After transfer, Marcus Marshall plays for FCS title

(12/8/17) - (Harrisonburg)James Madison Dukes running back Marcus Marshall (29) runs past the Weber State defense during the third quarter of the JMU vs. Weber State FCS Quarterfinals Friday night.(Stephen Swofford / DN-R)

(12/8/17) - (Harrisonburg)James Madison Dukes running back Marcus Marshall (29) runs past the Weber State defense during the third quarter of the JMU vs. Weber State FCS Quarterfinals Friday night.(Stephen Swofford / DN-R)

Former Georgia Tech B-back Marcus Marshall continues to keep ties with former teammates. While now at James Madison after transferring a year ago, he remains in a text-message group with TaQuon Marshall, Christian Campbell, David Curry – members of the 2015 signing class – and others.

“I miss Atlanta,” he said. “Atlanta and Harrisonburg, Va. (home of James Madison) are two very different cities.”

On the whole, though, Marshall is quite happy with how things have turned out. Marshall’s James Madison team will play North Dakota State for the FCS national championship Saturday in Frisco, Texas, (noon, ESPN2) and Marshall has been a significant driver in the Dukes’ playoff run. The tournament’s top seed, James Madison is on a 26-game winning streak and playing for its second consecutive national title.

“I just feel so lucky to have joined the team at the time I did, coming off of a great season last year,” Marshall said. “I knew they obviously had a lot of talent on the team and it had to be a special type of locker room. Getting to be there firsthand and getting to be a part of it and getting to witness how it’s gone, you can’t ask for much more as a football player.”

Marshall has split carries for most of the season, but has been dominant in the Dukes’ past two playoff games. He ran for 128 yards on 14 carries with two scores in a quarterfinal win over Weber State on Dec. 8 and then torched South Dakota State for 203 yards on 15 carries in the semifinal Dec. 6. He scored on runs of 65 and 87 yards in the semifinal, showing the breakaway speed that Tech fans witnessed in his two seasons at B-back.

Prior to those two playoff games, Marshall had a season total of 489 rushing yards on 103 carries.

“I think that everyone’s just kind of coming together and got the run game going,” Marshall said. “Obviously, I’m the one that gets noticed for that, but at the end of the day it’s a team effort. I couldn’t do any of that without the guys up front and the guys blocking downfield, as well.”

Marshall has had to adjust to a different style of offense, as well. James Madison runs a spread offense out of a shotgun.

“In the triple option, everything is fast,” he said. “You’re hitting the hole 100 percent. So with this offense, sometimes you have to be a little slower and let things develop, let blocks develop, so that was kind of a change after being used to running so hard and so fast all the time.”

His desire to play in such an offense was what drove his decision to transfer, he said. He played in a similar scheme in high school in Raleigh, N.C.

“I was never unhappy or anything like that,” he said. “I think that, when I left, I told people how I felt like the offense wasn’t my best fit.”

He called it a tough decision to leave teammates and coaches that he had grown close with, but said it was in his best interest. The emergence of Dedrick Mills, who won the starting B-back job as a freshman in the 2016 season and led the team in rushing yards, was not a factor, he said. That being the case, he said he didn’t feel any regrets when Mills was dismissed from the team last August.

“It wasn’t really about Dedrick,” he said. “It wasn’t about anybody else competition-wise. That really wasn’t what it was about. It was for getting in a system that I felt better about.”

Harrisonburg might not be Atlanta, but it’s also where his parents graduated from college. His father Warren, in fact, is the school’s all-time leading rusher. Marcus Marshall can make his own imprint Saturday.

“Everything’s come together perfectly,” Marshall said.