We’re now halfway through the college football season, which means the clutching to priors that is justifiable in the inherently small sample first month starts to go out the window. Especially in the context of projecting these guys toward hypothetical NFL careers, we should be looking to pivot quickly based on newly crystallized information. Updates coming to the rookie and devy rankings on Friday will reflect those pivots, but you can whet your whistle now on the following thoughts and data leaderboards covering more than 50 running backs across the college landscape:

Devin Neal just tore apart the Central Florida defense that Pro Football Focus rates as the country’s eighth-best against the run, going for 154 yards and a touchdown on just 12 carries to bring his season totals to 593 yards and six touchdowns on 77 carries:

The other guys at Kansas did their thing against UCF in this game, too, as 220-pound third-year sophomore Daniel Hishaw went 19-134-2 while 215-pound fifth-year Memphis transfer Dylan McDuffie went 19-91-2, but Neal can hardly be said to be a passenger princess on this train as his 7.70-yard per-carry average on the season represents a significant improvement over the 6.23 yards being offered by the collective other Jayhawk backs. Dude is fast, explosive, has a dead leg package that would make Group Captain Mandrake jealous, has NFL size at 215 pounds, is currently averaging 12.1 yards per reception on an 11.8% target share that ties D’Andre Swift’s career-best mark at Georgia and lands in the 76th percentile among historical draftees, and has posted market share numbers on annually-improving Kansas squads that mean his career arc of productivity closely matches those of past prospects like Devin Singletary, Alex Collins, Jordan Howard, Ryan Mathews, and Marlon Mack. Unless they’re as good as Breece Hall, lead backs for tier three programs are not sure bets for draft capital, but while Neal is certainly not at Hall’s level, I think he’s a better prospect than many of the recent Jermar Jefferson, Ke’Shawn Vaughn, Chase Brown, and Anthony McFarland types who’ve gotten hype in their jump to the NFL after dominating at mediocre Power Fives.

Let the PFF grade deniers (me) and Zack Moss slanderers (me) know that Benson is back up. Last year’s missed-tackles-forced-per-attempt king has had an absolutely atrocious start to a 2023 season that was supposed to be the rollout to his campaign as the top running back in the upcoming rookie class, as he averaged less than four yards per carry in three of his first four games and totaled nearly 100 fewer rushing yards across the entire first month of the season than Ray Davis put up on Florida in just 60 minutes last weekend. Given that abysmal stretch, I wasn’t confident enough in Benson to even include him in the top 11 of my first post-week one ranking of the 2024 running back class (largely because I wasn’t confident it would behoove him to turn pro in pursuit of whatever draft capital his then-current levels of productivity and effectiveness would garner).

The 200 yards and two touchdowns he laid on Virginia Tech on just 11 carries on Saturday were therefore a sight for sore eyes, and I mean that literally, because Benson looked smooth and explosive:

The performance brings his per-carry average up to 7.63 yards from the 4.73 it sat at entering the game, and while I hope this was the smash spot that Benson needed to get his groove back and propel him toward being a legitimate difference-maker on a CFB-contending Florida State squad, I need to see more before I let myself get re-excited about his NFL potential.

The truth of the matter is that, before Saturday, Benson’s resume was built on one season of high-end play that was otherwise bookended by two seasons of virtually zero production at Oregon (the first of which was missed due to injury, which obviously isn’t his fault -- the point is that we had basically no evidence of him being good going into last season) and four weeks of virtually zero production as part of a Seminole offense that simply isn’t the sort of environment in which you’d expect a stud running back to struggle. Benson has been running into heavier defensive fronts this season than those he faced in 2022, but his Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate numbers (which compare his output to that of his collective teammates while controlling for the defensive attention they each receive on their carries) entering the Virginia Tech game were both very low. It’s possible that he simply isn’t used to working through such crowded areas near the line of scrimmage, but outside of that one factor it’s hard to find a reason why a seemingly-healthy back running behind a quality offensive line (PFF rates them as the 17th-best run blocking unit out of 68 Power Five groups) on a team full of playmakers and led by a Heisman-contending quarterback would experience such a slog on the ground.

It’s also perhaps worth pointing out that the Hokie defense Benson just shredded is one of the nation’s worst. PFF rates them 62nd against the run among Power Five programs, they are bottom-12 in the country in both rushing yards per game and rushing yards per carry allowed, and they entered Saturday after having given up 5.2 yards per carry on 14 attempts to Old Dominion’s Keshawn Wicks, 21-95-1 to Purdue’s Devin Mockobee, 26-143-3 to Rutgers’ Kyle Monangai, and 27-174-2 to Marshall’s Rasheen Ali. Hopefully these last two paragraphs just turn out to be screenshot fuel that lets some salty Redditor claim evidence of my Benson haterade when he smashes the rest of the season, but I simply want to exercise some caution before vaulting him back up into RB1 territory in the 2024 rookie class.

Sanders opened up the season with a 2.8-yard-per-carry performance on 15 attempts against Western Carolina out of the FCS ranks, missed Arkansas’ next three games (which was longer than anticipated) with a knee injury, went just 11-for-34 against Texas A&M in his first game back, and produced only 15 yards on eight carries against Ole Miss on Saturday. The Razorbacks’ offense generally and the other running backs on the team specifically haven’t gotten much going so far this year, either, but those guys are collectively averaging 4.24 yards per carry to Sanders’ 2.68 (and junior runner AJ Green has averaged over six yards on his 32 attempts despite running into some of the heaviest defensive fronts of any back in the country), so it’s not as if Rocket’s struggles can be written off as purely the result of adverse circumstances.

I don’t know if he’s still working back from that knee injury (though it seems contradictory that they’d hold him out for longer than expected and then also have him on the field while he’s not fully healthy) or if the 15 pounds he added from last season’s playing weight is slowing him down, but either way, we are now halfway through the junior season for a player that many (including myself) considered the RB1 of the upcoming rookie class, and dude has 149 yards from scrimmage. The other piece of the puzzle is that Sanders is not a no-doubt prospect (he’s a wide receiver convert with one season each of good and bad rushing efficiency numbers, and, despite not having run with the level of power you’d anticipate from a 227-pound guy last season, may have done himself a disservice with the substantial offseason weight gain) and therefore (as I mentioned in this preseason rankings piece on the 2024 running back class) “[did] not have a stranglehold on this RB1 spot” even entering the year. He’s certainly lost that spot now, and he carries much of the same why-would-he-even-declare-at-this-point risk that Trey Benson was swimming in prior to this weekend.

It’s almost definitely not gonna be Benson or Sanders, and while I really like all of Braelon Allen, Blake Corum, and MarShawn Lloyd, Brooks has probably been the best running back in college football so far this season. He’s simply near the top of almost every rushing statistic leaderboard you can devise: second in yards, fourth (out of 144 backs with 50+ carries) in PFF grade, 14th in BAE Rating, 16th in yards after contact per attempt, 17th in raw yards per attempt, 23rd in missed tackles forced per attempt, and 23rd in RSR. He was also a monster in a close loss against Oklahoma ninth-ranked rushing defense (according to PFF) in Saturday’s Red River Showdown, with 163 yards and a touchdown on 27 touches:

There were fewer big games from non-Power Five runners than usual this weekend, but some of the guys who went off really went off.

The first of those is Ismail Mahdi, because of course it was. The cleanest precedent for a 180-pound, small-school speedster like him that I can think of is Keaton Mitchell, who had 719 yards and five touchdowns from scrimmage through the first five games of his sophomore season at East Carolina. After posting a 34-188-1 line against Louisiana on Saturday, Mahdi has now put together 851 yards and nine touchdowns from scrimmage through the first five games of his own sophomore season, and has added 280 yards and a score on nine kickoffs for good measure (Mitchell had five kick return yards during that five-game stretch in 2021). Mitchell had a lot of fans during this offseason cycle and could make some noise in the wide open Ravens backfield when he gets activated from IR in the next few weeks, and I see no reason why Mahdi couldn’t also punch above his weight as an NFL prospect when spring of 2025 rolls around.

Look at this shit from Antario Brown:

That was one of four touchdowns of more than 45 yards from Brown on Saturday, who totaled 280 yards and averaged 6.67 yards on the nine of his carries that didn’t go for scores. He’s a 219-pound junior who is now 13th in the country in rushing yards after starting the season with 131 yards in the first three games.

Another day, another Ashton Jeanty smash. Dude had a couple fumbles but bounced back to put up 24-167 against San Jose State, including this Najee Harris-style hurdle at the line of scrimmage:

Kimani Vidal is the country’s leading rusher (by over 100 yards) after putting up 245 yards and three touchdowns on 28 carries on Arkansas State.

Toledo’s Peny Boone is now at four straight games of 100+ rushing yards after going 17-129-2 against UMass. On the other side of that matchup, Kayron Lynch-Adams had 157 yards and a touchdown on his 20 carries.

North Texas’ Ayo Adeyi is at three such games himself after disrespecting the troops with 125 yards and a score on just 14 attempts against Navy.

Tyre Shelton had 21-118-2 in a loss against Western Kentucky.

Jermaine Brown Jr. had his first good game of the year following the departure of DeWayne McBride from UAB’s backfield this offseason. He had almost 1000 yards while playing behind McBride in 2022 but is at just 270 so far this year after putting up 116 yards and four touchdowns on 18 carries against South Florida on Saturday.

La’Damian Webb turned 19 carries into 100 yards and a touchdown against UL-Monroe.

It wasn’t a huge game, but I still thought Kadarius Calloway’s 12-93 line against Southern Miss was notable as a legitimizing follow-up to the breakaway-fueled 236 yards he had versus Marshall a week ago. He’s easily the country’s leader in yards per carry (among backs with at least 25 rushes), as his 12.89 is almost 3.5 yards higher than the per-attempt average of the second-place John Lee Eldridge.

Cautionary tale for the Benson breakout party is the follow-up to his 177-yard performance from last week that Quinshon Judkins just posted against Arkansas. He had one 34-yard run and also punched in a short-yardage touchdown, but produced only 1.82 yards per carry on the 17 attempts that didn’t include that breakaway scamper. Meanwhile, teammate Ulysses Bentley doubled up Quinshon’s per-carry average by going 13-94-1. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Judkins right now, but you can’t even blame stacked fronts for his poor efficiency: the 6.44 defenders in the box he’s faced on his average rushing attempt is in the 34th percentile among runners with 50+ carries on the season.

Audric Estime had his first slow week of the season with 20 yards on 10 rushes against Louisville. Braelon Allen had a similar performance against Washington State earlier in the year and this Louisville defense is currently among the nation's top-30 teams against the rush in terms of yards allowed, yards per carry allowed, and PFF grade, so this was probably a blip. This week’s tussle with USC (who doesn’t have a good defense) should be fun.

Estime’s Notre Dame squad will represent the toughest matchup that MarShawn Lloyd will have faced on the ground so far this season, so it’ll be interesting to see how he both is used and performs against a non-cupcake defensive front. That said, he’s been awesome against the defenses he has faced, most recently with 86 yards on 15 carries in USC’s triple-overtime tilt with Arizona on Saturday night, including this slick touchdown and the following clutch run to set the Trojans up in scoring position at the end of regulation (though they had a disastrous goal-to-go sequence that forced them into overtime):

Jawhar Jordan bounced back from his 32-yard game against NC State with 21-143-2 on Notre Dame.

Braelon Allen ran for 101 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries versus Rutgers.

I’m getting desperate for non-blowout game-script for Michigan. They’ve won every game this season by at least 24 points, which has meant Blake Corum can run for his weekly touchdown and then take things easy in the second half. This Saturday, that meant 69 yards and a score on just nine carries against Minnesota, while Donovan Edwards brought his season total to just 305 scrimmage yards with 45 on eight touches in the contest. The most exciting revelation from this one was the mention on the broadcast that Corum can put up 30 reps at 225 pounds on the bench, which would match Samaje Perine’s total for the most any running back has put up at the Combine since Jerick McKinnon back in 2014. People who are concerned about Corum’s size are telling on themselves.

I mentioned Logan Diggs in this article for the first time last week, and the 24-134-1 he put up on Missouri now makes three straight games of at least 100 yards from scrimmage. He’s 6’1, 215 pounds, and has nice BAE Rating and RSR numbers at 120.6% and 20.6%, respectively.

Carson Steele lit up the Washington State defense that held Braelon Allen to 20 yards back in early September with 141 yards on 30 attempts. He entered with zero 100-yard rushing games and just a five-carry advantage on the season over TJ Harden in the Bruin backfield, but he more than doubled his teammate’s touch count in this breakout performance. Maybe we’ll see Steele fully unleashed over the second half.

Pat Garwo probably isn’t a legitimate prospect, but he went 14-111 against Army.

Montrell Johnson took advantage of the absence of Trevor Etienne to gain 160 yards and score a touchdown on 21 touches versus Vanderbilt.

Will Shipley is absolutely the hardest guy for me to get a good feel for in the 2024 running back class. He strikes me as a somewhat lesser prospect than his staunch supporters would have you believe (though that’s not a strongly held opinion of mine), and his Trey Benson-esque start to the year has made crystallizing my thoughts on him even more difficult. The season-best performance of 19-97-1 he just posted against Wake Forest could be a good step toward a better second half, but even it’s not the kind of breakout game that Benson experienced this week.

Ray Davis followed up his week five explosion against Florida with a very solid 95 yards from scrimmage and a receiving score on 17 touches against Georgia.

Emani Bailey had his most efficient rushing outing of the season this week with a 21-152 line against Iowa State. On the other side of that matchup, third-year guy Eli Sanders gained 99 yards and a touchdown on his 16 attempts.

Missouri’s Cody Schrader scored three times and gained 114 yards on just 13 carries against LSU.

Tahj Brooks has now strung together four straight 100-yard rushing games after turning 31 attempts into 170 and a touchdown versus Baylor. He’s fourth in the country in rushing.

I was unfamiliar with Arizona’s Jonah Coleman prior to the USC game, but he kinda shredded them. The 5’9 and 225-pound sophomore entered the contest with just 191 yards on the season, but he only started out-touching upperclassmen DJ Williams and Michael Wiley in week four. Against the Trojans, he had 26 touches to Williams’ 10 (Wiley didn’t play) and turned those opportunities into 180 yards from scrimmage. I’m intrigued.

Kaleb Johnson hadn’t done anything this year prior to putting up 17-134-1 on Purdue, but the 222-pounder posted a 144.9% BAE Rating to go with a 3.7% RSR as Iowa’s lead back during his freshman 2022 season. Leshon Williams is a fourth-year guy in the Iowa backfield who isn’t much of a prospect but is currently averaging nearly 1.3 yards per carry greater than Johnson is, so it’ll be interesting to see how the backfield shakes out over the second half of the season.

Ollie Gordon put up 136 yards and a touchdown on 21 carries against Kansas State and has now gone for 100+ in two straight games and is averaging a combined 6.46 yards per carry in three games against Power Five opponents this season.

The Oregon State-Cal game had one of the most exciting pairs of opposing runners of any game this weekend with Damien Martinez and Jaydn Ott going blow for blow. Neither of them exploded, but Martinez had 105 yards and a touchdown on 18 touches to Ott’s 82 scoreless yards on his 14 touches. Ott’s senior teammate Isaiah Ifanse is a Montana State transfer who went for 95 yards and three touchdowns on a dozen touches of his own.

Here are the top-fifteen guys from Group of Five programs in total carries, listed alongside the average number of defenders in the box they face, the average amount of yards they gain, the average amount of yards after contact they gain, and their rates of 10-yard runs:

And here’s the same list but for guys at Power Five schools: