After ending his season with a leg injury at Ole Miss early October, Drake spent his offseason working on getting back to playing-form after surgery.
“It’s definitely been a hard road,” Drake said at SEC Media Days. “I’ve never had an injury to that extent before. Once it happened I had to really realize this wouldn’t be a two or three week injury, it’s going to be a four or five month injury. I still kind of have aches and pains a little bit but it’s all about your mindset and I’m ready to get back on the field with my teammates.”
In the spring game he wore a black no-contact jersey. On five carries, he netted 13 yards.
In his career he has 1,087 yards rushing in 28 games. He has 17 rushing touchdowns and two receiving touchdowns.
“I think Kenyan Drake has tremendous diversity as a player,” Alabama coach Nick Saban said at SEC Media Days. “He has so many things that he does well. He has great speed. He has very good running skills and running instincts, but he’s a fantastic receiver. In his position, it’s a little bit easier to almost create mismatches for him to be able to use those skills as a receiver than it would be if we played him at receiver because I think, if we played him at receiver, he would be one of the better receivers on our team.”
In his five games in 2014, Drake had 159 yards receiving and averaged 31.8 per game. He had two receiving touchdowns, one of which was 87 yards against Florida.
Although not considered a starter, he brings experience back to Alabama’s offense which only returns two starters, both on the offensive line.
“I think this is one of the assets that he’s going to possess moving forward that’s going to make him a very, very effective player in the future for us and as well as probably being a really good professional player,” Saban said. “And we need play maker types like him, especially this year when we’ve lost so many players who were play makers for us. He was an outstanding play maker last year, and I think Lane does a good job of featuring players like Kenyan Drake in our offense so that they can be very productive.”
