This is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the recap of everything I found notable in the land of running backs during week five of this college football season is here. Notes on over 50 players and rushing efficiency data on the most productive backs in the country:

In 2021, Texas had perhaps the most talented backfield in the country with Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson atop the depth chart and combining to receive 79% of all carries among Longhorn running backs. That season, true freshman Jonathon Brooks ran the ball in just three games (two against Big 12 opponents) but produced 6.81 yards per carry (more than a yard higher than Robinson’s average and nearly a yard higher than Johnson’s) to go with Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate marks in the 65th and 89th percentiles, respectively, among collegiate backs in the last five years. In 2022, the team ran it back with the same dynamic duo of future NFL runners, as Bijan and Roschon accounted for a collective 83% of carries from Texas backs. That year, redshirt freshman Brooks ran the ball in just four games (two against Big 12 opponents and another against the 8th-ranked Washington Huskies) but produced 6.57 yards per carry (nearly a half-yard higher than Robinson’s average and more than a half-yard higher than Johnson’s) to go with BAE Rating and RSR marks in the 65th and 64th percentiles, respectively, among collegiate backs in the last five years.

Now, in 2023 and as part of a backfield that no longer boasts Robinson and Johnson but does have the top-rated running back in the entire 2023 recruiting class in CJ Baxter as well as the sixth-rated runner in the entire 2022 recruiting class in Jaydon Blue, redshirt sophomore Brooks has alone accounted for 53% of Texas’ total running back carries while producing 6.94 yards per carry to go with BAE Rating and RSR marks in the 87th and 98th percentiles, respectively, among all NFL draftees in the last five years. He currently ranks 5th among Power Five running backs with at least 50 carries in BAE Rating and 8th in RSR, and his career marks in those metrics currently sit in the 74th and 94th percentiles, respectively, among future NFL backs, and compare favorably to the career numbers of the guys on this cherry-picked list of some of the most dynamic running back prospects in recent history:

He’s also producing like a monster right now. I’ve buried the lede on his ridiculous week five performance thus far, but he just put up 241 yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage against a 24th-ranked Kansas squad (far outshining a more highly-touted running back prospect in Devin Neal while doing so), has a season-worst performance of 14-57-1 against an Alabama team that Pro Football Focus currently rates as having the 13th-best rush defense in the country (they held Quinshon Judkins to essentially the same statline) despite playing behind an offensive line that PFF rates outside the nation’s 65 best run-blocking units, and enters week six with a 28.6% Dominator Rating on an offense that ranks 29th in the country in scoring and 17th in total yards. Those market share numbers in the context of such a high-octane offense (using S&P+ as our rating system) mean that Brooks’ third collegiate season is currently most comparable (from a production standpoint) to the third years of Carlos Hyde, Deuce Vaughn, Lamar Miller, and Derrius Guice (among all college backs in the last fifteen years), while his career production is most comparable to the numbers posted by Miller, Joe Mixon, Jeremy Hill, and Kyren Williams. Like those last four guys, Brooks did not experience an early breakout, but he contributed well as an underclassman on nationally-contending squads and is now dominating with lead-back opportunity. As the devy rankings indicate, he’s easily the biggest riser for me among top-30 backs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t make it out of round four in the NFL Draft this spring.

Adjusting for quality of opponent (and perhaps even without doing so), you could argue that the 289 yards and four touchdowns from scrimmage that Davis put up with just 27 touches on Saturday on the then-22nd-ranked Florida Gators and their stout defense -- that, at the time, ranked 5th, 15th, 18th, and 19th, respectively, in yards allowed per game, rushing yards allowed per game, points allowed per game, and PFF run-defense grade -- represents the best performance from any collegiate running back so far in the 2023 season.

He was simply a beast against what is still the SEC’s second-best defense by yards allowed per game, scoring a short-yardage touchdown despite a two-man disadvantage versus the 13 players Florida had on the field, powering through multiple men at the line of scrimmage and making guys miss in the open field, tight-roping the sideline and slaloming through defenders for a receiving touchdown, and showing off high-level explosiveness on a 75-yard touchdown that made him the fastest ball-carrier across all of college football this week:

I will have been a fan of Davis’ for four years by the time April rolls around, but the fact that he’s been an effective and productive player at three different programs during that time is at least matched by the consideration that he’s a fifth-year guy who will turn 25-years old during his rookie season in the NFL. While his current market share numbers and Kentucky’s to-date S&P+ ratings combine to indicate that (at least using the method I employ for rating seasonal production) his 2023 season is on pace to be the 12th-best among 884 fifth-year backs since 2009 (and better than those from guys like Latavius Murray, Jamaal Williams, Jaylen Warren, Phillip Lindsay, and Andre Ellington), the shape of his overall career arc is nearly without precedent. Where someone like Kendre Miller, for example, completed a three-year career that was at least 90% similar to those of five other players in the post-2008 timeframe and at least 85% similar to those of 66 other players, Davis’ has a total of zero and ten close production comps in those categories, respectively (with Williams the only fantasy-relevant pro in the latter group). Additionally, while the cohort of successful fifth-year backs I listed above certainly shows that super-senior runners can go on to succeed in the NFL, Davis will be the third-oldest running back drafted since at least 2007 if he is indeed selected this April, with Bernard Scott and Cameron Artis-Payne the only longer-toothed backs to hear their names called on draft day in that timeframe, and zero running backs in that same span have gone on to fantasy-relevance after being old enough to have turned 25 during their rookie seasons.

That doesn’t mean Davis is doomed to professional failure, but it’s worth keeping in mind that he’s substantially older than most of his opponents and substantially older than most other running back prospects who dominate while being substantially older than most of their opponents. Much of prospect evaluation involves grading on a variety of curves to account for the differences in offensive environment, strength of opponent, etc. in the situations of different players, and the age curve simply applies harder to Davis than to the vast majority of running backs in recent history.

Quinshon Judkins awoke in a big way on Saturday, erupting for 177 yards and a touchdown on 33 carries against LSU. He certainly looked like the 2022 version of himself that was named first-team All-SEC, and he’ll look to build upon his first 5+ yards-per-carry game of the season with a matchup this weekend against the next absentee runner on our list.

That next guy is Raheim Sanders, who played in just his second game of the year on Saturday after dealing with a knee injury for most of September. He averaged just 3.09 yards per carry against a decent Texas A&M defensive front, but this YAC effort on a screen pass was pretty nice. Hopefully he’s able to continue getting healthy and ultimately reassert himself as one of the best players in this upcoming running back class (it needs him to).

Terion Stewart showed out against Georgia Tech, rushing for 138 yards and a touchdown on 26 attempts while adding one reception for another 27 yards. He’s now put up two straight 100-yard rushing performances after starting the season with just 108 in the first three weeks combined.

Peny Boone will look to make it four 100-yard games in a row against UMass after going 16-113 against Northern Illinois in a game in which the Huskies’ Antario Brown put up 152 yards on 16 carries of his own last week. Boone is tied for 11th in the country in rushing while Brown started the season slow but is coming off two straight years of excellent team-relative efficiency.

Makhi Hughes redshirted behind Tyjae Spears at Tulane last season, but he’s operated as the team’s RB1 so far in 2023, had a 92-yard rushing outing against Ole Miss in early September, and capped off the month with this week’s 22-123-2 line against UAB. He’s just 195 pounds, but he’s currently averaging more yards per game than Spears ran for through his first three seasons with the Green Wave.

On the other end of that matchup was UAB’s Isaiah Jacobs, who scored two touchdowns and ran for 95 yards on 18 attempts. He’s a fourth-year guy and transfer from Maryland who entered the season without ever having posted a BAE Rating above the 80.1% mark. He’s UAB’s lead back but doesn’t strike me as a future pro.

Another unlikely pro but more interesting player is Jacksonville State’s Malik Jackson, a 185-pound fifth-year senior and wide receiver convert who put up his third 100-yard rushing game of the season on Saturday with a 13-129-1 line against Sam Houston State. He’s averaging 6.56 yards per carry and is Conference USA’s leading rusher.

An even smaller Malik in Fresno State’s 173-pound Sherrod had 123 yards and a touchdown on just 12 carries against Nevada, out-touching and out-gaining the team’s leading rusher in the recently-scholarshipped Elijah Gilliam.

Ismail Mahdi made his first appearance in this article after a 200-yard rushing game last week, and he was absolutely dominant again this Saturday. He’s another small guy at just 5’9 and 180 pounds, but he is electric in all phases and had the full repertoire on display against Southern Mississippi, with an 89-yard reception to go with 89 yards and three touchdowns on the ground as well as this 100-yard house call on a kickoff:

Mahdi’s 9.76 is the nation’s top mark in yards per carry (among guys with 50+ attempts), and nobody is within even a yard of it.

The guy in second place on that list is Harrison Waylee, yet another 180-pounder who most recently put up 18-191-1 in Wyoming’s victory over New Mexico.

Frank Gore Jr. seems to have turned things around, as after three games with a combined 76 rushing yards on 30 attempts to start the season he’s now strung together back-to-back 100-yard outings, following up last week’s 20-132-1 line against Arkansas State with 24-123-2 against Texas State. His current BAE Rating and RSR numbers are still pretty low, however, at 74.8% and -1.8%, respectively, after he posted ridiculous marks of 196.5% and 15.0% in those categories last season.

Rasheen Ali continued his bounceback season with a 137-yard, two-touchdown effort on just 18 attempts against Albany out of the FCS ranks. Yawn.

Ashton Jeanty is an absolute machine. He had a relatively inefficient rushing day with just 82 yards on 23 carries against Memphis, but that sorta thing just doesn’t seem to matter with this guy, as he added five receptions for 59 yards and scored two touchdowns each on the ground and through the air. He remains the nation’s running back leader in yards from scrimmage -- with a 75-yard lead over Audric Estime despite having played in one fewer game -- and is now also atop the country’s leaderboard in total touchdowns.

Former Alabama signee, four-star athlete, and Under Armour All-American Kadarius Calloway (he was a more highly-touted ATH recruit than Raheim Sanders back in 2021) is apparently a member of the Old Dominion Monarchs after having spent the last couple seasons playing both running back and defensive back at East Mississippi Community College (where he averaged 0.79 yards per carry greater than the collective other backs in 2022). After touching the ball just six times through Old Dominion’s first four games, the 6-foot, 217-pound Calloway put up 236 yards and scored three touchdowns on 11 carries against an undefeated Marshall squad on Saturday. He’s officially interesting:

Old Dominion’s starting runner from last season is Blake Watson, who put up 19-113-2 in Memphis’ matchup with Boise State. He’s currently sixth in the country in yards from scrimmage.

Fifth on that list is Nate Noel from Appalachian State, who continues to bat 1.000 on producing 100-yard rushing games this season after turning 18 attempts into 109 yards against UL-Monroe.

Ball State’s Marquez Cooper had a nice dual-threat day against Western Michigan, posting 15-82 on the ground and 4-54 through the air.

SMU’s Jaylan Knighton pulled two-thirds of a Calloway by going for 150 yards and two touchdowns on just 11 carries against Charlotte.

Tyre Shelton of Louisiana Tech is quietly putting together a productive season, as his 16-104-1 line against UTEP brings him to 8.59 yards per carry on the year and marks his second straight 100-yard game.

Coastal Carolina’s Braydon Bennett is a fifth-year guy who just posted his first quality game of the season against an FBS opponent, with 144 yards and a touchdown on 17 touches against Georgia Southern.

Finally, Myles Bailey nearly matched that line with 139 yards on his own 17 touches in Central Michigan’s victory over Eastern Michigan.

MarShawn Lloyd doesn’t touch the ball as often as some of the other most talented runners in the 2024 class just by virtue of playing on an offense with a million playmakers and led by the best quarterback in the country, but he manages to make an impression every week anyway. In the Colorado game, that impression came on this sick cutback touchdown run:

He went 13-84 and added a 12-yard reception in the victory, and he and Ismail Mahdi are currently the only two players among the nation’s top-30 scrimmage yard-gainers who have fewer than 60 touches on the season (the average for the other 28 guys on that list is 94 touches).

I mentioned earlier that Audric Estime is second in the country in yards from scrimmage, and he maintained his streak of just being plain good in every game this season by putting up 81 yards and two touchdowns on then-17th-ranked Duke, including a 30-yard rumble for the go-ahead score with less than a minute to play:

He also added four receptions for 25 yards and, five games and 94 carries into the season, is still forcing 0.38 missed tackles per rushing attempt, a mark in the 99th percentile among eventual NFL draftees.

Logan Diggs, who played with Estime at Notre Dame in both 2021 and 2022, is now LSU’s RB1 and put up 19-101-2 on Arkansas this weekend.

Bucky Irving joins Mahdi and Lloyd as one of just four players (along with New Mexico’s Jacory Croskey-Merritt) among the country’s top-30 running backs in yards from scrimmage with fewer than 70 touches on the season, as he averaged 6.94 yards per touch on his way to 111 yards and a score against Stanford on Saturday.

South Carolina’s Mario Anderson spent the first four years of his career at Newberry College (where he ran for over 3300 yards in three seasons and was done pretty dirty in his 2020 roster photo -- click on “historical”) and is now the lead runner on an SEC. He put up 101 yards and a touchdown on just 10 carries against Tennessee.

One of the great names in college football this year belongs to Bhayshul Tuten of Virginia Tech, who spent the first two seasons of his career at Tarik Cohen’s alma mater of North Carolina A&T, where he was dominant in 2022. Tuten just ran for 109 yards on 24 carries and added 4-37-1 as a receiver in the Hokies’ win over Pitt.

Purdue super-duper-senior Tyrone Tracy is a wide receiver convert now splitting time with Devin Mockobee at running back. After going 8-84-1 against Wisconsin two weeks ago, he put up 21-112-1 on Illinois on Saturday.

I’m probably not taking Tahj Brooks seriously as an NFL prospect at this point, but he’s not making the worst case for himself so far this season. After turning 21 carries into 101 yards and two touchdowns against Houston, he ranks tenth in the country in rushing and (albeit alongside a very low BAE Rating) has the fourth-highest RSR among Power Five runners with at least 50 attempts.

I’ve decided that Cam Skattebo is like the poor man’s Ashton Jeanty. He averaged less than three yards per carry on 24 attempts against Cal this Saturday, but he scored a touchdown on the ground and had 98 yards on four receptions. He even completed this pass for 18 yards to put him at 15 yards per pass attempt in the last two weeks:

Washington’s Dillon Johnson is a 218-pound fourth-year guy who finished three years as a rotational back at Mississippi State with a 116.9% BAE Rating and a 4.0% RSR, and he’s been solid as the leading rusher for one of the country’s best offenses so far this season. He went 16-91-2 on the ground and had five receptions for 48 yards against Arizona last weekend.

Jaylen Wright of Tennessee had 123 yards on 16 carries against South Carolina on Saturday after averaging fewer than four yards per carry across his last two games.

Nathan Carter gained 108 yards on 20 carries versus Iowa just one week after their defense -- which PFF rates as the 10th-best in the country against the run -- only gave up 3.18 yards per carry to Penn State’s duo of Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen.

It’s the same thing every week for the Michigan backfield: Blake Corum contributes well in low-stakes blowouts while Donovan Edwards gets more work than seems appropriate for a guy running like he’s wearing galoshes out there. This time around it was 16-74-1 from Corum and 51 yards on 15 touches from Edwards in a 38-point win over Nebraska.

Le’Veon Moss continues to impress, most recently with 134 yards on 20 touches against Arkansas.

Bucky Irving’s most productive backfield teammate this season has been the 205-pound Jordan James, who is actually averaging 0.88 yards per carry greater than the diminutive junior and just put up the same amount of rushing yards and touchdowns (88 and one) on Stanford as Irving did, but on seven fewer carries.

Darius Taylor didn’t suit up for Minnesota on Saturday, which opened the door for sophomore Zach Evans to lead the backfield. He put together a quality 15-87-1 performance against Louisiana-Lafayette.

Kaytron Allen went down early in Penn State’s game against Northwestern (and it seems we don’t yet know what exactly happened or how serious his injury is), opening the door for an increased role for Nick Singleton and an opportunity for senior transfer Trey Potts. Singleton had six catches for 39 yards and a touchdown and also scored on the ground, but turned in another inefficient rushing outing with just 80 yards (and a fumble) on 21 carries, while Potts scored twice (one rushing and one receiving) and had 51 yards on just four touches in Allen’s absence.

BYU freshman LJ Martin continues to dominate backfield touches while not offering much explosive-play production. He most recently turned 16 carries into 66 yards and two touchdowns in a win against Cincinnati.

Cal sophomore Jaydn Ott has now book-ended two weeks’ worth of sub-3.5-yard-per-carry running with a pair of dynamic ground performances. He had 20-190-2 against North Texas in the season opener and then ran for 165 yards and a touchdown on 29 carries against Arizona State.

Utah’s defense is allowing just 2.4 yards per carry and 67.0 rushing yards per game and 2.4 on the season (the fifth- and fourth-best marks in the country, respectively), so all things considered, Damien Martinez’s 16-61-1 line in Oregon State’s 21-7 win was pretty impressive.

Just because, let’s sort by Dominator Rating and give you the BAE Rating and RSR marks for the guys at the top of those leaderboards. Here’s Group of Five players to start: