. They were playing a lot of nickel defense, and usually against a four-down, our guard and our center have to combo block and get up to the linebacker. But since the ‘backer blitzed, and he pretty much ate himself up, it created that big gap.
DF: This long run against Idaho State might be my favorite play I’ve seen from you. First, and I’ve seen you do this more than once, the spin move to get out of trouble right at the line of scrimmage. You’ve developed this into a good way of eliminating potentially negative plays. Then, you run past just about everybody, and then, when it’s time to go out of bounds, you don’t. You face up to the DB here and start to rumble. Tell me about all the components of this.
ZM: [The spin move] is just instinct. A lot of the running back position is just played off of instinct. I already kind of felt the guy coming, and the spin move back against gravity, especially with how hard he was pushing against the play, seemed like the best move. That was probably the only move that would allow me to go ahead and make a play for our offense. Like I said, I love to make sure I finish my runs in a dominating fashion each and every time I touch the ball. There are not a lot of clips where you’ll see me running out of bounds. His leverage was to push me out of bounds and to try and keep me away from the touchdown, and running into him was the only thing that was going to allow me to get those few extra yards. They ended up ruling that out of bounds at the one-yard line, but I could have been ruled out at the five or six or whatever if I didn’t lower my shoulder into him.
DF: Do you think your speed is underrated?
ZM: Yeah, but I have a good opportunity to go out this upcoming week and show what I’m able to do. I actually like it being underrated right now.
DF: What do you think you’ll run in the 40?
ZM: I’m hoping somewhere in the low 4.5s or the high 4.4s. I’m just happy for the opportunity.
DF: Well, here’s where you pick up that touchdown. You scored 15 of them on the ground in 2019, and this was a common theme — blowing people up to and through the end zone. This isn’t quite Earl Campbell on Isaiah Robertson violence, but it did remind me of that.
ZM: You know, it’s the one-yard line. I don’t do any looking for an extra hole or dancing the majority of the time; I’m getting north and south as fast as I can. I want to maximize every opportunity I get to score a touchdown, especially in the red zone. The offensive line did a great job of opening up a big hole for me, and that allowed me to stay on the path I was already on. The guy filled the gap, and a lot of guys won’t turn that down. A lot of guys will. I had a guy who wanted to turn it down, and the way he tried to turn down that play pretty much speaks to how I play. That’s what goes through their minds every week when they line up against me.
DF: I’m going to assume you believe yourself to be the best running back in this class. Why is this so?
ZM: I believe that I do a lot of good things on the part of my game. I am the most well-rounded guy, with a lot of growth still to come. I’m a student first. I’m always going to count on myself, and I’m always going to bet on myself, and I believe I’m the best back for teams to pick.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”