We should have enough of a sample size to start dropping rushing efficiency data leaderboards here next week, but here’s everything I thought was notable in the realm of college running backs over the course of last weekend:
My estimation of Audric Estime as a man just fuckin’ skyrocketed.
Dude looks legit. He has the rare combination of being untackleable -- he’s currently at 0.52 missed tackles forced per attempt, third-most in the country among players with at least 20 carries -- and able to rip off long runs, and if he can keep up some semblance of this dominance (he’s averaging 8.0 yards per carry, has excellent box count-adjusted metrics, and is the country’s rushing leader) against the likes of Ohio State and USC in the coming weeks, the top five of my running back rankings for the upcoming draft class is going to get real crowded.
Blake Corum is back.
I wrote that sentence with a question mark last week, but I’m stating it as a fact now. He looked good again this week, and while the 181 scrimmage yards and four touchdowns he’s posted so far have only come against two Group of Five opponents in East Carolina and UNLV, his Heisman-contending 2022 season started out with 175 yards and two touchdowns in games against two Group of Five opponents in Colorado State and Hawaii in the first two weeks. He’s averaging more than twice as many yards per carry as Donovan Edwards and is also much more involved in the receiving game through these first couple matchups than he was on a per-game basis a year ago. I’m continually impressed by how clean of a mover he is when navigating the line of scrimmage, and I can’t decide if he looks more like Aaron Jones or a Formula 1 car in the way that he’s compact, explosive, and always seems to find the most efficient path through traffic.
Checking in on MarShawn Lloyd.
I speculated last week that maybe the Stanford game would give us a look at Lloyd in a more competitive game script, and, well, that didn’t happen. The USC offense is just too ridiculously stacked, but Lloyd continues to be their best running back. He’s currently third in the Pac-12 in rushing while averaging 7.8 yards per carry and doing his best Shady McCoy impression on each touch. The Colorado game on the 30th will be must-see TV.
Hello, Omarion Hampton.
A week after managing just 37 yards (but two touchdowns) on 16 carries against South Carolina, the sophomore for North Carolina put up 26-234-3 on Appalachian State with backfield mate British Brooks (a sixth-year senior who had 15 carries for 103 yards against the Gamecocks) out with an injury. Brooks is expected to be back for next week’s game versus Minnesota, where it will be interesting to see how the pecking order shakes out.
Brooks missed all of last season with a torn ligament in his knee, but Hampton was the team’s second-leading rusher and posted positive marks in both Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate as a freshman. Caleb Hood is a junior who was the team’s most effective runner on a per-carry basis a season ago (82nd-percentile BAE Rating and 58th-percentile RSR on 44 carries), but he’s running clearly behind these other two guys and has just six attempts so far in 2023. Elijah Green is also a junior who’s been uninvolved this season (he has one carry) after he operated as the team’s RB1 last year. There are lots of moving parts here but we’ve seen enough flashes from multiple of them to make the backfield worth keeping an eye on.
A review of last week’s surprise stars.
Western Michigan’s Jalen Buckley followed up his 194-yard game against St. Francis with an 87-yard effort on just eight carries against some legitimate competition in Syracuse. Dude looks like Tiki Barber with that high-and-tight ball security.
Marcus Carroll hit the century mark for the second week in a row, this time putting up 107 yards and three touchdowns in Georgia State’s victory over UConn. He’s currently fifth in the country in yards after contact per attempt (averaging 4.63) among 42 backs with at least 30 carries on the year.
George Holani’s absence allowed Ashton Jeanty to have the Boise State backfield all to himself against UCF, and he took advantage to the tune of 115 yards on 24 carries and five receptions for 97 yards, including this slick touchdown:
Jeanty’s 206 receiving yards put him in the top-25 among all players nationally, and he’s the only running back over the 150 mark while also sitting in a seven-way tie for third-place among CFB runners with nine receptions. He’ll be shooting way up the devy ranks.
Rasheen Ali had another good game as well, as he finished with 18 carries for 85 yards and three touchdowns despite starting just 6 for 13 against East Carolina.
Jaylen Wright did to Austin Peay in week two (13 for 118) essentially what he did to Virginia in week one, and his per-carry average of 9.3 currently ranks third in the country among backs with at least 20 carries. He posted a 65th-percentile figure of 0.92 Yards Per Carry+ last season, and his mark in the same metric sits at a ridiculous 4.23 right now.
A group of less-than-stellar follow-up performances: LJ Martin, LJ Johnson, Sedrick Alexander, Mark Fletcher, Emani Bailey, and Sutton Smith combined for 663 rushing yards in week one but collectively put up just 154 on Saturday. Martin averaged a respectable 4.5 yards on his six carries against Southern Utah, but none of these other guys managed even four per tote or more than the 67 rushing yards that Bailey totaled against Nicholls State.
Split backfields:
Both of UCLA’s runners were good again this week, with Carson Steele going 12-84-1 and TJ Harden putting up 9-91-1. They’re a formidable thunder-and-lightning combo.
I don’t have the box count-adjusted numbers yet, but Kaytron Allen is currently out-carrying, out-rushing, and out-averaging Nick Singleton. He had 19 carries for 103 yards and a single touchdown against Delaware while Singleton put up 47 yards and three touchdowns on his 12 carries.
TreVeyon Henderson made this 30-yard touchdown look easy against Youngstown State on his way to a 5-56-2 performance, while neither Miyan Williams nor Chip Trayanum did much on six carries a piece. Western Kentucky is their final cupcake before a matchup with Notre Dame on the 23rd, a game that will be appointment viewing for those of us who like to watch running backs.
Others worth mentioning:
Jase McClellan has not been impressive so far this season. He’s breaking a lot of tackles -- 11 on 22 carries -- but not going anywhere afterwards, with just a 2.73 yards-after-contact average to go with a 3.8 raw per-carry mean (to be fair to him, though, Roydell Williams, Jamarion Miller, and Richard Young are each also averaging fewer than four yards per carry for the Tide). It’s only been two weeks, but the tentativeness with which I placed him at RB11 in my final preseason rankings for the upcoming draft class is slowly morphing into plain disinterest. Hopefully he can turn things around soon.
Trey Benson followed up a slow day against LSU with a high-impact outing on low volume in a blowout win over Southern Mississippi, as he put up 79 yards and three touchdowns on just nine rushes. Dude is a highlight machine, and this week was no different:
Speaking of highlight machines, the dead leg and stop-start explosiveness by Devin Neal on this run against Illinois were ridiculous:
He’s sitting at 9.3 yards per carry on the season after his 10-120-1 performance, and he already has a third of the receptions totals he posted in all of 2022. His 10-yard run rate is currently fifth-highest among 125 backs with at least 20 carries, behind only Jaylen Wright, Damien Martinez, Demond Claiborne, and Will Shipley.
Let’s talk about the three guys ahead of him that we haven’t touched on so far. Martinez followed up a dominant week one performance against San Jose State with another undressing of a hapless California school, this time putting up 7-104-1 on UC-Davis. His 10.0 yards per carry make him the Power 5 leader among guys with at least 20 attempts.
Claiborne is a sophomore at Wake Forest who I was unaware of before this week, but he put up 165 yards on 25 carries against Vanderbilt after going 13-70-1 against an FCS school in Elon in week one. He’ll need to catch some passes in order to be truly interesting given that he’s only 200 pounds (and was listed at just 180 as a recruit), but he was a four-star guy and may be worth keeping an eye on. Senior starter Justice Ellison -- who posted just a 92.2% BAE Rating on 169 carries last season -- should be back against Old Dominion next week after missing the Vanderbilt game with an injury, so Clairborne and fellow sophomore Tate Carney -- who went 13-117-1 against the Commodores -- will likely take a backseat.
It was light work for Shipley against Charleston Southern out of the FCS ranks: 9 for 73 on the ground and 3 for 22 through the air. They get Florida State in two weeks.
In other news, Utah running back Ja’Quinden Jackson dominated Baylor, posting 129 yards on 19 carries. He’s a quarterback convert, a Texas transfer from a couple years ago, and a big dude at 6’2 and 228 pounds who is currently averaging 5.59 yards after contact per attempt, the second-highest mark in the country among backs with 20+ carries.
It’s been a slow start for Quinshon Judkins, as his 48 yards on 18 carries against Tulane mean he’s averaging fewer than 3.5 yards per attempt on the season. I’m certainly not jumping to conclusions yet, but it’ll be interesting to see how things go against Alabama and LSU in the next few weeks, and maybe Georgia Tech will be a get-right game on Saturday after they gave up 8.1 yards per carry against Louisville's backs in week one.
LSU transfer Corey Kiner has been pretty good for Cincinnati so far, as he followed up a 13-105 performance against Eastern Kentucky in week one with 153 yards and two touchdowns on 20 carries against Pitt. He was a four-star recruit, is currently listed at a stout 5’9 and 215 pounds, and is currently forcing 0.42 missed tackles per attempt and averaging 7.8 yards per carry while sitting at eighth on the nation’s rushing yardage leaderboard. I’m intrigued.