Championship games meant a smaller pool of players to talk about than we normally have, but the CFB recap article at noahmoreparties.com does not take weeks off:

After they traded 100-yard rushing games in the two weeks after Jonathon Brooks tore his ACL, CJ Baxter and Jaydon Blue split work pretty evenly in Texas’ blowout win over Ollie Gordon’s Oklahoma State squad in the Big 12 Championship Game. Baxter went 13-43-1 on the ground and caught four passes for 33 yards, while Blue went 10-33 and caught three passes for 38 yards and a touchdown. I thought Blue looked both explosive in the running game and smooth in the receiving game:

Baxter did out-touch him 17-13 in the game and has out-touched him a combined 52-36 in the three games since Brooks went down and a combined 151-66 this season, but it’s pretty clear that Blue has been the more effective player throughout 2023. Baxter’s 4.64-yard per-carry average is the lowest among the five Longhorn backs with at least ten attempts on the year, as is his 36.9% Success Rate (a mark that ranks 133rd out of 148 nationwide runners with 100+ carries). He also ranks 139th in the country in yards per route run among running backs with double-digit targets. The five-star freshman has been very involved, with over 20 receptions to go with a per-game workload of more than ten carries, but he really hasn’t been impressive on a per-opportunity basis this season.

On the other hand, Blue has been excellent. He has quality raw efficiency marks that produce above-baseline numbers in both Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate despite his sharing a backfield with a number-one recruit and a Doak Walker Award semifinalist. He also ranks 26th in the country in yards per route run (ahead of guys like Jermaine Brown, TreVeyon Henderson, and Blake Watson) and hit the fastest in-game speed of any running back in college football in 2023:

So how are we supposed to view these guys as devy assets? It’s hard to say that Blue is just better than Baxter given that Baxter is way ahead of schedule compared to where Blue was a year ago, when he turned 15 carries into 33 yards in nine games as the Longhorns’ RB5, but it also kinda seems like Blue is just better than Baxter. Even if that’s the case, it wouldn’t necessarily be a foregone conclusion that Blue passes Baxter by on this depth chart at some point between now and next fall, and if Blue doesn’t pass him by, does he transfer? He’ll be draft-eligible next spring and may want to showcase himself in a larger role. There’s also the unknown element that Brooks adds to this situation. Is he healthy enough to reclaim his workhorse role when the 2024 season rolls around (assuming he stays in school)? Even if he is, does Steve Sarkisian deploy him that way or roll him into some kind of three-man rotation? In order, I’m most convinced of the NFL talent of Brooks, Blue, and then Baxter among the key players in this running back room, but it’s easier to feel confident in my talent evaluation than in any sort of devy valuation projection at this point (and these are college guys without huge resumes, so it’s not like the talent evaluation is set in stone, either!).

I’ll finish this Texas running back spiel with a brief digression to point out a curiosity that I noticed and that you can take however you want: Baxter’s freshman season has been very Trey Sermon-like. Back in 2017, the freshman version of Sermon was the RB2 behind an excellent lead back in Rodney Anderson on a Big 12 champion Oklahoma squad. Here’s how his numbers from that debut season compare to Baxter’s current marks:

Because there were so relatively few games this weekend, I want to take the opportunity to put some non-starters under more of a microscope than we usually do in this article. We cover a lot of ground on the most productive backs on a week-to-week basis, but C2C and devy rosters care about the next men up and the diamonds in the rough as well.

The first worth mentioning among players in that genre is Keilan Robinson, who played very well in spot duty against Oklahoma State. Just a week after returning a kickoff for a 95-yard touchdown, Robinson scored twice versus the Cowboys, including this long, tight-roping score:

He turned six touches into 95 yards in the game and has averaged seven yards per carry this season, and that’s after you remove the above 57-yarder from his sample. He’s not a big-time pro prospect, but Robinson is a former four-star recruit who has contributed well throughout his five-year college career and whose lack of production can pretty easily be explained by the elite running back talent he’s played behind. I’d be surprised to get fantasy relevance from him at the next level, but I would not be surprised to see him participating in an NFL rookie camp this summer.

Lawrance Toafili had an even longer run in the ACC Championship Game, going for 75 yards on this play to give him 118 yards and a short touchdown on just ten attempts. He’s probably not much of an NFL prospect, either, but Trey Benson’s season-long mark of 5.80 yards per carry is interesting vis-á-vis Toafili’s 6.67. Benson went just 18-for-67 in the game.

On the other side of that matchup was Isaac Guerendo, who had just ten yards in the contest but has been very solid in backup roles in each of the last three seasons, first behind Braelon Allen and then spelling Jawhar Jordan. He has averaged 4.16 yards after contact per attempt this year, the seventh-best mark among Power Five runners with at least 100 carries. Jordan gained 73 yards on 17 touches versus Florida State, while sophomore Maurice Turner went 2-for-41 but is now at two straight seasons of sub-85.0% BAE Ratings and negative RSRs on 50+ attempts.

Jam Miller scored a nice wheel route touchdown against Georgia:

He gained only 23 yards, but Miller received a career-high (against FBS opponents) nine rushing attempts in the SEC Championship Game, and his season-long RSR currently sits at 2.1%. He hasn’t been a bad player, but you’d think this would have been the year to assert yourself in the Alabama backfield if such a thing was ever going to happen. Jase McClellan did not play against Georgia, opening the door for Roydell Williams to go 16-64-1.

Kalel Mullins is a converted linebacker with just 46 career rushing attempts, but he turned three carries into 15 yards against Iowa and has been Michigan’s most efficient ball-carrier all season. He has a 150.1% BAE Rating, a 20.5% RSR, and is averaging more yards after contact per attempt -- 4.00 -- than Donovan Edwards is averaging overall. Edwards gained 47 yards on eight touches while Blake Corum scored two short touchdowns and turned 19 touches into 62 yards in the game.

For Iowa, sophomore Kaleb Johnson gained 14 yards on six carries. He was a beast last season, with a 144.9% BAE Rating and 3.7% RSR to go with 0.34 missed tackles forced per attempt, but those numbers have dipped to 89.2%, -9.5%, and 0.15 this year (though the fact that he’s seen literally the heaviest defensive fronts of any running back in college football might have something to do with the drop in efficiency). Starter Leshon Williams gained just 25 yards on his nine carries versus the Wolverines.

Billy Lucas is a “sophomore” at Liberty who graduated from high school in 2019, played a few years at the FCS level at Duquesne, and spent this season backing up Conference USA’s leading rusher in Quinton Cooley. Lucas turned 14 carries into 86 yards and a score against New Mexico State on Friday and may have some CFF value in 2024 (assuming Cooley leaves for the NFL), but he lagged behind the efficiency of even Liberty’s RB3 and RB4 this year. Cooley went 11-71-3 in the victory:

In the Pac-12 Championship Game, Jordan James turned six touches into 65 yards and a touchdown. He has straight up outplayed Bucky Irving on a per-carry basis this season (in terms of both Success Rate and yards per carry), a reality that makes him one of the more interesting soon-to-be-starters across the college landscape. Irving turned 14 touches into just 36 yards against Washington.

They spread the wealth quite a bit during the regular season, but Jaylan Knighton dominated backfield touches in this weekend’s matchup against Tulane, going 15-75-1 on the ground. LJ Johnson and Camar Wheaton combined for just eight carries behind him after averaging a combined 20 per game in the prior weeks. Knighton has been the most efficient of the three backs but both Johnson and Wheaton have posted higher Success Rates.

Makhi Hughes managed just 44 yards on 11 carries versus SMU, but his advanced efficiency numbers remain sky high.

The same can be said for Ollie Gordon (at least in terms of his BAE Rating) after he went 13-for-34 against Texas. They completely bottled him up on the ground, but he did look smooth on his way to posting his second-highest receiving yardage total of the season with 54 on four receptions.

As he has in each of the last three weeks, Kendall Milton out-touched Daijun Edwards to serve as Georgia’s lead back in the SEC Championship loss to Alabama. He went 13-42-2 in the game and has a 113.7% BAE Rating to go with a 7.6% RSR on the year. Edwards turned ten attempts into just 38 yards on Saturday and has certainly been outed as a non-value-adding runner by this point in the season.

Finally, Dillon Johnson exploded against Oregon. He ran for 152 yards and two scores on 28 carries, caught a seven-yard pass, and threw a four-yard touchdown. He’s still not breaking many tackles, but his production and near-elite efficiency numbers -- 134.6% BAE Rating and 8.5% RSR -- probably provide a good enough reason to take him seriously as an NFL prospect.