A fantastic start to the 2023 college football season is now in the books. Future versions of this post-week survey will include leaderboards for advanced metrics and more definitive takeaways based on a larger sample of performances, but here’s what most caught my eye across the running back landscape in week one:

We don’t know what his usage and productivity will look like when USC starts playing games that are actually competitive (maybe next week against Stanford?), but Lloyd is running ahead of Austin Jones and Quenten Joyner as the Trojans’ RB1 through two weeks, and the on-field results and eye test have shown him to be an explosive and versatile threat out of the backfield on a small sample during that time. His 16 total carries and 28 routes run represent just one and five fewer, respectively, than what Jones and Joyner have combined for. The latter total gives Lloyd a 36.4% route participation rate on USC’s 77 dropbacks, itself an 86th-percentile mark that means his to-date involvement in the passing game is similar to how often Jahmyr Gibbs, D’Andre Swift, Najee Harris, and Bijan Robinson were being asked to run routes during their respective final seasons at Georgia Tech, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas (all between 34.8% and 36.5%).

Lloyd has also just been good. He’s averaging 7.4 yards per carry, has forced (according to Pro Football Focus) seven missed tackles on his 16 rushing attempts (he runs with all three of ferocity, elusiveness, and burst, as can be seen here: 1, 2, 3), was impressive through and after the catch on the beautiful, up-the-seam connection from Caleb Williams shown above, and has been a dawg as a blocker both downfield and at the line of scrimmage. I called him “a superstar just waiting to be unleashed” a week ago and have been banging the Lloyd-as-an-under-the-radar-stud drum for months. Hopefully these first two games have just been a teaser of what’s to come.

I’ve been tentatively optimistic (heavy on the tentative) about Corum’s prospects of returning to form after rehabbing a surgically-repaired knee this offseason, but he looked a lot like his old, explosive self in Michigan’s win against East Carolina on Saturday. It was only ten carries against a G5 opponent, but he was cutting well off both legs and flashed something close to his signature burst on this long run. I’ll continue monitoring this situation as the season progresses, but I thought it was an excellent first game back for the guy I consider the best pure runner (assuming health) in the upcoming draft class.

TreVeyon Henderson was part of a ho-hum day for the Ohio State offense against Indiana, as he turned 12 carries into just 47 yards (while, according to PFF, not forcing a single missed tackle) and didn’t catch a single pass. Miyan Williams was similarly inefficient but scored two touchdowns, while Chip Trayanum outdid them both by gaining 45 of his 57 yards after contact and on just eight attempts total.

Raheim Sanders experienced even more of a slog in week one than Henderson and Williams did, but his struggles came against Western Carolina out of the FCS ranks rather than at the hands of a Power Five squad. Sanders did score two touchdowns, but he averaged just 2.8 yards on his 15 carries and “added” two receptions for -4 yards. The other Razorback runners gained 68 yards on their 14 combined attempts while KJ Jefferson threw for 246 and three scores, so it’s possible the Catamounts were just loading the box to stop Sanders at any cost (though I didn’t watch this game and don’t have box count data from it yet, so who really knows). There should be better days ahead for Arkansas’ workhorse.

Trey Benson posted a Hendersonian line of 12 for 47 in Florida State’s blowout win over LSU on Sunday, but Rodney Hill and Lawrence Toafili combined for similar output (11 for 49) behind him and I thought Benson looked good in some spots despite the general lack of running room:

Notable performances from first-year runners included:

5’9 and 170-pound four-star Dylan Edwards made everybody miss on his way to 6-24-1 on the ground and 5-of-5 for 135 and three touchdowns as a receiver, including the game-winner. NFL potential is obviously limited by his size but man is dude tough to tackle in open space.

LJ Martin went for 91 yards on 16 carries in his first game for BYU.

Sedrick Alexander had 89 yards and two touchdowns on 14 attempts for Vanderbilt (and shoutout to Blake Hampton for being in on both of these last two guys since the summer).

Mark Fletcher -- a 6’2 and 225-pound four-star at Miami -- had 76 yards and a touchdown on nine carries against Miami of Ohio:

Roderick Robinson, Cedric Baxter, and Justice Haynes -- the top three backs in campus2canton.com’s 2023 Freshman & Supplemental Draft Guide from earlier this summer -- were all impressive in limited action. Robinson went 8-50-1, Baxter had 38 yards on five carries (one of which resulted in this nice run), and Haynes gained 29 yards on just four attempts. They were each their team’s most efficient running back in week one.

Jalen Buckley is technically a redshirt freshman, but he’s already listed at 5’11 and 210 pounds and went 30-194-1 against St. Francis in a game in which the other Western Michigan backs averaged just 3.9 yards on their 28 combined attempts. I’m officially interested.

LJ Johnson is a four-star guy who didn’t catch on at Texas A&M, but he went for 14-128-1 in his first game for SMU on Saturday.

Ray Davis is now at his third school and fifth season in college overall, but he’s still running like the stud I thought he was back in 2020. He had 112 yards and two touchdowns on 14 carries in Kentucky’s season-opener against Ball State.

Carson Steele had 96 yards and a receiving touchdown on 17 touches against Coastal Carolina, but the advanced data says TJ Harden was better. Another situation to monitor.

Emani Bailey may have fallen through the cracks. I had him unranked coming into the season despite the fact that he’d posted a Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate above the 85th percentile in each of the last two seasons (one as a committee runner at Louisiana and the other as depth behind Kendre Miller at TCU), and he ran for 164 yards while sharing carries with Alabama transfer Trey Sanders on Saturday. I almost fell off the couch when he pulled off this run:

Ashton Jeanty (who the C2C team has been hyping up for years) went 10-44-1 on the ground and led Boise State with 109 receiving yards (including this 50-yard touchdown on a screen pass) in a blowout loss against Washington. He’s already listed at a stout 5’9 and 210 pounds.

I wrote about Bucky Irving on Sunday, whose two touchdowns and 149 yards from scrimmage helped with Oregon’s historic drubbing of Portland State.

Kimani Vidal leads the nation in both rushing and scrimmage yards after going for 248 on 25 carries (on top of two receptions for 54 yards) against Stephen F. Austin. He weighs 215 pounds, has 76 career receptions, and has never posted a BAE Rating below the 111.0% mark in three seasons at Troy.

Audric Estime weighs 227 pounds and has enough juice to rip off 50-yard runs right through the teeth of the (FCS-level Tennessee State) defense. He has 211 rushing yards through two games after posting a BAE Rating and RSR each above the 82nd percentile on his way to a 920-yard season in 2022.

With 137 yards in Marshall’s opener against Albany, Rasheen Ali already has over 50% of the rushing yardage total he posted in all of 2022.

Devin Neal looked as smooth and explosive as ever on his way to 119 yards and two touchdowns from scrimmage against Missouri State:

Sutton Smith had a 96th-percentile RSR on a couple dozen carries as a freshman last season and then led Memphis with 18 carries for 115 yards and two touchdowns on Saturday. He’s only 5’9 and 185 pounds, but we know how things go with running backs from this program.

Jo’Quavious Marks hasn’t posted a BAE Rating above the 100% mark since 2020, but he dominated backfield touches and posted nearly 200 yards from scrimmage against Southeastern Louisiana this weekend.

Braelon Allen and Chez Mellusi both ran for over 140 yards and two touchdowns against Buffalo, with Allen adding a team-leading seven (!!) receptions for 25 yards. Not even the target share cultists will be able to stop him now.

Jaydn Ott looked pretty good against North Texas, running for 188 yards and two touchdowns (with 178 and both scores coming in the first half) in a performance that included this nice effort:

Jaylen Wright put up 115 yards on just 12 carries against Virginia, and he did it with a long run of only 21 yards.

LeQuint Allen and DJ Giddens were impressive in their first games following the respective departures of Sean Tucker and Deuce Vaughn. Allen had 16-107-1 and Giddens had 15-128, both against FCS opponents.

Marcus Carroll hasn’t done much in three seasons at Georgia State, but he wrecked Rhode Island to the tune of 184 yards and three touchdowns on 23 carries last Thursday.

Damien Martinez put up 18 for 145 against San Jose State on Sunday. Notably, he’s now listed at 232 pounds after weighing 216 as a freshman, and he also managed two receptions for 19 yards against the Spartans after catching just four balls all of last season. If he’s going to be a competent checkdown option who can also run explosively at 230 pounds, then his current RB31 spot in my devy rankings is way too low.

Clemson was awful against Duke on Monday night, but (outside of this interception-causing drop) Will Shipley was not. He caught six passes -- including one for the team’s only touchdown of the game -- and ran for 114 yards on 17 attempts, a performance that meant the average Shipley carry was worth more than 0.50 Expected Points Added greater than the average Cade Klubnik dropback.