Chris Elmore hesitated before planting his foot at the Wake Forest 10-yard line with his hands on his knees. With Syracuse lined up in the shotgun, Elmore stood behind Eric Dungey. When the ball was snapped, Dungey stepped to the side and tucked it into Elmore’s arms.

Elmore gained steam for five yards before reaching the line of scrimmage, where 6-foot-2, 285-pound defensive lineman Willie Yarbary tried to tackle Elmore from the side. Elmore plowed through and Yabary lay on the ground trying to grasp his foot as Elmore rumbled through a much smaller, 205-pound defensive back into the end zone for his second touchdown of the season.

“He tried his hardest,” Elmore said, laughing, of Yarbary’s attempted tackle. “That’s just them throwing me a bone. I’m blocking my ass off all the time and it’s like here you go, go work with it. I take pride in that.”

In his first two years at No. 13 Syracuse (7-2, 4-2 Atlantic Coast) Elmore has played all over the field, including halfback, fullback, wide receiver, tight end, defensive end and nose tackle. He is currently listed as a fullback/tight end as well as a backup nose tackle. But Elmore takes special pride in the fullback position, one where he uses his power to clear space for SU’s running backs and a few carries at the goal-line. It earned him the nickname “Rhino.”

“It’s just the 18-wheeler, Ford Pinto thing,” SU head coach Dino Babers said. “It’s just big truck versus little car. When you’re in November and guys are banged up, you’ve got to see if somebody’s willing to keep making that business decision over and over and over again to hit somebody as big as ‘Rhino’ because he’s large.”

While he is listed at 282 pounds, Elmore is actually about 289, he said. Last year when he was listed as a halfback, he was the biggest in the ACC. Playing a position in the backfield at that size earned Elmore the nickname “Rhino” from the SU coaching staff, originally coined by former offensive coordinator Sean Lewis.

“‘You just remind me of a rhino,’” Elmore remembers Lewis saying. “‘You just always want to run through things.’”

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The nickname defines how Elmore plays and his job on the field. The play before his touchdown against Wake Forest, Elmore paved a path for Dungey in between the right guard and the outside tackle on third down and three.  As a linebacker came storming in to blow up the play at the line of scrimmage and force a fourth down, Elmore halted him, allowing Dungey to break off a 13-yard gain for a first down to set up his proceeding touchdown run.

“I love seeing backs being able to cut off my blocks and run for big yards,” Elmore said. “I know I did my job.”

Elmore has taken his blocking to a new level this year, he said. Last year as a freshman, he said he often fell back to high school mistakes. He dipped his head and missed blocks. Now he keeps his head up, his eyes open, and runs through contact from multiple positions: halfback, fullback and tight end.

Elmore is cutting weight to maximize how effective he can be from multiple positions. At one point this season, he reached 299 pounds, before the coaches said he was too big. Now, he is working to enter next season at 275, a mix between slimming down and maintaining his effectiveness. He wants to be faster in the open field to play more linebacker. And to silence the fat jokes, he joked.

“NC state last year there was a drive I was running all over the place and the running backs said ‘we got to get him some air,’” Elmore said.

But whether he is 299 or 275, Elmore’s playstyle remains the same.

“My mentality is run everything over,” Elmore said. “Everybody knows that I’m not a shifty guy. Just run downhill and run anyone over.”

Published on November 6, 2018 at 11:46 pm

Contact Matt: mdliberm@syr.edu