Vikings trio trades carries for wins

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VALPARAISO -- The cliches are coming fast and furious now, an endless barrage of team-first this and all-about-the-W that. They're tossing around words like love and family the way most football players toss around unintelligible grunts and profanity-laden trash talk.

Standing in the training room, side-by-side (might as well be arm-in-arm, skipping down a yellow-brick road) surrounded by court-jester teammates trying to break their concentration and cause a slip-up, these three guys -- the Hombres, they're known as -- are unflappable. They stick to the stump speech.

You've heard it all before, of course. They don't care about numbers, just wins. They don't care about the spotlight, just state. Team. Family. Love.

Ugh.

It's maddening. Borderline saccharin -- just sickeningly sweet.

This isn't what you came here for. You came looking for conflict. For disgruntled, disrespected, displeased teenage angst. For ego clashes and temper tantrums and closed-door shouting matches.

Too bad.

Won't find it here. Not at Valparaiso. Not in this backfield.

Sorry, but you've stumbled into a feel-good story.

You've found three guys without egos, three guys without conflict, three guys who could probably start for a lot of teams and put up some gaudy numbers as feature backs, but who are perfectly content to spread the wealth.

Honestly.

Vikings senior Eric Jackson and juniors Nick Thompson and Michael Perkins -- the Hombres, or Amigos, or Banditos, or Tostitos or Cheetos or something; coach Mark Hoffman can never remember -- have Valparaiso's offense averaging a ridiculous 271 rushing yards per game.

Jackson's averaging nearly 7 yards per carry and is closing in on 1,000 yards for the season. Thompson is averaging 8 yards a carry and could easily be a 1,000-yard rusher if he got more than 10 carries a game. And Perkins? This guy's running for nearly 11 yards every time he touches the ball -- but he only touches the ball five or six times a game because he plays defense and special teams, too.

You can't help but imagine what he could do with 25 carries a game -- what any of them could.

You can't. But they don't.

Honestly.

The only number they're concerned with is the number of wins the Vikings have -- and right now, that's nine. The goal is five more and a state championship.

After all, no matter who does the heavy lifting, they'd each get a ring.

"We don't care," Thompson says.

Really?

"Really," Perkins chimes in.

Really? Come on.

"Really," Jackson adds.

Why not? You're kids, you're teenagers, you're supposed to be all about you. Why wouldn't you want all the carries all the time?

"Because we wouldn't be winning," Jackson says. "There's no doubt in my mind, we wouldn't be winning."

One for all, not all for one

Let Jackson explain. He's good at clearing things up -- fifth in his class, after all. "He's Coach Hoffman on the field," Perkins says. When the other guys are in the game, Jackson's usually found somewhere near Hoffman, ready to correct him at any moment.

The first time Jackson played the majority of snaps, the Vikings had to call timeout twice in the first two minutes.

"They were calling in the plays wrong," Jackson says. "We were joking, 'If I was there, I would have corrected you, Coach!' "

Hoffman doesn't deny it.

"Eric straightens me out sometimes," he says. "He's the brilliant guy."

It's those smarts that have made Jackson a standout tailback -- having rushed for 948 yards and nine touchdowns as a third-year starter -- despite his unimposing 160-pound frame.

"I'm not really the fastest or the biggest, but that's one thing I've always had over people -- I've just been smarter than them," he says.

Thompson quickly jumps in, unable to resist a quick bit of mocking.

"I'm smarter than them!" he says, in a haughty voice.

Jackson smiles, shakes his head, then continues.

"I know physically I'm not better than them, but I can out-think them," he says. "I read my cuts quicker, and a lot of the times I'm moving people around to where they should be to make sure a play works."

It helps that Thompson and Perkins are both ace students, too. And that the offensive line has a remarkable four potential academic all-staters paving the way. So everyone can be counted on -- to make the right reads, and also to be on the field each week.

"We're never worried about guys being eligible on this team because of grades," Perkins says.

But anyway, back to Jackson's comment that the Vikings wouldn't be winning without the Hombres sharing the ball. It's not just because Valparaiso always has a fresh set of legs in there, though that helps. It's not just because each has a different style of running, though that helps, too.

No, here's the way Jackson explains it -- if there were competition for carries, it wouldn't serve as motivation, but rather foster dissension.

And that leads to losses. Jackson knows. He's seen it before.

"In the past, we've had a team of individuals," he says. "This is the first team I've been on where everybody's working as one -- and it's noticeable.

"If you look back two years ago when I was a sophomore, I was surrounded by great athletes -- they were faster than us (the current backfield trio), bigger than us, and all across the board they were physically better than us. But they weren't as successful as us, and that's because all of them were individuals, looking out for themselves rather than playing for the team. There can be a lot of greed when you're playing for the individual, when you're trying to showcase yourself rather than do what's best for the team."

So a situation like this one -- with three standout running backs and only one ball to go around -- just wouldn't have worked.

More talent, more problems.

"One person would have wanted all the carries, and we'd be down each others' throats all the time," Jackson says. "You don't win like that."

The more, the merrier

OK, so imagine you're Michael Perkins. You're a move-in from California, heading Midwest-ward right after your sophomore season ended to follow your dad, who got a job as a minister in Valparaiso.

You've already met Thompson -- an accomplished back and teammate -- at the REPS camp. You haven't met Jackson, who spent much of the offseason losing 30 pounds in a bout with mono, but you know all about him. He's going to be a three-year starter, after all.

Sure, you can run a sub-11-second 100-meterdash. You're an incredible athlete. You know it. So do your new coaches and teammates.

But you're new. You're stunned by all the weight-lifting these guys do -- morning and night, nothing like the easy summers in California. You've been running a relatively simple offense, not a complicated, wide-ranging multiple scheme like Valparaiso's.

It's the first day of offensive practice, and you don't know what the heck is going on.

"I was so confused," Perkins says. "I'm thinking, 'Man, I don't know what to do, what am I gonna do?' And then I see Nick and Eric come out, and they're probably thinking, 'Yeah, that guy's not going to get any carries, it's going to be our year.' "

Thompson knows how that's supposed to go, how it normally goes.

"If this were a team of individuals," he says, "Eric and I might look at each other and say, 'Look, Mike doesn't know what he's doing. Let's keep it that way.'"

But it wasn't like that. Not at all.

Honestly.

"They took me under their wing," Perkins says. "That first day, they're like, 'You don't want to do that, that's the wrong way. You want to step over here and do this.' And I was like, OK, maybe they really want to look out for me. Maybe they want to help me so I can help the team. And over the season, I saw that it was basically a big family. This team is our big family, our big football family. But this is our own personal family, the three of us, the Hombres. I love these guys."

Bottom-feeders turned favorites

There it is again. Family. Love. Team. That's about the 10th time in 10 minutes, now.

Sure, it's still a little too sweet, a little too happy -- remember, you came looking for hatred and angst.

But now, you believe it. You realize it's not clichés, it's not a stump speech. It's how they really feel. It's what they truly believe.

They're not frustrated about splitting carries. They're not clashing egos behind closed doors. They're not harboring secret grudges. Thompson and Perkins won't be wielding tire irons instead of batons as they run track in the spring, with Jackson's vacated carries dangling there like a carrot.

Honestly.

And why wouldn't it be that way? This was a team picked by most to finish seventh or eighth in the eight-team Duneland Conference. A team that was supposed to be an utter afterthought.

And here the Vikings are, 9-1, Duneland co-champs, preparing to host Chesterton in the second round of sectionals tonight, hoping to avenge their only loss -- maybe even the favorites to win not just the sectional, but the regional, too. They opened the season with a win over Penn, after all.

So, yes, the Hombres are doing just fine, thank you, no matter what the stat sheets say. And that's not about to change -- especially not as long as the Vikings keep winning.

"We definitely play a lot of teams that are more athletic than us and better than us, but I don't think any team can compare to us as a team," Jackson says. "I've been on football teams, basketball teams, track teams -- but this is the first team that's truly been about the team. We all love each other, we all look out for each other, we're all in this together."

And they'll stay that way, side-by-side, arm-in-arm, skipping merrily down the yellow, er, green-brick road -- maybe, if all goes well, all the way to Indianapolis.

Contact Mark Lazerus at 648-3140 or mlazerus@post-trib.com