Here we are at the end of all things, at least mostly. Other than Monday’s National Championship Game, the college football season is over, and I wanted to return to the once-weekly CFB recap articles to survey the notable running back performances from all of bowl season and across the FBS landscape. Transfers, opt-outs, and injuries created opportunities for many young and less-heralded players in these exhibitions, but we also got throwback games from some of the most established backs in the country. The performance I want to focus on first came from someone who straddles the line between those two extremes:

Prior to Minnesota’s Quick Lane Bowl matchup with Bowling Green on the day after Christmas, we had seen Taylor just once since September 23rd and not at all since October 21st, when he turned 16 attempts into 59 yards against an Iowa defense that Pro Football Focus rates as the country’s best against the run. He did enough in his five healthy games -- including a three-week stretch in which he posted an 86-529-4 rushing line -- to earn fake All-Freshman Big Ten honors from me, but it was in the bowl game and against the Falcons when Taylor notched his season-high in rushing yards. He went 35-208-1 on the ground to secure a 30-24 win in a game that saw the Gophers throw for just 50 yards (and Taylor led the team by hauling in 11 of those):

The first-year runner ended his season with a 45.3% Dominator Rating, the highest mark for any freshman back at the FBS level going back to at least 2009, and if we ignore the season opener against Nebraska in which Taylor carried the ball just one time for three yards, his Dominator Rating would be a ridiculous 54.3%. Zero running backs in the last fifteen years -- regardless of age, classification, or conference standing -- have accounted for such a portion of their team’s total offensive output. Basically, Taylor was uniquely and historically dominant in his freshman season: the 133.2 rushing yards he averaged on a per-game basis (which counts the Nebraska game!) are nearly ten more than Ollie Gordon averaged and more than 30 more than any other Big Ten runner averaged this year.

Dominator Rating is an improvement over raw volume statistics in judging player production, but it’s also just kind of a modification of those raw volume statistics and therefore not sufficient for evaluating player performance (particularly for running backs and especially when compared to how effective it and its market share-based cousins are at identifying top wide receiver prospects). Fortunately with Taylor, he averaged 5.79 yards per carry, finished top-12 among nearly 80 Power Five runners with 100+ attempts in raw Success Rate, and posted marks in the 86th and 79th percentiles, respectively, in Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate this season, backing up his impressive production with legitimate on-field efficacy. The relatively low level of in-house competition at Minnesota means that we can’t treat Taylor’s freshman year as if it came from Jonathan Taylor or Nick Chubb or Adrian Peterson, but he’s already listed at 210 pounds and ended his high school career as a four-star recruit (according to 247Sports’ composite rating). He’s a legitimate NFL prospect.

The most out-of-nowhere explosion of bowl season came from Freddie Brock, who put up 291 yards from scrimmage and scored a touchdown in Georgia State’s Famous Idaho Potato Bowl victory over Utah State. Brock is a 190-pound senior who had touched the ball six times all season prior to this matchup and who had spent the previous three years as a member of the Maine Black Bears at the FCS level, where his peak achievement was an 857-yard, ten-touchdown season in 2021. I’m mostly taking two things away from Brock’s big game: 1) a slightly higher level of skepticism toward recent Missouri transfer Marcus Carroll, who led the Panther backfield with over 1300 rushing yards this season, and 2) a major boost for how I’m viewing Brock’s professional potential (which basically means he went from flying completely under my radar to being a pretty interesting CFF asset for 2024 and a longshot candidate to eventually make Jaleel McLaughlin-type contributions in the NFL). The fact that his name sounds like it belongs to the mild-mannered alter ego of some minor Marvel villain doesn’t hurt.

Speaking of players with names that could just as easily belong to tertiary comic book characters, Anderson Castle led the Appalachian State backfield with 20 carries for 119 yards in a 13-9 win over Miami of Ohio in last month’s laconically-named Cure Bowl. Longtime Mountaineer starter Nate Noel did not run very efficiently this season and is now in the transfer portal, but despite the fact that Castle is 220 pounds and has two years of eligibility remaining, I would anticipate the fifth-year man occupying no more than a breather-back role behind Kanye Roberts -- who was good enough in such a niche that he earned fake All-Freshman Sun Belt honors from yours truly this season -- next year.

Rickey Hunt provided another aberrant smash, turning 18 touches into 133 yards and scoring five (!!) touchdowns in a win over Georgia Southern in the Myrtle Beach Bowl. He might be interesting. The presence of established starter Sieh Bangura meant there weren’t a ton of touches up for grabs in the Ohio backfield this year, but he’s jumping ship to carry Darius Taylor’s water in Minnesota, leaving the runway wide open for Hunt -- a 203-pound true freshman and former three-star recruit -- to step into the RB1 chair. He looked good in the bowl game (see below) and should be viewed as a breakout candidate with pro potential going into 2024:

Jadarian Price is probably the most notable runner from a blue blood program to pop his big game cherry during bowl season, with a 13-106-1 line in Notre Dame’s blowout victory over Oregon State in the Sun Bowl. Price is technically a second-year guy, but he missed all of last season with an injury and -- with Audric Estime dominating backfield opportunity -- hadn’t touched the ball even ten times in a single game until the matchup with the Beavers. The former four-star recruit will likely compete with Jeremiyah Love (another four-star guy who was a true freshman this season) for touches in 2024. I’m giving Price the early leg up there: he easily outperformed Love’s 15-for-39 rushing output in the bowl game, he has a more developed frame at 206 pounds compared to Love’s 197, and he outpaced his teammate in BAE Rating, RSR, missed tackles forced per attempt, yards after contact per attempt, explosive run rate, and pretty much every other rushing metric this season.

Adjusted for situational context, Dylan Sampson might have posted the most impressive bowl game breakout of any running back in this article. His Tennessee Volunteers blew out Iowa in the Citrus Bowl by a score of 35-0, and his 133 yards on 20 attempts marked 25 more than any back had gained against the Hawkeyes’ nation-leading rush defense in any single game this season (Nathan Carter’s 108-yard performance from back in September represents the only other century mark-reaching effort versus Iowa in 2023). Against a defensive front that allowed just 3.14 yards per carry and a 7.0% explosive run rate on the year, Sampson went for 6.65 per attempt and gained 10+ yards on a fifth of his carries.

It will be interesting to see how things shake out in the Volunteer backfield in 2024. Upperclassmen Jaylen Wright and Jabari Small combined for 232 carries this season and have now both declared for the NFL Draft, so it will be some combination of the third-year Sampson and rising sophomore Cameron Seldon as Tennessee’s top rushing options. Seldon had his freshman season slowed by injury, but he posted a 55% raw Success Rate on his own 13-for-55 line against Iowa (Sampson succeeded on 40% of his attempts in the bowl game) and was a highly-touted recruit who possesses both receiving chops and an NFL-ready frame (he was listed at 210 pounds this year). The 190-pound Sampson posted a 172.5% BAE Rating in 2022 and was solid in a relief role this year, but he will have his work cut out for him in fending off Seldon.

I’m not sure how out-of-nowhere this one was, but Isaac Guerendo took advantage of Jawhar Jordan’s absence to go 23-161-3 on the ground and gain another 42 yards on five receptions in Louisville’s 28-42 loss to USC in the Holiday Bowl:

Considering his 225-pound frame and the fact that he’s been running efficiently against Power Five competition for years now, Guerendo is one to watch for as a sneaky could-be-a-better-pro-than-college-player candidate. Any scouting buzz surrounding him will have an opportunity to pick up steam at the Hula Bowl (or the East-West Shrine Bowl, who knows).

Another player who posted big numbers in a losing effort is Jackson Acker, who gained 108 yards and scored a touchdown on 15 touches in Wisconsin’s overtime loss to LSU in the ReliaQuest Bowl. Your guess is as good as mine in terms of what the Badger backfield will look like in their first post-Braelon Allen season (the addition of Tawee Walker through the transfer portal muddies things up a bit), but Acker’s elite physical profile -- he’s listed at 6’1 and 235 pounds, ran sub-11 seconds in the 100-meter dash in high school, and was named Wisconsin’s track and field Gatorade Player of the Year after winning state championships in both the discus and shot put back in 2021 -- means that we shouldn’t be shocked if he emerges as a major contributor.

I know almost nothing about Braylon McReynolds, a 180-pound sophomore who turned 16 touches into 111 yards in a blowout win over Eastern Michigan in the 68 Ventures Bowl. He’d served as South Alabama’s RB3 for most of the season but did gain 149 yards on 25 touches in the team’s regular season finale versus Texas State (and he has now averaged over 16 PPR points per game in four career contests with double-digit touches, all without scoring a touchdown in any of those games). La’Damien Webb -- the Jaguars’ starter -- is heading to the NFL, opening the door for McReynolds to step into CFF relevance next season. He will presumably compete for lead-back opportunity with rising senior Kentrell Bullock, who went 6-68-1 in the bowl game and operated as the squad’s RB2 throughout the year.

The last surprise producer I want to cover is Ron Wiggins, who turned 30 touches into 143 yards and a score in Jacksonville State’s New Orleans Bowl win over Louisiana. He’s not much of an NFL prospect at just 180 pounds, but he notched above-baseline marks in both BAE Rating and RSR while playing behind Malik Jackson -- who earned fake first-team All-Conference USA honors from me -- in an injury-slowed junior season in 2023.

DJ Giddens took a blow torch to the NC State defense in the Pop-Tarts Bowl, going 28-151-1 on the ground while adding a 37-yard receiving touchdown. He finished his redshirt sophomore season with four straight 100-yard rushing games against Big 12 competition and as one of just two Power Five runners with the rare combination of 300+ receiving yards and a missed tackles forced per attempt average above the 0.30 threshold. I’m not sure Giddens will declare for this year’s draft, but he’d probably have the most complete skill-set of anyone in the 2024 class and would be able to avoid competing with a much more robust group of 2025 prospects.

The other Power Five guy who finished this year with 300 or more receiving yards and a MTF average above the 0.30 mark is Bucky Irving, who turned 17 touches into 135 yards and a score in Oregon’s Fiesta Bowl blowout of Liberty. Look at him scoot:

Jordan James is not eligible for this year’s draft, but he gained 72 yards on ten touches behind Irving in the contest. Liberty’s Quinton Cooley is eligible for the draft, and he topped off his best-running-back-in-Conference-USA campaign by serving as a bright spot in the Flames’ bowl game loss, going 9-for-79 against the Ducks.

Cody Schrader finished his fantastic final season with a 128-yard dismantling of Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl, a 29-carry performance in which he also scored the go-ahead touchdown. The losing side saw TreVeyon Henderson -- who is apparently still undecided on his declare-or-not options -- slog through 19 carries for 72 yards.

Blake Corum still has one game left, but he started and ended the scoring for Michigan in their overtime win over Alabama in the Rose Bowl. His 19-83-1 rushing line was right in line with his usual standards, while his 35 receiving yards represented a season-high. He’ll have an opportunity to add to his already record-breaking career totals against Washington’s 72nd-ranked rush defense in the CFP Championship Game (two years after he went 21-171-3 against the Huskies) after having looked like vintage Corum versus the Rolling Tide:

Donovan Edwards added just four carries for eleven yards in that semifinal matchup, while Jase McClellan had one of his better games of the year for Alabama. He gained more rushing yards against the Wolverines than he had in any contest since mid-October, going 14-87-2 to bring his season total (and new career high) to 890 yards. Freshman five-star Justice Haynes added 31 yards on his four attempts to cap off a season of “solid contributions”.

Meeting Corum, Edwards, et al. in the title game is Dillon Johnson, who did not have an efficient outing but scored twice in Washington’s six-point win over Texas in the Sugar Bowl. He has scored six touchdowns in his last three games and 17 on the year overall, and while he got hurt late in the semifinal, he is expected to suit up against Michigan.

Will Shipley recently announced his intention to leave Clemson for the NFL, and he ended his college career with a scintillating 38 yards on 13 touches in the Gator Bowl victory over Kentucky. As has been the case nearly all season, Phil Mafah far outpaced Shipley’s contributions in the game, turning his own 13 touches into 74 yards and four touchdowns. It seems like he is returning to school, where he’d theoretically have the Tiger backfield to himself for the first time in his career in 2024.

From the other sideline, Ray Davis went 13-63-1 on the ground to finish off a 21-score, 1400-yard season in the SEC. He fell just shy of joining the Giddens/Irving dual-threat group from earlier, with 324 receiving yards to go with a MTF average of 0.26.

Another (perhaps) underrated SEC runner is Kendall Milton, who turned only nine attempts into 104 yards and the game’s first two touchdowns in Georgia’s drubbing of Florida State in the Orange Bowl:

Maybe I’m a sucker, but as a 6’1 and 220-pound former four-star recruit who finished his career at the running back factory that is the University of Georgia by averaging nearly seven yards per carry and over four yards after contact per attempt during his final two seasons, Milton strikes me as one of the more intriguing backs in the 2024 class. Teammate Daijun Edwards -- who led this backfield all year and turned eight touches into 90 yards and two scores in the game -- also declared for the draft. Freshman stud Roderick Robinson finished his season off with a 7-for-70 rushing line against the Seminoles.

Kyle Monangai is not declaring for the draft, but will instead return to Rutgers after a breakout fourth season in which he emerged as one of the best running backs in the Big Ten. He capped of that season with 180 yards and a touchdown on 27 touches against Miami in the Pinstripe Bowl:

RJ Harvey’s career arc has followed a pretty similar path to that of Monangai, and he will also be returning to school in 2024. Harvey was held by Georgia Tech to 120 scoreless yards on 15 attempts in UCF’s Gasparilla Bowl loss, but he finished the year as one of the most efficient 1000-yard rushers across the Power Five conferences.

Converted wide receiver Jamal Haynes turned his own 18 carries into 128 yards in the game, while teammate Dontae Smith went 16-65-1 on the ground. I’m not sure if either of them will end up leaving school (though Smith is a fifth-year guy who may not have eligibility left), but Haynes has some long-shot appeal as an efficient runner with elusiveness and receiving chops, sort of in the Lynn Bowden or Demetric Felton mold.

Devin Neal is returning to Kansas, where he finished his season with 74 yards and a touchdown on 21 touches in the Jayhawks’ win over UNLV in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl. His decision to not jump to the NFL is puzzling to me, as he seems like someone who’d contend for RB1 in this increasingly-depleted class but will be one of several solid options in the mid-rounds of the 2025 draft.

Tahj Brooks wouldn’t have the same cachet in this crop of running back prospects as Neal would, but he is also puzzlingly returning to school for a fifth season after breaking out with over 1500 rushing yards in 2023 (I would assume that NIL is to blame here). He wrapped his year up with a 22-98-1 line in a win over Cal in the Independence Bowl.

As far as I can tell, we’ve received no word yet on whether Kye Robichaux is declaring or not, but he capped off his first season at the Power Five level by going for 107 yards and a score on 15 touches in Boston College’s win over SMU in the Fenway Bowl.

I also don’t know what will become of Rasheen Ali, who bounced back from an injury-shortened 2022 season to gain over 1300 yards and score 16 touchdowns in 2023. His fourth collegiate season ended with a loss to UTSA in the Frisco Bowl, but Ali was his typical efficient self, going 9-92-1 in the game.

Rashad Amos put up one of the bigger stat-lines of bowl season by dropping 33-180-1 in a loss to Appalachian State in the Cure Bowl. He broke out with over 1000 rushing yards at Miami of Ohio this year after unproductively toiling away at South Carolina for three seasons, and he is now in the transfer portal.

Also in (or already through, rather) the portal is Kadarius Calloway, a very explosive runner who averaged over seven yards per carry and four yards after contact per attempt in his lone season with Old Dominion in 2023. He did not have a big game in the Monarchs’ overtime loss to Western Kentucky in the Famous Toastery Bowl, with just 29 yards and a touchdown on ten carries, but he’ll now be joining Jaydn Ott over in Berkeley. I wouldn’t bet on him eating into Ott’s workload too much, but that’s all contingent on how the very boom/bust Calloway fares in transitioning to a higher level of competition; it’s very possible that the talent difference between the two runners is not large. Either way, this will be one of the more fascinating backfields to watch in 2024.

I’ve been relatively long-winded in this article, so let’s bang out four relatively boring players real quick: Malik Sherrod gained 171 yards on 28 touches in Fresno State’s win over New Mexico State in the -- *gasp* -- New Mexico Bowl, Dean Connors turned 15 carries into 64 yards and two touchdowns in Rice’s loss to Texas State in the First Responder Bowl (in which Ismail Mahdi went 24-for-122), Harrison Waylee gained 94 yards on 21 touches in Wyoming’s one-point win over Toledo in the Arizona Bowl, and Jacquez Stuart went 9-99-1 on the ground in a losing effort for the Rockets.

In this article series this season, I have basically ignored the big numbers posted by running backs at service academies on a weekly basis, mostly because those programs run weird offenses and don’t really send fantasy-relevant players to the NFL: in the nearly 25 years since the turn of the century, guys from Air Force, Army, and Navy (across all positions) have combined to score 94.5 fantasy points as pros. Acknowledging that, I’ve decided to throw the troops a bone in this season-finale version of the CFB recap by shouting out Emmanuel Michel. He led Air Force to an Armed Forces Bowl victory over James Madison by turning 35 carries into 203 yards and two touchdowns, capping off an excellent season in which the 215-pound fifth-year senior scored 11 times and ran for nearly 1000 yards. John Lee Eldridge III is a true senior who weighs just 195 pounds, and he contributed eight rushes for 78 yards in the bowl game to finish out a year in which he nearly eclipsed the 600-rushing yard mark at more than seven yards per attempt.

In contrast to the noble troops, Bhayshul Tuten is a genuine draft dodger. The man who turned 20 touches into 155 yards and two touchdowns in Virginia Tech’s Military Bowl win over Tulane is eligible to turn pro but decided to postpone his matriculation to the NFL for one more year. Tuten wasn’t very efficient this season but did force a ridiculous 0.39 missed tackles per attempt, the highest mark for any collegiate runner with at least 200 receiving yards.

Antario Brown gained 132 yards on 25 carries in a win over Arkansas State in the Camellia Bowl. He ran for over 1200 yards this year but finished with just 0.16 missed tackles forced per attempt, the second-lowest mark for any 1000-yard rusher in the country (ahead of only Blake Corum, who forced a troublesome 0.11 per attempt after doing so at a 0.28 per-attempt clip prior to his late-2022 knee injury).

Let’s finish this godforsaken section with a few Group of Five runners who definitely are heading to the NFL this spring, starting with Memphis’ Blake Watson. The dual-threat back turned 18 touches into 129 yards in the Liberty Bowl win versus Iowa State (in which stud freshman Abu Sama went just 12-for-4 on the ground). His versatility, small stature, and mixed-bag efficiency numbers make him a wildcard in this running back class.

Kimani Vidal is also off to the league. He finished the year second in the country in total rushing yards and ended his college career with a 17-for-79 line against Duke in Troy’s Birmingham Bowl loss, and we will see him return to Alabama for Senior Bowl practice in less than a month (he also is apparently related to Hank Aaron, so that’s neat).

George Holani’s eligibility is mercifully all used up, so his 183-yard, two-score performance against UCLA on 18 touches in the LA Bowl will stand as the cherry on top of a very solid career at Boise State:

It will be the Ashton Jeanty -- who turned 21 touches into 102 yards in the loss -- show at Boise State in 2024, hopefully with some more Jambres Dubar sprinkled in (and maybe led by Malachi Nelson??).

Makhi Hughes went for 88 yards on 15 rushes in Tulane’s loss to Virginia Tech. He ends his redshirt freshman season with nearly 1500 scrimmage yards and as perhaps the best non-Jeanty prospect among Group of Five runners.

In their semifinal matchup against Washington, Texas’ young duo of CJ Baxter and Jaydon Blue combined for over 200 yards and two scores on 24 touches. News (surprising to me) recently dropped that Jonathon Brooks is heading to the league, removing a perhaps significant barrier to Baxter and Blue being fully unleashed in 2024. Both of them flashed at times this season, with Blue performing more efficiently on less work.

The biggest college running back-related news of the last week came when Quinshon Judkins announced his intention to enter the transfer portal. He’s coming off his second straight 1000-yard rushing season but was far less efficient as a sophomore than as a freshman, as his per-carry average dropped by nearly a yard-and-a-half at the same time that his raw Success Rate fell by more than six percentage points, all while neither the other Rebel runners nor the team’s offensive line (according to PFF) experienced a significant dip in performance. Judkins’ final game in an Ole Miss uniform saw him gain 120 yards and score a touchdown on 35 touches in the Peach Bowl victory over Penn State, emblematic of his volume-fueled output throughout the 2023 season. It will be fun to see him in a new uniform, where we might get some clarity on who the true Judkins is: either the guy whose most recent on-field results don’t speak strongly to an exciting NFL future, or the guy whose tape does:

In a losing effort for Penn State, Nick Singleton finished his season with an 8-for-50 rushing performance alongside a 4-86-1 line that stands as the best single-game receiving contribution of his career:

For all of Singleton’s early struggles, he ended the year on a strong note by averaging 8.91 yards per touch on 43 opportunities in the Nittany Lions’ final three games. Kaytron Allen went 10-for-51 on the ground in the final loss but gained 150 more yards on just one more carry than Singleton for the season.

Without Carson Steele in the lineup, TJ Harden had the UCLA backfield to himself against Boise State, and he took the opportunity to convert 24 touches into 131 yards and two scores. In three career games with at least 20 touches, Harden averages 25.4 PPR points, and (pending transfer portal nonsense) he could be in line for a big 2024 as the Bruins’ undisputed lead back.

Ollie Gordon ended his stellar year by going 27-118-1 in Oklahoma State’s win over Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl. Five-star Aggie freshman Rueben Owens went just 7-for-26 in the game, completing a disastrous season in which backfield teammates Amari Daniels and Le’Veon Moss each averaged more than five yards per carry while Owens toiled away at 3.81. He might stink.

Speaking of stink, LeQuint Allen turned 20 carries into two yards (!!) in a 45-point blowout loss to South Florida in the Boca Raton Bowl. The prince who was promised in this post-Sean Tucker world turned out to be a bit like the college version of Tony Pollard: much less effective in a workhorse role. He averaged fewer than five yards per touch this season.

Let’s get three final ho-hum performances out of the way before ending on a positive note. Jahiem White ended his fantastic freshman season by turning 14 touches into 65 yards and a score in West Virginia’s win over North Carolina in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, while Omarion Hampton went just 19-for-62 on the ground in the Tar Heels’ loss. Jaydn Ott gained 83 yards and scored one touchdown on 21 touches in Cal’s loss to Texas Tech.

Finally, Gavin Sawchuk went out with a bang in Oklahoma’s Alamo Bowl to Arizona, going 15-134-1 to make it five straight 100-yard rushing games to close out the year. He also added three catches for another 42 yards in the game: