Memphis football is back – and it's a blast

Riley Ferguson has figured it out. He has figured out what it feels like to walk on to the football field and see Anthony Miller out there, ready to catch anything, and to see Phil Mayhue lined up on the other side, poised to make a defense pay for doubling Miller. To have Doroland Dorceus lined up behind him, or maybe Darrell Henderson, or possibly Tony Pollard. To have Sam Craft on his offensive team, as well as Damonte Coxie and Patrick Taylor.

"It's unbelievable, honestly," Ferguson said. "I'm like a little kid in the backyard with the best players in the neighborhood."

The best players in the neighborhood. And a coach who can draw up plays in the dirt as well as anyone.

So welcome to Memphis football, 2017. It's going to be good, yes. But it's also going to be something many people never thought Memphis football could be.

Fun. A blast. A wildly-entertaining civic happening.

Memphis football has become what Memphis basketball once was, what Grizzlies basketball has been for the last seven years.

"It's the best thing I've ever done in my life," Ferguson said. "I love it, being the quarterback at Memphis."

This is how everyone talks about the program these days, even if they're not the quarterback. The fans talk this way. The players talk this way.

Here's Spencer Smith, the punter: "It's fun every day, even if we're in there, and they're kicking our butts on the field or in the weight room. It's just fun to be here and be around this group of guys and around this coaching staff. It's fun every day regardless of what we're doing."

Much of the fun comes from winning games, of course. That's a prerequisite. But at least some of it comes from the way the Tigers win them.

They fling the ball all over the place. They set records upon records.

Last year, with a brand new coach and a brand new quarterback, Memphis racked up 6,028 yards (second all-time), 505 points (second all-time), 57 touchdowns (second all-time) and 34 touchdown passes (first all-time).

And, yes, the game of football is very different than it used to be. But it wasn't so long ago (2013, 2011 and 2010, to be exact) that the Tigers averaged 19.5, 16.2 and 14.4 points a game. Last year, they averaged 38.8 points a game, and this year could be even better.

"Definitely," Dorceus said. "We left a lot of plays, we left a lot of yards, touchdowns, off little mistakes that we made, not that the other team made, that we made. If we fix that, that's another 1,000 yards for us that we left out there."

Said Pollard: "If I played defense, I would be scared going against us because on offense, we have an unlimited number of players that we can go to and rely on in game-time situations."

Pollard is a perfect example of this. Along with Henderson, he may be the fastest player on the team. He showed that last year when he scored two touchdowns on kickoffs. But at receiver, he shares time with Miller (who had 95 catches for 1,434 yards and 14 touchdowns last year) and Mayhue (a 6-3 monster who catches everything) and Craft (who has already scored 17 touchdowns over the course of his career) and Coxie (who may have the best physical tools of any of them).

At running back, Pollard has to fit in with Dorceus (who has 1,881 career rushing yards) Henderson (who is simply electric) and Taylor (a 6-3 battering ram who was second in rushing as a freshman).

So you understand why Ferguson is so pumped, and why fans are pumped right along with him.

"There's literally nothing a defense can do to be right if the quarterback makes the right decision," Ferguson said. "The defense can never be right. There's always an answer no matter what the defense does. Literally, there's nothing the defense can do as long as we're on the same page and make the right decisions."

So here's to being on the same page in 2017. And here's to making the right decisions. And here's to the return of Memphis football, which is suddenly the most fun team in the neighborhood.