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USF Football: 5 breakout players to watch in 2018

By Ryan T. Smith

BIRMINGHAM, AL - DECEMBER 23: Head coach Charlie Strong of the South Florida Bulls gathers his team around the championship trophy following the Birmingham Bowl against the Texas Tech Red Raiders at Legion Field on December 23, 2017 in Birmingham, Alabama. South Florida won 38-34. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
BIRMINGHAM, AL - DECEMBER 23: Head coach Charlie Strong of the South Florida Bulls gathers his team around the championship trophy following the Birmingham Bowl against the Texas Tech Red Raiders at Legion Field on December 23, 2017 in Birmingham, Alabama. South Florida won 38-34. (Photo by Joe Robbins/Getty Images) /
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South Florida football is gearing up for another strong season, but it’ll need some breakout candidates to step up. Who are those top candidates?

After going a combined 21-4 over the past two seasons, the South Florida Bulls have arrived at a bit of a crossroads. They’ve lost half of the starters from last year’s ten-win team to graduation, including all-everything quarterback Quinton Flowers, and second-year head coach Charlie Strong will be relying more on his own recruits and less on Willie Taggart’s.

With great change comes great opportunity, though, and many young players who were buried on the depth chart in 2017 will get a chance to shine this season.

Here are five breakout candidates for the Bulls in 2018 — all players who didn’t start last year but have a good chance to be first-stringers when week one rolls around.

Heading into the offseason, it was widely assumed that the battle to replace D’Ernest Johnson and Darius Tice in the Bulls’ backfield would be a two-horse race. Junior Trevon Sands was the next man up on the depth chart and ran for 111 yards in 2017, and Florida transfer Jordan Cronkrite had chipped in 511 total yards in two seasons with the Gators and was a scout team standout during his transfer year.

In the words of the immortal Lee Corso, not so fast! Spring ball came and went and left us with a new frontrunner for the lion’s share of the carries in 2018 — previously little-used redshirt sophomore Elijah Mack.

On paper, this makes sense. Though Mack found himself buried on the depth chart his freshman season, he was a mid-three star prospect out of high school with offers from Power Five programs like Arizona and Indiana. Perhaps most importantly, he’s a bruiser at 6-1, 225 lbs. who fits the mold of the workhorse back that offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert craves for his power running game.

Cronkrite, and perhaps Sands, will still see plenty of action in the fall, but Mack appears to be the man to beat for the starting job. And it’s not difficult to see why.

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