The Darkest Age of the Fullback: How football’s most hard-nosed position has become an endangered species (2024)

Logan Horton is a relic. He’s a young relic, born a generation too late, a football player perfectly built for a bygone era. Sitting in front of his computer at home in Oregon, he not only knows this, he embraces it. He uploads video highlights from his junior season to his Hudl recruiting profile, reliving plays that bring to mind black-and-white slo-mo footage on NFL Films, with John Facenda narrating:

The rising senior from the great northwest lowers his shoulder and cuts down a defender like a ponderosa pine, his Jesuit High teammate behind him … The brute of a back pulls left and looks for his target on the edge. He seeks to destroy — then does so to alarming effect … No job is too small, no defender too big for the bodyguard of the backfield. The quarterback scrambles, his eyes downfield and not on the linebacker closing fast. Luckily, his fullback is always on the watch, ready to lower the boom.

Horton snaps back into the silence of his room and pushes the upload button. Then the recruiting reel sits and waits to be watched.

The fullback position has always been the face of hard-nosed offense, capturing the imagination of fans with grainy clips of the Colts’ Alan Ameche scoring from the one in the 1958 NFL Championship Game, or of Larry Csonka brutalizing defenses on the undefeated 1972 Dolphins. The position stayed relevant in the video game era, as young fans mashed the B-Button with Tom Rathman in Tecmo Bowl, or used Larry Centers, once the second-highest-rated running back in Madden, on a short crossing route. It was a given: Football needed fullbacks.

Then it didn’t.

For a decade the position has diminished on all levels of the game, from high school on up to the NFL: Fewer prep fullbacks earn scholarships; fewer college stars get NFL combine invites — and the only one who did this year had a painful wait during the draft; fewer NFL teams even list the position on their roster. Blame the spread. Curse the RPO. Shake your head at the concussion crisis. There is no one cause of the fullbacks’ demise.

Perhaps no player symbolizes the plight of the fullback better than Horton. He is one of only two fullbacks listed in the entire 247Sports database for the 2020 class. Both are two-stars. By comparison, the highest-rated long-snapper has a scholarship to Notre Dame.

Horton dreams of playing for Notre Dame’s rival, Stanford. But the Cardinal haven’t offered. In fact, the nation’s top-rated fullback recruit has exactly zero FBS offers. Yet he still loves being a fullback, even though it’s …

“Dying off,” Horton says, finishing the sentence.

Happy hour at Primanti Brothers in State College, Pa., is crowded with Penn State alums and fratters downing the “almost famous” sandwiches: an eight-inch stack of grilled meat, cheese, tomatoes, coleslaw and french fries, all jammed between two slices of Italian bread. The sandwich is almost as famous as the faces on the restaurant’s hand-painted mural of Nittany Lion history. But on fall Thursday nights, like this one in 2017, the sandwiches and drink specials take second billing. Tonight, head coach football James Franklin and Steve Jones, the voice of the Nittany Lions, are perched on stools and miked up for the weekly coaches’ radio show.

The very scene evokes change in Happy Valley. This show used to be held at a barbecue joint outside of town, well off campus. But when Franklin arrived in 2014, the event soon moved here to Primanti’s, which itself had just replaced a legendary student watering hole, The Gingerbread Man. Now a block from campus, the show is held across the street from the largest construction project this town has ever seen, a multi-use 12-story building. Even at tradition-bound Penn State, change is inevitable.

On this night, Franklin is dealing with a transition more difficult for Penn Staters than any closed down bar or mammoth construction site: The disappearance of the fullback from the offense. Fans and media have relentlessly asked Franklin and his coaches about it. Finally fed up, the coach turns on the sarcasm as he addresses his audience.

“Just so we’re clear, just so I never get asked this question again, we will line up under center, we will have four fullbacks in the game and we will run that the entire game,” Franklin says.

There is laughter. Then Franklin gets serious.

“We are not going under center, we are not using a fullback,” he says. “We need to get more efficient at what we’re doing.”

This is late September in 2017. Saquon Barkley is on his way to his third straight 1,000-yard rushing season and coming off a 211-yard game against Iowa. But some hardcore Lion fans are still dissatisfied. In June, someone had tweeted at then-Penn State receivers coach Josh Gattis: “The offense would have even more balance if we utilized fullbacks, how about we recruit one??”

Gattis’ reply: “To block who? A LB you just brought in the box bc U no longer have a 3rd WR?

Why put an 18 wheeler in front of a Ferrari & ask it to go fast!”

To drive home his point, Gattis then posted a photo of a big rig under a sign that read “no trucks left lane.” His point was clear: Fullbacks are unwieldy. They get in the way. They are outdated.

This movement away from the fullback is happening all over the country, at all levels. Never mind the passing offenses that take a fullback off the field to line up with an extra receiver. Even run-oriented offenses don’t want fullbacks. Georgia head coach Kirby Smart is only 43 but is old school when it comes to moving the ball. He is a physical offense guy. But what is he not?

“I’m not a fullback guy,” Smart said, speaking a few years back at a fan function.

What do you mean, Smart was asked later by reporters who were used to seeing fullbacks open holes for Herschel Walker, Knowshon Moreno, Todd Gurley and countless others?

“It means I’m not a fullback guy,” Smart said.

He paused a second for emphasis.

“What does a fullback do?” Smart asked a reporter.

Mostly blocks. Sometimes catches passes.

“What does a tight end do?” Smart replied. “Same.”

As it turned out Smart did use a fullback his first two years at Georgia, having inherited Christian Payne, who cleared the way for Sony Michel and Nick Chubb to make many of their big runs on the way to the national championship game. But when Payne’s career was finished after the 2017 season, so was the fullback at Georgia.

But surely there are holdouts among coaches. One must be Frank Solich, a prototype fullback at Nebraska a half-century ago. He went on to coach great fullbacks there like Rathman, Andra Franklin and Cory Schlesinger — pile drivers on Huskers squads that won 12 conference titles and national championships during his 24-year tenure as an assistant and head coach.

So a call is placed to that other Athens, where Solich, now 70, is the coach of Ohio University. Solich, who also runs the Bobcats offense, is asked how he uses the position that has been so important in his life and career.

“We have not brought fullbacks into our system for some time now,” says Solich.

Oh.

“When I first got here we ran a lot of what Nebraska was running and had some success with it, and a true fullback position,” says Solich. “But what offenses have gone to is really replacing the fullback with tight ends. So you can kind of have your cake and eat it too, where you have a better receiver in a tight end.”

Is it sad, as someone who played the position?

“Not really,” Solich says, with a chuckle. “In my career, I had a hairline fracture in my ankle, a shoulder surgery and knee surgery. It doesn’t sadden me that those guys don’t have as many of those.”

And that’s the other factor, the unspoken one: safety awareness, especially of head injuries, has made parents less eager to let their kids play the sport, much less at a position that often resembles a battering ram with a face mask.

But the ultimate reasons have to do with offensive style and the economics of roster management.

The change has happened so gradually that few have noticed. The last offensive revolution of the 20th century — the West Coast offense, and its passing emphasis — actually popularized the fullback even more. Without ever rushing for 1,000 yards, road pavers like Rathman, William Floyd and Daryl Johnston became household names, at least in football households. When Emmitt Smith was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he asked Johnston, his longtime fullback, to stand up in the crowd, then said: “Without you, I know today would not have been possible.”

But then came the Air Raid, devised by Hal Mumme and Mike Leach, popularized by their coaching tree and adopted by countless other coaches. Among its core principles: use that third receiver instead of a fullback. The spread offense spawned followed by the RPO (run-pass option) craze, which puts a value on quick decisions and thus doesn’t require a fullback to lead the way on a slow-developing run or in pass protection.

So, college coaches now figure why use one of those valuable 85 scholarships — the NCAA limit — on a fullback, when it could go to a 12th offensive lineman or a 10th receiver. Most NFL teams use the fullback at least some of the time, but with only 53 spots, few rosters carry more than one. And as high schools, facing shrinking rosters, watch and often copy the upper levels, the fullback is becoming a romantic notion.

Still, count Stanford coach David Shaw among the hopeless romantics.

Shaw is only 46 but still favors a traditional offensive system — and is willing to use scholarships on fullbacks. Two of them this year, in fact.

“You’ll see a lot of average to above-average offensive linemen with 30 offers, right?” Shaw says, with a chuckle. “Because everyone needs offensive linemen. And you’ll see a great fullback with three offers. Because not everyone’s looking for a fullback. But when you hit on the right guy …”

Shaw shakes his head thinking about teams lining up in shotgun on short-yardage plays, with no lead blocking back. He hears about this dismal fate for fullbacks and scoffs, invoking the past to envision a future where the fullback is still vital.

“How many third-and-3s or third-and-2s in the history of college football are where you hit the fullback in the flat off a play-action, goal-line short-yardage?” Shaw says. “And on top of that how many great runners have followed a fullback throughout their careers, in college and the NFL?”

Right across the San Francisco Bay, Jon Gruden agrees. He had just come out of semi-retirement to take the Raiders head coaching job when he spoke at last year’s NFL combine. “I would like to have a fullback,” Gruden said. “They’re a dying breed in football. I think it gives your offense a lot of deception. I want to throw the game back to 1998.”

When Gruden coached the Buccaneers two decades ago, he used Mike Alstott, a second-round pick from Purdue, as a running fullback. Alstott made six Pro Bowls and scored 58 touchdowns in 12 seasons with the Bucs. Nearly three decades after graduating from Purdue, Alstott is still its all-time leading rusher.

And now, as the head coach at Northside Christian Prep in Clearwater, Fla., Alstott calls his own offense. It features a shotgun with a single back.

Mike Alstott, whose very name screams fullback, does not use one.

Even as his family and friends gather for the third and final day of the NFL Draft, Alec Ingold knows there is a chance that no one will pick him. But he has enough hope to hold a draft party at his parents’ house in Green Bay, Wis. Outside, a Wisconsin banner — Fullback U., where Ingold played — greets visitors at the front door. Someone has written with chalk on the driveway in big block letters: “HAPPY DRAFT DAY!”

Ingold’s optimism is not unfounded. He was the only fullback invited to the NFL combine, where he did well. There was also his highlight reel moment at the Senior Bowl: Leading the way downfield on an end-around, Ingold turned and leveled a defender. Gruden, coaching the North Team, was so excited he dashed out on the field to extend a hand to Ingold, who slapped it.

But there is also cause for doubt. Last year, NFL teams lined up with a starting fullback only 16 percent of the time, down from 48 percent in 2008 and 68 percent in 1998. As the draft churns through rounds four, five, six and seven, nobody calls his name. Not the Raiders, not the hometown Packers or any other fullback-friendly team.

“You’d have to be naïve to say it’s not going away, or it’s not more rare, obviously,” Ingold says, adding in the same breath: “I’m proud to be a fullback. It’s not a position for the faint of heart.”

As it turns out, neither is draft day once Caleb Wilson goes to the Cardinals with the 254th and final pick. Wilson, of course, is a tight end.

But late in the day Ingold’s phone rings. He leaves the room and soon returns to stand in front of the big screen TV, and somebody else’s highlights, to address the crowded family room. Gruden and the Raiders are signing him as an undrafted free agent.

“I definitely thought that my name was going to get called,” Ingold says. “And I thought it was going to be with the Raiders. Obviously, it didn’t work out for me that way. At the end of the day, I ended up getting in the same building that I wanted to be in. Whoever plays fullback for the Raiders is going to play a lot of ball. So that’s where I wanted to be.”

Last season, Gruden and the Raiders started a fullback three times.

In response to the decrease in college fullbacks, NFL clubs have become more industrious in finding them. Patriots fullback James Develin played defensive end at Brown before Gruden’s brother Jay, then head coach of the UFL’s Florida Tuskers, made him a fullback. The Steelers fullback is former Kent State LB Roosevelt Nix (a Pro Bowler after the 2017 season despite gaining a total of 6 yards from scrimmage). The Panthers’ Alex Armah played three different positions at Division II West Georgia. And Kyle Juszczyk of the Niners, whom Ingold points to as a model fullback, played tight end at Harvard.

The inexorable march of progress will eventually kill the position off permanently. Everybody is scoring too many points with all these new offenses to go back. Fullback will fade away.

Or will it?

“I don’t think it’s disappeared,” Air Raid architect Mike Leach says of the fullback. “It’s disappeared from the standpoint of: ‘I’m in the (I-formation), and I’m the fullback, and I’m just gonna slam straight ahead.’ But they do have that loaded up guy, that big guy, that they’re moving around behind the line of scrimmage, and basically if they get an overlap or if you don’t shift with him they’ll run behind him.

“There’s a lot of different methods to attack the whole field,” Leach adds. “And that’s kind of what’s exciting right now, is a lot of them are surfacing that are pretty cool.”

There’s a theme when you talk to football people about fullback: Don’t say it’s dead. It could become popular again.

“You know, nobody’s ever stopped the wishbone,” says Leach, laughing.

But, for now, what are the Logan Hortons of football to do?

David Shaw, per NCAA rules, cannot talk about current recruits. But he can talk about the time Stanford recruited another fullback from Jesuit High, back when Horton was about 5 years old.

One day in Stanford’s offices, then-running backs coach Willie Taggart was watching film at his desk when Shaw passed by.

“Hey, you gotta see this,” Taggart said, beckoning Shaw in.

Taggart was watching film of Owen Marecic, a prospect from Jesuit who had a few small-college offers. After watching about three plays Shaw had seen enough: “There’s our fullback.”

“Yes it is,” Taggart replied.

Marecic became the fullback for Toby Gerhart and was a fourth-round draft pick of the Browns in 2011.

“That’s where those stories start, because you have to be able to see it, and know what you’re looking for, and how you’re going to cultivate it and use it in your offense,” Shaw says now. “You have to find the right guy that has those traits you’re looking for. And they’re not highly coveted right now.”

Horton, who plays both ways at Jesuit, sees that lack of fullback love firsthand. Last season, he was part of Jesuit’s all-junior linebacking corps. Heading into the summer, two of them have FBS offers — Lucas Christen holds one from Air Force and Andy Alfieri has committed to Cal. But all Horton can do is wait and hope and preach the fullback gospel.

“There’s something about the delivering of blows and putting guys on their back,” Horton says. “There’s a certain feeling I get that I just love. And there’s a deep sense of achievement when you know you’re helping your team, especially when it comes to running the ball and playing smash-mouth football.”

It seems like a match: Stanford and Logan Horton. So now, like a millennial stuck with a pager, he waits for that call, hoping the game still needs him as much as he needs the game.

“I love football,” he says. “And I love fullbacks.”

— The Athletic’s Audrey Snyder and Scott Dochterman contributed to this report.

(Top photos: Getty Images; illustration / The Athletic)