Just imagine a quippy remark or interesting tidbit in this very short preamble to the week twelve recap:
Quinshon Judkins is having a bad season.
The volume numbers look fine, but Judkins has not been good this year. The median per-carry average for all lead backs in the SEC in the last five years is 5.38 yards, and Judkins is currently averaging 4.46. Let’s attempt to figure out what’s up.
One potential culprit is a bad offensive line. Pro Football Focus rates Ole Miss’ run-blocking unit as just the 68th-best in the country and the ninth-best in the SEC, and they’ve been playing without either of their starting tackles in the last few weeks. Still, it’s hard to completely attribute Judkins’ struggles to that poor blocking when he excelled despite playing with an even worse offensive line last season, when PFF rated the Rebels as having the 89th- and 11th-best run-blocking in the country and in the SEC, respectively. It’s also hard to totally blame blocking when the other backs at Ole Miss have individually and collectively been much more effective on a per-carry basis than Judkins has.
Ulysses Bentley is averaging 5.59 yards per carry and has a 51.2% Success Rate on 82 attempts as Judkins’ primary backup. Third-year man Matt Jones has only 12 attempts, but he’s succeeded on more than half of them and is averaging over seven yards per carry (and it’s not as if he’s only played against cupcakes, as six of his dozen carries have come against Power Five opponents). Jamious Griffin is a fifth-year guy with only seven carries, but he’s succeeded on five of them while averaging 5.57 yards per attempt. Collectively, these guys are averaging 5.70 yards per carry and succeeding at a 53.5% rate on a total sample of 101 attempts. Judkins is averaging 4.46 yards per carry and has succeeded on just 45.5% of his 209 attempts.
We also can’t blame some extreme level of defensive attention paid to Judkins at the line of scrimmage for his rushing struggles. His 78.7% Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and -7.9% Relative Success Rate both say that’s not the issue, but it’s also true that the other Rebel runners have faced an average of 6.37 men in the box to Judkins’ 6.32. There are actually only five Power Five runners in the country (among guys with 100+ attempts) who have faced fewer box defenders on their average carry than Judkins has, and they’re all averaging between 0.37 and 2.92 more yards per carry than Judkins is. In fact, of the 15 other Power Five backs (with 100+ carries) who’ve faced no more than even 6.50 average box defenders (a round number that lands in the 42nd percentile), the only one of them who has been less efficient on a per-carry basis than Judkins has thus far in 2023 is Bhayshul Tuten.
Basically, Judkins has not been good, and we can’t reasonably blame his offensive line or the circumstances of his carries. So what gives? One factor is health. Lane Kiffin said earlier this season that Judkins “got hurt in the Tulane game” and then “pushed himself to play” in the subsequent weeks. By the time they played Alabama on September 23rd, though, Judkins said he was “healthier” than in the few preceding games and “felt really good.” After the tailback went 33-177-1 against LSU just seven days later, Kiffin responded to a question about Judkins’ early-season struggles by saying, “Well, he was hurt.” I’m not deep in the weeds of the Ole Miss message boards, but I can’t find any mention of Judkins’ health following that past-tense reference from October 4th.
You could also argue that the LSU game represents a sort of turning point in Judkins’ season. After all, he’s run for over 100 yards in four of his seven games and is averaging 4.82 yards per carry during that time, compared to zero 100-yard games and 3.53 yards per carry prior in the first four weeks of the season. But this can’t be our back-to-normal for Judkins, because it’s still not good. 4.82 yards per carry is fine, but it’s like Jo’Quavious Marks or JaTarvious Whitlow fine, not stud-running-back-that-we’re-excited-about-drafting-as-next-year’s-RB1 fine. It’s also still lower than what the other Ole Miss backs are producing, as they’ve averaged a collective 5.55 yards per carry in the since-LSU stretch. Judkins is presumably healthy, but he’s still not adding value on a per-carry basis (he just turned 18 carries into only 65 yards against UL-Monroe!).
My default explanation for such a phenomenon is that Judkins simply is not actually healthy, at least not fully. With yards after contact and missed tackles forced per attempt numbers that haven’t fallen off relative to last season in any significant way -- he’s at 3.35 and 0.26, respectively, in 2023 compared to 3.38 and 0.28 from last year -- it’s difficult to find on-field metrics that corroborate such a position, but I’m not yet ready to draw the scorching hot conclusion that follows when you dismiss injury as a potential factor: that Quinshon Judkins might be overrated.
It wouldn’t be the first time the devy community prematurely crowned a king, as Tank Bigsby, Max Borghi, Zach Evans, and Chuba Hubbard can all attest to. I’m not saying it’s definitely the case (and I don’t even necessarily believe it at this point), but Judkins turning out to be less than what his stellar freshman productivity would indicate also would not be completely out of the blue when we look at the rushing efficiency metrics. The 117.0% BAE Rating he posted last year is good for a college runner (it’s in the 72nd percentile), but it’s slightly below average for an NFL prospect (47th percentile). Grading on a curve would involve giving Judkins extra credit for having posted such numbers as a freshman and relative to a talented group of backfield teammates that included Bentley and Evans, but it’s easy to point out that a) Bentley is now outperforming Judkins on a per-carry basis, and b) Evans is now doing nothing in the NFL (though I still feel pretty much the same about him as I expressed in this article). Judkins also posted a negative RSR and displayed subpar through-contact ability on film last season. Basically, he was good as a freshman, but his play was not beyond reproach, and his poor performance from this season makes it harder to continue giving him the benefit of the doubt for some of the holes we saw in his game in 2022. I hope (and still think) it’s simply injuries, but we need to keep an eye out for Judkins just not quite being that guy.
Big day for freshmen.
In his first game since Jonathon Brooks went down, CJ Baxter went 20-for-117 on the ground and caught five passes for 13 yards against the fourth-best rushing defense in the Big 12 (according to PFF). He also looked pretty good:
Mark Fletcher has now carried the ball a double-digit amount of times in each of his last four games, with this Saturday’s performance against Louisville probably standing as the best of his young career. He turned 17 carries into 126 yards and two touchdowns and looked a little Najee Harris-ish:
I rated Rueben Owens as the only true freshman back in the country giving us a large sample of bad play in this article from last week, but he dominated backfield touches and delivered 124 yards and a touchdown on 20 touches on Saturday. It was against Abilene Christian out of the FCS ranks, but a step in the right direction is a step in the right direction. It’s also notable that Le’Veon Moss was active and received a carry in this game, as he’d missed the matchup with Mississippi State after getting hurt against Ole Miss. He was playing well prior to the injury, and I would assume that he’ll return to something closer to a regular workload in a higher-stakes game against LSU on Saturday.
CJ Donaldson didn’t play much against Cincinnati due to an injury, opening the door for Jahiem White to step into increased volume just two weeks after the freshman went 16-for-146 against BYU. He was even better this Saturday, turning 21 carries into 204 yards and a score and adding this 75-yard receiving touchdown:
White has averaged at least nine yards per carry in five of the eight games in which he’s run the ball this season. He is very explosive and very small, though his 5’7 frame means he doesn’t need to be a ton heavier than his 192 pounds to be viable for Tarik Cohen- or even Dion Lewis-type stuff in the league.
Notable performances from the 2024 class:
TreVeyon Henderson is on a heater. After putting up 172 yards and two scores on 17 touches against Minnesota, he’s now gone for over 100 rushing yards in four of his last five games and in three of his four since returning from injury. This long touchdown he pulled off is one of the best runs I’ve seen this season:
The Kansas State-versus-Kansas showdown included two top-ten runners in the upcoming class in DJ Giddens and Devin Neal. Neal went 13-138-3 and met his weekly quota of pulling off at least one ridiculous run:
Giddens is underrated and therefore doesn’t have any sexy highlight clips available to link from Twitter, but he had a good game of his own, going 21-102-1 in a victory.
I wonder if Blake Corum is feeling worn out at this point in the season. I speculated a couple weeks ago that he might not be 100% of the dominant player that we saw in 2022, and despite a 26-145-2 performance against Penn State during this stretch, he’s averaging just 4.06 yards per carry across 97 carries in his last five games after going 28-94-2 against Maryland on Saturday. He’s also succeeding on just 45.4% of his carries during that time after doing so 60.2% of the time on the 83 carries that came prior.
On the other hand, Donovan Edwards and the collective other Michigan backs haven’t been killing it lately either. Edwards went 11-39 this week (though that’s slightly more efficient than Corum’s line), and he and the other guys are combining to average 3.94 yards per carry and succeed on 39% of their collective attempts in the post-Minnesota stretch we’ve been referring to. They’re also running into defensive fronts that are not quite as heavy as those Corum faces, at blank versus blank, so maybe Corum is doing just fine after all. For whatever it’s worth, he also emphasized how healthy he is going into Saturday’s matchup with Ohio State (and I don’t get the vibe that he’s lying):
It appears we have a good old fashioned committee backfield at Clemson. Phil Mafah led the way with 25 touches for 91 yards and a score against North Carolina, while Will Shipley had probably the best game of his season by going 18-126-1 on the ground and adding two receptions for another 53 yards. He also looked good while doing it.
Audric Estime rumbled for another solid outing, notching his fourth straight game with at least 87 rushing yards by going for 115 and a score on 22 carries versus Wake Forest.
UCF held Ollie Gordon to 25 yards on 12 attempts a week ago, but Tahj Brooks had probably his best game of the season against the Knights, turned 24 attempts into 182 yards and a score. He’s a tough guy to bring down:
MarShawn Lloyd didn’t have a great game against UCLA, with just 17 yards on eight attempts to go with this brutal fumble. He did add three receptions for 75 yards (including this nice downfield play), but his fumble rate on 115 carries is now the seventh-highest among all 100+ carry backs in the nation. His career fumble rate is even higher, so ball security is a slight red flag on his prospect profile.
Sophomores:
It is no longer lonely at the top of the country’s rushing yardage leaderboard for Ollie Gordon, as after a 19-178-2 performance against Clemson, Omarion Hampton’s 1414 yards bring him into a first-place tie with Gordon. This play was a whoopsie, but he looked pretty good otherwise:
Gordon had a good game himself this week, going for 180 yards from scrimmage and scoring three touchdowns on 30 touches against Houston (including a second-half rushing line of 16-125-3). He’s remarkably elusive in tight spaces and especially around the line of scrimmage for such a tall runner, something we see throughout this cut-up from Saturday:
Nick Singleton averaged more yards per carry than Kaytron Allen for just the third time this season on Saturday, as he turned 11 carries into 61 yards while Allen went 16-69-2 against Rutgers. We’re now approaching the 150-carry mark for each of these guys, and Allen is averaging 0.80 more yards per carry while succeeding on 11.3% more of his attempts than Singleton is despite seeing virtually the same box counts (6.57 for Allen versus 6.59 for Singleton).
Jonah Coleman gained 90 yards and scored a touchdown on 14 attempts versus Utah this weekend. He’s been a beast on the ground all year, but I wonder if pass-catching has been an overlooked part of his game. He has three or more receptions in six games to go with 277 receiving yards, 12th-most among nationwide running backs.
Oregon State lost to Washington, but Damien Martinez had his way with the Huskies:
He finished the game with 26-123-2 on the ground to go with two receptions for another 44 yards. Martinez is one of only seven Power Five runners in the country (among those with 100+ carries and counting Audric Estime) who’ve seen more than seven defenders in the box on his average carry, and he’s the only one of that group who is averaging more than six yards per attempt.
After posting a 22-142-1 rushing line in the win over USC on Saturday, TJ Harden now has two games of at least 20 touches and is averaging 16 touches per game during UCLA’s last four contest, at the same time that Carson Steele is averaging 11.8 touches and hasn’t handled the ball more than 13 times in a single game. Harden added two receptions for 16 yards and a score against the Trojans, while Steele turned his 12 attempts into just 49 yards.
Trevor Etienne has now gone over 100 yards from scrimmage in three games in a row after turning 17 touches into 119 yards and two scores against Missouri. Montrell Johnson had a good game as well, going 12-for-85 on the ground and scoring a 12-yard receiving touchdown.
After posting 14-107-1 against BYU, Gavin Sawchuk has also now gone over 100 yards from scrimmage in three games in a row. He scored the game-winning touchdown on this run:
What do you know: after catching eight passes for 21 yards and turning 27 attempts into 120 rushing yards and two scores against Georgia Tech on Saturday, LeQuint Allen has also now gone over 100 yards from scrimmage in three games in a row.
Always the one-upper, Jaydn Ott notched his fourth straight game of 100+ scrimmage yards by turning 38 touches into 188 yards and a touchdown versus the nerds at Stanford (nothing like the real men they have at Berkeley)
Small school round-up:
Ashton Jeanty returned to action this weekend, but it was still George Holani who led the Boise State backfield against Utah State. The fifth-year runner turned 15 carries into 178 yards and two scores, and he looked pretty good while doing it:
Jeanty played well also, going 12-85-1 on the ground and catching two passes for another 23 yards. He’s clearly the more multidimensional of these two backs, but Holani is averaging more yards per carry and succeeding on a higher percentage of his attempts while running into heavier defensive fronts.
On the other side of the matchup, Davon Booth turned a dozen attempts into 125 yards. He’s a junior transfer from Cerritos College, where he ran for over 1400 yards and was named a California Community College Football Coaches Association All-American in 2022 (though I’m not clear on where the California Community College Football Coaches Association gets the authority to name All-Americans).
Oscar Adaway and Ayo Adeyi combined for 276 yards from scrimmage on 36 total touches against Tulsa. Adaway scored a touchdown and out-gained Adeyi by 28 yards in the game, but Adeyi has been the better player this season and has a solid rushing efficiency profile going back multiple years. He’d been an interesting small school prospect if he wasn’t 192 pounds or didn’t only have nine receptions in his three-year career. Anthony Watkins ran for 115 yards and a score on 21 carries for Tulsa in the matchup.
Malik Jackson and Anwar Lewis combined for an even bigger outing against Louisiana Tech than the fellas from North Texas had this weekend. Lewis turned 15 touches into 136 yards and a score, while Jackson ran the ball only nine times but went for 193 yards and two touchdowns. He’s been excellent in the open field all year, as his 61.1% Breakaway Conversion Rate and this 68-yard scamper show:
If my calculations are accurate, the highest PPR output from any Group of Five back in week twelve came from Ja’Quez Cross, who has been the far more efficient runner while splitting time with Zak Wallace in the Arkansas State backfield this season. The Red Wolves poured it on in a 77-31 win over Texas State on Saturday, as Cross went 13-139-3, Wallace added 7-65-2, and even freshman Cedric Hawkins had 5-35-2.
The next-highest PPR output came from Jacory Croskey-Merritt, who ran for 204 yards and two scores on 21 attempts versus Fresno State. He’s a 204-pound fifth-year guy, but he’s having a pretty nice season, with a 125.1% BAE Rating and an 11.6% RSR. This run from Saturday was a highlight:
Last Tuesday, Peny Boone put the boom on Bowling Green by adding three receptions for 24 yards to his 15-131-1 rushing line in a one-point victory. All due respect to Marcus Carroll and Kimani Vidal, but as the only 1000-yard back in the country who is averaging more than seven yards per carry, Boone deserved to be a Doak Walker Award semifinalist if any G5 guy deserved it.
Or maybe I should keep my mouth shut, because Carroll scored a touchdown and gained 138 yards from scrimmage on 19 touches against LSU this weekend (they lost by 42, but Carroll can’t play defense, throw passes, and run the ball). He leads all non-Power Five runners in rushing yards on the season.
Vidal also had a solid week, going for 112 yards and a score on 27 carries versus Louisiana. He’s only eight yards behind Carroll on the national rushing leaderboard, and on 21 fewer carries.
The guy who is eighth among Group of Five runners on that list is Antario Brown, who went 21-159-2 against Western Michigan last Tuesday. He hasn’t been quite as good as a high-volume back this season as he was in a part-time role in the previous two years:
Bangura did have a good game against Central Michigan a week ago, with 126 yards on 21 attempts.
Ta’ron Keith continues to play well in Terion Stewart’s absence, as he ran for just 65 yards on 15 carries but caught seven passes for another 51 yards against Toledo last Tuesday. They’ve both been fantastic this season and are a strong contender for best running back duo in the Group of Five conferences.
SMU probably has the best trio of G5 runners, but LJ Johnson stood out on his own with a 21-115-1 line against Memphis this week (with his touchdown coming versus 12 defenders), as Jaylan Knighton and Camar Wheaton went a combined 11-56-1 behind him.
One guy who I haven’t paid much attention to this season is Dean Conners, who ran for 184 yards on 19 carries against Charlotte this weekend. He’s in the middle of a nice little year, with marks over the 90th percentile in each of yards per carry, BAE Rating, yards after contact per attempt, and missed tackles forced per attempt.
Marquez Cooper had what is surprisingly just his third 100-yard rushing game of the season against Kent State this weekend, going 25-140-1 on his way to notching his third straight season of at least 1000 yards from scrimmage. He’s not the best running back in the G5, but Cooper is probably the most accomplished.
Jermaine Brown had perhaps his best game of the year against Temple this week, with 173 yards and a score on 25 touches. He’s one of the draft-eligible players that I’m most excited to watch film of this offseason, as his tape inspires praise on Twitter (1, 2, 3) that doesn’t really match with his data profile.
La’Damian Webb notched his fifth 100-yard rushing game of the season with a 24-117-1 line against Marshall that also included two receptions for four yards and another score. Rasheen Ali went just 16-55 in the shutout loss.
Jaylon Armstead had more than 20 carries for the first time in his career on Saturday, and he took the record opportunity to put up 134 yards and a score on San Jose State.
We once again finish off our small school recap with a San Jose State runner, but this time it’s Quali Conley instead of Kairee Robinson. The former turned his 13 attempts into 155 yards and a touchdown on Armstead’s SDSU Aztecs, while Robinson went just 11-40-1 to snap a four-game streak of 100-yard rushing games.
And finally, our future UDFAs of America:
Cody Schrader was named a Doak Walker Award semifinalist and is therefore probably the highest-profile of any UDFA we’ll discuss here, but I think he’s still probably a UDFA. This week, he continued his stellar season by running for 148 yards on 23 attempts versus Florida, including this explosive touchdown:
Kye Robichaux went 24-118 against Pitt to make it three of his last four with more than 100 yards on the ground. On the other side, Rodney Hammond posted his first 100-yard game with 145 and a score on 15 carries.
Isaac Guerendo ran ahead of Jawhar Jordan and gained 104 yards on 16 touches against Miami on Saturday. He’s been a beast in November, with a 32-333-5 line in his last three game. Guerendo is actually somewhat interesting as a deep sleeper in the upcoming draft class, as he’s been good this year after having posted BAE Ratings above the 120% mark in both of his two seasons behind Braelon Allen at Wisconsin.
Aidan Robbins put up 182 yards on 22 carries against Oklahoma this weekend. He feels like a return-to-school candidate.
Reggie Love turned 18 attempts into just 64 yards in Illinois’ 13-15 loss to Iowa. I say that not because his performance was notable, but because his monopoly on backfield opportunity was. Kaden Feagin missed the game and will have shoulder surgery that will put him on the shelf for the rest of the year and even through spring practice.
Lastly, the moment you’ve been waiting for: Purdue versus Northwestern. Devin Mockobee had a 98 yards and a score on 15 touches in this one, but Tyrone Tracy led the Boilermaker backfield with 20 touches that he turned into 198 yards and a touchdown. This open-field running looks like if Alvin Kamara was wearing the Iron Boots from Ocarina of Time:
Cam Porter had a solid game on the other side of the matchup, with 17-95-2 on the ground.