The always-quotable Roger Shultz may have begun earning his reputation for loquacity in 1990, when as a senior center at Alabama he was asked about the Tide's running back situation.

Starter Siran Stacy had torn an ACL in the season opener against Brett Favre's Southern Miss Golden Eagles, and first-year Alabama coach Gene Stallings moved true freshman Chris Anderson into the starting lineup.

Asked how he felt about it, Shultz said he had full confidence in Anderson and any other Tide running back on two good legs. As he prudently noted, it beat the alternative: "You don't want a guy like me back there."

It is difficult to picture the future Biggest Loser runner-up trying to turn the corner on a toss sweep, even with Jillian Michaels yelling at him. But his underlying point was this: When one guy goes down, another has to step up.

The situation the Alabama Crimson Tide faces this fall is different in that it was a true freshman, Dee Hart, who suffered a season-ending injury and not the starter. But after the transfers of Demetrius Goode and Corey Grant, Hart's injury leaves the Tide with only three scholarship backs on the roster and without a player whose considerable open-field skills Nick Saban had already begun comparing to Javier Arenas.

Trent Richardson will get the bulk of the carries this fall, and Eddie Lacy should fill the second-back role that Richardson has manned so capably the past two years. But in a game that grinds up running backs like so much sausage, two aren't enough. Lacy ran for 406 yards last year as the Tide's third back and led Alabama in rushing in the Capital One Bowl rout of Michigan State.

That means Jalston Fowler just became an important player for Alabama in 2011.

Built like a tank, the former Vigor standout saw mostly mop-up duty in 2010, rushing for 111 yards on 14 carries (7.9 yards per carry) against the likes of Duke and Georgia State with a handful of carries against Mississippi State, Tennessee and Michigan State. This year, he's just an ankle sprain away from being one of the Tide's featured backs.

Fowler's new role may give the muscular sophomore, who once described his running style in high school as that of an "untamed beast," a chance to show the college football world what his high school coach has known all along.

"He has crazy explosion," said Vigor coach Kerry Stevenson, who watched Fowler run for 1,182 yards and 25 touchdowns to help his 2008 Wolves team win a 5A state title. "For 6-foot, 245 pounds to jump up and dunk a basketball with two hands? ... The only thing he needs to do is build up his confidence. He's going to be a great NFL running back one day."

The crazy thing is, for a while there it looked like Fowler might not ever be in this position. Recruited out of high school as a running back, Fowler started 2010 as a linebacker before returning to the backfield a few games into the season.

He is one of those multi-talented types of athletes who looks perfectly at home in more than one position. Sometimes, as was the case of his former Vigor and Alabama teammate, B.J. Scott, that translates to never finding a home -- switching positions to the point that you never have time to establish yourself in any of them.

There doesn't seem to be any doubt now where Fowler will be this fall. The Tide was looking for ways to get him involved in the offense even before Hart's injury, experimenting with him at H-back. Now, it appears he'll be doing what he believes he does best:

Running like an untamed beast.

Contact Mike Herndon at: mherndon@press-register.com

His column appears on Sundays and Wednesdays in the Press-Register.