Tim Lester called a split zone, with a running back on either side of the quarterback, and Ervin Philips and Adonis Ameen-Moore jogged onto the field.

But to Lester’s surprise, the 234-pound Moore lined up to take the hand off and the 179-pound Philips lined up to block for him. It was Lester’s first game as Syracuse’s offensive coordinator — against top-ranked Florida State six games into the season — and he was sure running backs coach DeAndre Smith had made a mistake.

“Don’t you want Adonis blocking for Erv?” Lester asked Smith.

“No, Erv’s probably our best blocker,” Smith answered.

As Lester started laying out the new offense he’d implement in January, he held onto the image of Philips successfully blocking the Seminoles’ defensive ends.

And after a freshman season in which Philips ran for 194 yards, the Orange decided to move him out of a running backs group that also lost seniors Ameen-Moore and Prince-Tyson Gulley. He became a “hybrid” with rising seniors Ashton Broyld and Ben Lewis, and SU’s annual spring game on Saturday will offer the first look at a position Lester called an “integral part” of his new offense.

“The hybrid has to be able to do everything. Run, catch and block,” Lester said. “In the offense that I ran before I came here that was always a big spot, so Erv was one of the first people I thought of when I had a chance to put it into this offense.”

With Philips’ speed, age and athleticism pointing to latent potential, he figures to be the most intriguing of the three-man group.

As Lester explains it, the hybrid does a lot of things out of a lot spots in a lot of different ways. The hybrid can take handoffs out of the backfield or on jet sweeps, line up near the tight ends and block in the run or pass game, receive out of the slot and so on.

And to add to the confusion, there’s no consensus on what the position is called — with Lester and Philips throwing out “hybrid,” “H,” “super” and “super back” as names for the position.

But Lester was quick to point out that it’s not an H-back, a position in the offense he inherited from George McDonald. Lester says that the H-back was really “just a slot receiver,” and the hybrid is designed for players like Lewis and Broyld, who don’t perfectly fit the mold of a wideout or running back.

Yet Lester said that Philips does “fit the running back mold perfectly,” and making him a hybrid allows SU to milk his abundant skill set.

Lester added that Philips can move back to running back if need be, a spot SU got just two touchdowns out of last season.

“I like doing it all,” Philips said. “As long as I’m in the open field, I like doing it all and I think I can do it all.”

When Syracuse defensive coordinator Chuck Bullough was recruiting Philips out of West Haven (Connecticut) High School, he knew Philips didn’t have to be confined to the running back position.

Bullough saw a 17-year-old Philips getting around the edge on handoffs, catching passes and breaking tackles in the return game, and added that Philips “could put his foot in the ground and take off.”

“He would actually be a great corner,” Bullough said, laughing, of what he thought when he first saw Philips play.

Now the rising sophomore will have a chance to do everything short of playing defense and throwing passes — as far as we know — for an offense that is looking to crawl out of the basement of Division I football.

And if Philips’ versatility as a hybrid places him at the center of Lester’s new system in the coming months, what originally drew Syracuse’s attention could be the ire of opposing coordinators in 2015.

“He loves it, because he thinks of himself as a wide receiver anyway,” Lester said of Philips’ position change. “He thinks, ‘I can be a running back but really am a wide receiver.’ And now he is. And he’s a running back, too. Just a little bit of everything. Mentally it really fits.”

Published on April 2, 2015 at 11:22 pm

Contact Jesse: jcdoug01@syr.edu | @dougherty_jesse