The Cannoneers ran the ball thirty-seven times in the divisional round for twenty-one yards, which is 0.57 a carry against the 3.44 of their regular season, and they won 23-13 while the Dredgers outgained them by eighty-five.
Wade Fothergill took twenty-one of those carries and finished eight yards behind where he started, and was thrown to four times, caught three, and gained nothing with them: twenty-four touches, minus eight yards, from the lowest-graded man to carry it twenty-one times in this postseason. Kellen Jessup ran twenty-one times for minus seven in week sixteen and caught three passes that gained nothing, and the Millwrights lost that game and the two after it.
The difference was not in the backfield. The Dredgers turned it over three times to the Cannoneers' once, and the five drives that produced twenty-three points covered a hundred and eighteen yards between them, four of the five beginning past midfield.
Asked about the twenty-four touches, Fothergill said, “That's the game they needed me to play. I'd play it again.” He is twenty-one, on $1.1 million expiring.
The Cannoneers were outgained by four hundred and twenty-four yards over seventeen games and finished 13-4, first in the Timber. The Hellcats gained 401 beating the Grackles and come to them next, and Fothergill will carry it again without reaching fifty yards.