Turbin ready for the gridiron after a season away
It has been a rough year for Robert Turbin. Now, the fully-healed running back is preparing to make it a rough year for opposing defenses.
After tearing his anterior cruciate ligament and missing the entire 2010 football season, Utah State’s No. 1 offensive threat is ready to return to his dominant self. Turbin, a junior and team leader, hurt his knee early last year during spring practice. The initial plan was for Turbin to attempt to return for the conference portion of the schedule, but he ended up sitting out the remainder of the season to let his knee heal entirely. Now, as the Aggies enter the third year in the Gary Anderson era, Turbin is ready to revisit his record-setting ways.
Only halfway through his already impressive career as an Aggie, Turbin has put up some notable stats. In his two seasons, Turbin has displayed his consistency. With 1,798 career yards rushing, Turbin is the most recent player to gain over 1,500 yards on the ground since Emmett White, who graduated in 2001.
The dynamic athlete from Fremont, Calif., has also demonstrated his explosiveness as a ball carrier. Turbin owns the school record for the longest run from scrimmage, as he scored from 96 yards out against Utah in the 2009 season opener. Turbin has garnered respect from opposing coaches and players. In 2009 he was named second team all-Western Athletic Conference (WAC). However, in spite of his many awards and achievements, Turbin has one simple goal for the upcoming season.
“I just want to win the WAC,” he said. “Of course, I have individual goals in my own mind that I want to do, and individual accolades that I want to accomplish. But when I step on the field and when I get in the locker room, it’s about the team. As a team, we want to win the WAC championship. And then, we want to win whatever is after that.”
With spring practice underway, Turbin and the Aggie coaching staff are choosing to play it safe. So far, Turbin’s participation in full-contact scrimmages has been limited. The plan is to work Turbin into contact drills slowly, as he gets acclimated to taking and giving hits with his aggressive running style.
“In the short amount of practices and the short amount of live reps that we’ve seen, it’s been good to keep Robert Turbin out of a lot of things, just to keep him healthy,” said Aggie running backs coach Ilaisa Tuiaki. “We know what he can do, so we will just keep him healthy and bring him back in the fall.”
Turbin is aware the importance in not taking any chances on re-injuring himself.
“I guess (Anderson) just wants to keep some of the players safe,” he said. “Bobby (Wagner) is also limited, and he’s perfectly fine. We’re just trying to keep guys safe, because the most important part of this season is the season, it’s September and October. That is what we are working towards.”
While he has not been fully active in practice, that is not to say that Turbin has completely missed out on the physicality of the game that he loves.
“On the first day of pads, I got tackled when we were going nine-on-seven,” Turbin said. “Coach Anderson came up to me and said, ‘How did that feel, Turbin?’ and I said, ‘It felt pretty good. It felt regular.’ You know, it’s obviously a great feeling to be out here with the guys in full pads, just having fun.”
As spring practice continues, Turbin will fill two roles, one of which he developed last year. Turbin may not have been on the field in 2010, but he was definitely valuable to his football team. He spent the entire year as a player-coach, traveling with the team and mentoring the fleet of young Aggie running backs. Turbin will continue to guide his teammates this year, something Tuiaki is grateful for.
“The young guys look up to him,” Tuiaki said. “They can always turn to him in the game or out on the sideline for questions and everything. He is just another set of eyes for me.”
One of those young backs Turbin is mentoring is sophomore Robert Marshall, one of the players that filled in for Turbin last year.
“It’s still good, because last year he was still coaching us, but this year when he’s not in he is still coaching us,” Marshall said of Turbin. “He’s still doing his thing when he’s on the field, but when he’s off he is helping those guys that are off the field. He balances both the playing field and coaching us, so that he can do both.”
This year, Turbin will not have to be on the sideline to make his teammates better. His on-field example inspires his fellow Aggies to perform better.
“Every time that I am out there, I just look at him to get better,” Marshall said. “Looking at him is like a blessing in disguise, because while he’s doing his thing, it feels like I’m out there doing it. Whatever he does, it just motivates me to do better as well as the other guys. We just look at him to bring us along because he is a veteran. He knows what he is doing, and he knows how the system should be ran. It’s a good thing to have (Turbin) back out there.”
With more than 140 days before he will take the field against defending national champions the Auburn Tigers on Saturday, Sept. 3, Turbin has a lot of time to prepare. Already a force to be reckoned with, Turbin is looking to improve each and every day.
“As an individual, the thing I want to focus on the most is being consistent. We have 15 practices in the spring, and I want to make sure that I am better on day 15 than I was on day one,” he said.
–w.mangum@aggiemail.usu.edu