BleedGopher
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Per Howie:
The old arena football line — the one repeated for years by quarterbacks, coaches, and every guy selling the game as organized chaos — is that nobody really runs the football anymore.
Tell that to Shannon Brooks, who is stomping through Arena Football One defenses like a man trying to settle an old score with every linebacker in the building.
The Minnesota Monsters fullback leads AF1 with 188 rushing yards while averaging a league-best 68.7 yards per game, numbers that almost look typo-ish in a modern indoor league built on quick throws, fly routes and quarterbacks firing footballs around like beer-league darts.
Brooks has become something rarer than a 300-pound lineman who pays for dinner on the road. He has become feared. Not flashy feared. Not social-media feared. Football feared.
The kind where defenders know exactly what's coming and still struggle to stop it.
“I only know one way,” Brooks said earlier this week when asked whether he prefers running around defenders instead of through them.
That answer probably caused three opposing defensive coordinators to reach for antacids somewhere around the AF1.
Because Brooks does not run with the modern running back's obsession over aesthetics. There is very little dancing. Very little hesitation. Very little of the sideways nonsense that infects football at every level now, from youth leagues to Sundays.
He sees daylight and detonates into it.
“When you see that hole, you got to hit it,” Brooks said. “You ain’t really got time to dance around or things like that. Everything closes quicker. Everything happens quicker.”
That right there is the entire arena game explained in one paragraph by a man carrying linebackers on his shoulders.
Arena football compresses violence. The field is smaller. The angles disappear faster. Running lanes open and close like elevator doors. A running back barely secures the football before somebody with bad intentions wraps both arms around his ribs.
And yet Brooks keeps producing.
www.fox21online.com
Go Gophers!!
The old arena football line — the one repeated for years by quarterbacks, coaches, and every guy selling the game as organized chaos — is that nobody really runs the football anymore.
Tell that to Shannon Brooks, who is stomping through Arena Football One defenses like a man trying to settle an old score with every linebacker in the building.
The Minnesota Monsters fullback leads AF1 with 188 rushing yards while averaging a league-best 68.7 yards per game, numbers that almost look typo-ish in a modern indoor league built on quick throws, fly routes and quarterbacks firing footballs around like beer-league darts.
Brooks has become something rarer than a 300-pound lineman who pays for dinner on the road. He has become feared. Not flashy feared. Not social-media feared. Football feared.
The kind where defenders know exactly what's coming and still struggle to stop it.
“I only know one way,” Brooks said earlier this week when asked whether he prefers running around defenders instead of through them.
That answer probably caused three opposing defensive coordinators to reach for antacids somewhere around the AF1.
Because Brooks does not run with the modern running back's obsession over aesthetics. There is very little dancing. Very little hesitation. Very little of the sideways nonsense that infects football at every level now, from youth leagues to Sundays.
He sees daylight and detonates into it.
“When you see that hole, you got to hit it,” Brooks said. “You ain’t really got time to dance around or things like that. Everything closes quicker. Everything happens quicker.”
That right there is the entire arena game explained in one paragraph by a man carrying linebackers on his shoulders.
Arena football compresses violence. The field is smaller. The angles disappear faster. Running lanes open and close like elevator doors. A running back barely secures the football before somebody with bad intentions wraps both arms around his ribs.
And yet Brooks keeps producing.
Shannon Brooks: The Minnesota Monsters punishing runner
The old arena football line — the one repeated for years by quarterbacks, coaches, and every guy selling the game as organized chaos — is that nobody really runs the
Go Gophers!!
