Eldridge's blocking key no matter what position he plays

By Scott Wright

Published: December 13, 2006

NORMAN — On the Oklahoma depth chart, Brody Eldridge is listed as the third-string tight end. On the coaches' All-Big 12 team, he earned honorable-mention status as a fullback.

But the position he plays is trivial. Eldridge is a blocker.

And a surprisingly good one.

"Brody is a very physical blocker,” said OU offensive line coach James Patton. "He controls people and plays hard, dominates people. Man, it's fun watching him play.”

Eldridge, a 6-foot-5, 258-pound redshirt freshman, was signed as a defensive end when he came out of Prairie View High School in La Cygne, Kan. in the spring of 2005.

Not long after his arrival at OU, Eldridge began to see the logjam of defensive ends ahead of him: three juniors who could start and a handful of other players waiting for their opportunity.

In the spring following his redshirt season, offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson approached him about moving to tight end, a position that, at the time, had only one scholarship player in junior Joe Jon Finley.

"It was gonna be another year, two years before I would get a chance to play at defensive end,” Eldridge said. "That's why it was so easy to say, ‘Yeah, I'll go to tight end.'”

By the time fall camp arrived, Eldridge had a good handle on the position. True freshman tight end Jermaine Gresham, who admits the weakness of his game is blocking, quickly began looking to Eldridge for help.

"If I've got a question, I can look over and ask him,” Gresham said. "He'll lay it down for me, how you do it, you put your hand here or whatever. He's a good mentor to me in the blocking game.”

In the Sooners' season-opening win over UAB, starting fullback Matt Clapp suffered a severe ankle injury, and Wilson began looking for help there.

"We didn't know he was a fullback,” said Wilson. "The first time we did it, he just did good with it, which surprised me, because I saw him as more of a true tight end.”

And Eldridge wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to play.

"I was all for it,” Eldridge said. "Wherever they want me to play, that's what I want to do. I just want to be on the field.”

Soon, he was playing fullback better than the fullbacks, with one exception — those dropped passes.

It's a problem Eldridge says is more in his head than his hands.

It started on a cold, windy night against Colorado, when he dropped two passes. He dropped another in the Big 12 Championship game.

"He doesn't have great hands, but he has good hands. He's not a guy we should worry throwing the ball to,” Wilson said.

"Because he can do it, whether it's just a little mental thing right now, from one day when some things went sideways, and he's made it a little bit bigger than it is.”

Eldridge finished the regular season with three receptions for 18 yards. A tight end and wide receiver in high school, he knows catching the ball shouldn't be such a problem for him.

"I've got to get my confidence up with that,” he said. "It has to come along. It has a lot to do with the head.”

Whether Eldridge can catch the ball or not, Wilson isn't complaining too much.

"His ability to naturally be a fair blocker, a good, solid, young blocker, and do it from the fullback was something he was just gifted at,” Wilson said. "We didn't spend a lot of time at it, and he got pretty good at it and that helped us a ton.”