As the Wildcats wrapped up their fourth day of spring football practice on Tuesday in Lexington, new Kentucky offensive coordinator Liam Coen proclaimed he is not much of a "stat guy."
There is one figure, however, that he knows must grow significantly in 2021: touches for Chris Rodriguez.
The Cats' junior running back is coming off a season which saw him lead the talent-rich SEC in yards per carry at 6.60 -- nearly a full yard better than Alabama star Najee Harris -- but Rodriguez finished 11th in the league in carries with a modest 119 in 11 games.
Rodriguez also caught only one pass the entire season -- a 12-yard reception coming in the final regular-season game against South Carolina -- while Harris, hauled in 43 receptions for 425 yards to go along with his 251 rushing attempts.
One of the SEC's other top backs, Kevin Harris at South Carolina, had 185 carries and 21 receptions. Coen wants to put Rodriguez in their workload category.
"Chris Rodriguez needs to touch the ball as many times as possible, right?" Coen said with a laugh. "But I think it's my job and our job as an offensive staff to find different ways for him to touch the football opposed to just turning around and giving him the ball.
"We want to Chris over 25 touches per game, for sure, whether that's 25 runs or five (of them) catches."
Rodriguez has been training for an expanded role. The 5-foot-11, 224-pound Georgia native said Tuesday that he's changed his diet in an effort to get himself in the best physical condition.
Getting used the new playbook and the pass-catching responsibilities has been a challenge, Rodriguez added. "The toughest thing is probably the routes out of the backfield... We're doing a lot of different stuff."
Rodriguez likes the concept of catching more balls out of the backfield.
"Obviously, if you watch a lot of NFL, you see that those guys catch the ball out of the backfield a ton," he said. "I like it."
Coen conceded that it may be a challenge to keep all of UK's talented running backs active and involved. In addition to the expected workhorse in Rodriguez, expectations are high for Kavosiey Smoke, Travis Tisdale, JuTahn McClain, and Torrance Davis.
Utilizing the position group in the passing game may be the answer to keeping more players involved in the offense.
"We've got to be able to use these guys in the pass game," Coen said. "It's a talented group, and we need to get the ball in their hands as much as possible -- screens, jet sweeps, stuff like that. Get them out on the perimeter to be able to create some leverage and get the ball to our athletes in space. They just do such a nice job of making plays when they are in space, it's our job to get them the football as much as possible to create some different matchups for the defense."
Stat guy or not, the numbers support Coen's aspirations. During his 2020 season with the Los Angeles Rams, the running backs were targeted 71 times out of the backfield. The tight ends/H-backs were targeted an additional 112 times, accounting for 50.4% of the Rams' passing attempts.
By contrast, UK's running backs and tight ends caught only 33 of the Cats' 145 pass receptions (22.8%) in 2020.
