As Woody Marks weighed his football future last winter, Darren Myles was frank with his former running back. His body of work, he told Marks, was an incomplete picture of the player Myles knew he could be. Four seasons at Mississippi State, playing in Mike Leach’s pass-happy Air Raid offense, proved Marks could catch passes out of the backfield. But he was typecast in the eyes of NFL scouts as a third-down, change-of-pace player, incapable of carrying the load as a bruising back running between the tackles.
His high school coach knew better than that. Myles had seen it during four years at Carver High in Atlanta.