Myrtle Beach’s Sinclair carrying load for Seahawks

Mickey Wilson’s stubborn approach to his offense has taken him off some Christmas card lists.

He’s been known to throw during the fourth quarter of games Myrtle Beach was winning by large margins, exactly the opposite of what conventional play-calling says to do. In the Seahawks coach’s mind, it wasn’t meant to be an slap in the face to opposing teams. Rather, passing is what he knows, and the rhythm between quarterbacks and receivers – even back-ups – isn’t maximized without reps.

Myrtle Beach looking like such a run-oriented team must be driving him nuts, right?

“If you know Coach Wilson, you know that he’ll do anything to win the game,” senior tailback Brandon Sinclair said. “He hates losing.”

As the Seahawks struggle with a new crop of receivers and the passing numbers have dipped, Wilson finds himself relying on the kid wearing No. 22. Sinclair’s production is probably the biggest reason Myrtle Beach is 2-1 and ranked No. 4 in the state in advance of Friday’s meeting with Carolina Forest in The Sun News Game of the Week.

The senior has rushed for 577 yards, one more than Carolina Forest’s Dyverse Simmons for the area lead, and eight touchdowns. Last week against Socastee alone, he put up 294 yards and five touchdowns. The yardage was his second-highest single-game total and actually more than what he ran for during his entire freshman season, when he began what appears to be a four-year streak of leading the team in rushing.

But what he’s doing this year isn’t something we haven’t seen before. In fact, it looks awfully similar to two years ago, when quarterback Drayton Arnold was also completing less than half of his passes and the rest of the offensive skill players were struggling to mesh.

“We’ve talked about that as a team,” Wilson said. “In 2013, we had a lot of growing pains. It led to some losses. We were lucky Friday night [against Socastee] to win. We’ve got a bunch of new faces in a bunch of new places. They’re just trying to figure it out. It’s very frustrating from an offensive coaching standpoint. But it’s something we can reflect on and say ‘We’ve been here before.’”

Sinclair’s 1,919-yard campaign as a sophomore no doubt kept the Seahawks offense afloat while Arnold and the rest of the offense caught up. And even though it was that passing game that stood out more in the playoffs en route to the Class AAA state title, chances are Myrtle Beach’s fate looks a lot different without Sinclair carrying the load.

Once again, he’s resumed his role as the team’s security blanket.

And once again, he’s putting up huge numbers in the process. The 5-foot-10, 191-pounder is averaging 192 yards per game, a figure that would, even if Myrtle Beach played just 11 games, bump him over the 2,000-yard mark for the season and leave him as what is believed to be the top rusher in school history. (Statistics from 1980s and earlier aren’t solid, although multiple people around the program believe Sinclair’s sophomore season set the school’s single-season record.)

With or without that distinction, though, he’s adding to a standout career that has already seen him reach 4,587 yards of total offense (4,092 rushing) and exactly 50 touchdowns.

Having his best season yet was something he dedicated himself to back in the spring. After working his way up to becoming a starter on the baseball team – something he said he did to keep himself out of trouble and occupied – Sinclair quit that sport to focus on football.

The decision wasn’t immediately very popular.

“I love for all my players to play multiple sports,” Wilson said. “I think that’s important. It makes you a better competitor. I have a lot of kids who concentrate on one sport. But they don’t really concentrate on one sport – they just say that.

“Brandon has spent a ton of extra work in the weight room. He was coming in four days a week during the summer.”

The result has been a bigger, faster running back making sure Myrtle Beach’s offense can keep putting up points. Wilson said Sinclair, who verbally committed to Old Dominion back in May, is now an ACC- or SEC-caliber running back.

For what it’s worth, Sinclair has said he is still fully committed to ODU, although that doesn’t mean larger schools won’t offer if he continues to do what he has so far this season. History shows he could be in line for another big game against Friday’s opponent.

As a sophomore, Sinclair set his still-standing career-high by rushing for 307 yards against the Panthers. He followed it up last year by going for 162 while adding 77 yards receiving.

Still, it was Myrtle Beach’s passing game that Carolina Forest coach Marc Morris brought up a few weeks back while talking about his own team’s success running the ball. A Carolina Forest player rushing for 100 yards in his offense, he said, was akin to a Seahawk quarterback throwing for 200, given Wilson’s perceived proclivity for airing it out.

Truth be told, the numbers from the past three seasons point to something altogether different, at least in terms of what Myrtle Beach is running. So far this year, the Seahawks have kept it on the ground 86 times versus 67 passes.

Last year, the team had 358 rushes against 350 passes. And in 2013, the team’s championship season, Wilson’s stereotyped offense actually threw the ball about 125 fewer times than it ran it.

Without Sinclair, though, who knows what any of those numbers would look like.

“I think that means he has a lot of confidence in me,” Sinclair said. “We’ve always had a good relationship. He’s shown me the way to win.”

And leaned on him to do so along the way.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 3:56 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach’s Sinclair carrying load for Seahawks."