Brian Kelly and the Irish coaching staff are insistent on developing the type of running game that hasn’t existed at Notre Dame during the past two coaching regimes. With a razor thin depth chart at running back, the onus for establishing a new running identity will fall squarely on the shoulders of a talented tandem of upperclassmen.

The word tandem was first used around the time of the American Revolution to describe a carriage pulled by two horses, one in front of the other. A revolution in the Irish ground game will take the same type of treatment. Out front will be junior Cierre Wood, who racked up over 1,000 all-purpose yards during his first season on the field last year.

The new Irish workhorse takes a very business-like approach to improving himself in practice. Wood said that he, like every other player he knows, is working toward the ultimate goal of getting to the next level and that motivates him to bring a lunch pail attitude each day. The college football world is starting to notice the hard work. Earlier this week, he was added to the Paul Hornung Award watch list for the most versatile player in college football to go along with his mention on the Doak Walker watch list earlier this summer.

Wood showed short jolts of the electricity he can provide throughout the 2010 season, but it wasn’t until the team’s final two games that he pulled away as Notre Dame’s top back.

“I just let everything go. Coach Kelly is always talking about cutting your body loose,” Wood said of his 81 rushing yards and a touchdown against Miami in the Sun Bowl. “That’s the hardest thing just to cut your body loose, and once I did that I found I had success.”

Part of that success came with a heavy assist from between-the-tackles bruiser Robert Hughes, who ran the ball a season-high 27 times in the win against the Hurricanes. Hughes wore down the Miami front line, giving Wood the opportunity to get the second level and show off his speed. With Hughes in the midst of a tryout with the Chicago Bears, the Irish will turn to senior Jonas Gray to provide the pounding this season.

Gray, an aspiring stand-up comedian, had only 20 total carries last season and the coaching staff openly questioned how serious he was about playing football. Gray has removed all doubts at the start of his senior season and is now nipping at the heels of Wood in Notre Dame’s tandem.

“He’s changed tremendously. You can see a real love and passion for the game of football that maybe he didn’t demonstrate as much a year ago,” said Irish offensive coordinator Charley Molnar. “The margin between him and No. 20 [Wood] is so small right now based on the way he’s practicing.”

Gray said he realized he needed to step up for the sake of the team and wanted to leave a good legacy in his final year on the collegiate level.

“It’s just making it a higher priority,” he said. “My senior year I wanna go out with a bang and do whatever I can to help the team win. I just take everyday as a new day and I know the potential of how good this team can be.”

Wood and Gray are roommates and spent the summer pushing each other to improve themselves both physically and mentally on the field. Irish running backs coach Tim Hinton said having his two top backs room together has given them a chance to study the offense and to commiserate after tough days at practice.

“I was on their butts today and they’re both mad at me. Now they can talk about it and get it all vented out and then come back and go the next day,” Hinton said following the team’s first practice in full pads Wednesday.

The entire team has focused on developing a mental toughness in the run game during the first few days of practice. Hinton said he realizes that he has to walk a thin line between building a pair of tough running backs and making sure they are fresh enough to be running full speed into November and beyond.

“You’ve gotta manage reps a little bit. You can’t burn them out,” he said. “You have to make sure the reps are good enough that they are game ready and conditioned, but yet you know there's only so many tags and so many hits and so many protections you got in you.”

Freshmen running backs George Atkinson and Cam McDaniel are competing for the chance to occasionally spell Wood and Gray on Saturdays. Hinton said both of the rookies have great vision and the potential to be big playmakers, but there is still a lot to learn.

With Atkinson and McDaniel in the early developmental stage, Wood and Gray are prepared to be used “at length” this season—which, when translated to Latin, happens to be tan dem.