The 2020 Florida State football season was odd for many reasons.

From a position group perspective, perhaps nothing was stranger than the fact that the Seminoles' running backs were not a bigger part of the offense.

In the three years before Mike Norvell took over as head coach at Florida State, his Memphis running backs put up staggering numbers.

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Kenneth Gainwell rushed for 1,459 yards in 2019, and three other backs finished with more than 300 apiece.

In 2018, Darrell Henderson racked up 1,909 rushing yards, Patrick Taylor rumbled for 1,122, and Tony Pollard finished with more than 500.

And in 2017, Henderson rushed for 1,154 yards while Taylor finished with 866.

But in his first season with the Seminoles, Norvell's top rusher was quarterback Jordan Travis. And lead running back Jashaun Corbin finished with just 401 yards on 81 carries in nine games -- that's an average of nine carries and less than 45 yards per outing.

That is quite a dropoff from typical Norvell offenses.

It's too early to know after one week of preseason camp whether the Seminoles' ground game in 2021 will generate anything close to the production of Norvell's offenses at Memphis, but running backs coach David Johnson definitely sounds encouraged.

"They kind of understand exactly what we want, the standard that we want," Johnson said. "And they have a good understanding, a good grasp of the offense at this point in time, so we're able to put a little more on them."

Corbin received rave reviews from offensive coordinator Kenny Dillingham after Saturday's scrimmage. Dillingham said the redshirt sophomore was finally looking like the guy who was named to the SEC All-Freshman Team in 2018 and started two games for Texas A&M in 2019 before going down with a devastating hamstring injury.