THE FIELD: 2024 Running Backs Preview
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This is the second in an offseason series previewing and ranking the positional groups of Nebraska’s opponents and Nebraska in relation. Other installments can be found below:
Running backs as a position have been devalued at the professional level, with the top ball carriers receiving less and less of a share of the salary cap as NFL teams have embraced increased passing and the idea that offensive line play is the decisive variable in a team’s rushing success.
But that’s still not really true in the college game. While passing attacks in collegiate football continue to modernize and play a larger role in the sport, an offense can still be built around the singular performance of a great, game-changing back. Michigan State in 2020 finished 119th in SP+ offensive rating and in 2021 returned the same mediocre line and play-caller and had a first-year starter at quarterback — and jumped to 31st in offensive rating mostly because Kenneth Walker decided to go insane mode. Other players like Christian McCaffrey at Stanford, Breece Hall at Iowa State, and Ollie Gordon III at Oklahoma State have elevated otherwise nondescript or untalented attacks into top 25 units by advance statistical measures since 2015, when the “RBs Don’t Matter” movement began in earnest in the NFL. Michigan has gone 40-3 over the last three seasons, largely by building its offense around giving Blake Corum a bunch of Duo carries. In college, at least, running backs do matter.
In evaluating these backs I’ve relied more on tape performance and underlying metrics than just raw rushing totals or yards per carry, which can be skewed by offensive line play, scheme, or breaking a few big runs. The two metrics I’ve focused the most on are “average yards per carry after contact” (sometimes abbreviated YCO/A) and “missed tackles forced” (sometimes abbreviated MTF), as I believe those two do the best job of isolating running backs’ individual contributions.
Average yards per carry after contact is, simply, the amount of yards a player generates after being first touched by the defense divided by their total carries. I think this does the best job of quantifying/isolating what sort of yardage backs are generating on their own: If the spot where you get first touched by the defense is the amount of yardage on the play we can attribute to the play design or the blocking, then all the yardage that comes after a back has been touched we can attribute to the back’s own skill/ability/individual performance. Not perfect, but probably the best we have. The mean YCO/A among starting FBS backs last season was 3.11 yards; anything higher is above average, and anything lower is below average.
Missed tackles forced is a Pro Football Focus stat that attributes an MTF any time a back avoids being tackled in a situation where the service otherwise believes they would be tackled. Same principle: The place where a back should have been tackled we can largely attribute to blocking/scheme on the play, so forcing missed tackles isolates what value ball carriers are actually bringing themselves. The mean MTF among starting FBS backs last season was about 24.5 (though these are raw totals and not rate stats adjusted for carries, 27 missed tackles forced on 100 carries is obviously more impressive than 27 missed tackles forced on 200 carries).
Another stat I’ve looked at is “breakaway run percentage,” which translates how many of a player’s carries go for 15 or more yards. It’s instructive at seeing (a) which players are good at breaking long runs, and (b) which players broke a lot of long runs that maybe ran into some lucky variance. I’ve also evaluated these players on pass catching ability, size (specifically weight, as it has a correlation with a player’s durability), injury history and fumbling.
Let’s get started.
13. UTEP
PROJECTED STARTER: Jevon Jackson, fourth-year junior
PROJECTED ROTATIONAL PLAYERS: Ezell Jolly, second-year freshman; Daryon Triche, third-year sophomore
PROJECTED DEPTH: Marquez Taylor, second-year freshman; Joshua Dye, second-year freshman; Xavier Johnson, second-year freshman; Ashton Emory, first-year freshman
The Miners lost their top three rushers from 2023, though their new coaching staff brought a second-team FCS All-American with them from Austin Peay in Jackson.
Jackson dominated at the lower level in 2023, going for 1,377 yards and topping 150 rushing yards in five games, an even more impressive rushing total considering he played just 31 total snaps in the season’s first three games. His profile shows both tackle breaking ability (3.89 average yards after contact, sixth in the FCS) and elusiveness (64 missed tackles forced, third in the FCS), and at 5’8 and 200 pounds he should have the size to move up a division and survive 15 or so touches a game.
He was especially effective1 at reading out creases in counter and split zone runs, and once he gets in space he won with both strength and slipperyness:
He spends a lot of time dancing in the backfield trying to suss out creases, instead of hitting holes hard when something wasn’t there. That led to a lot of negative plays and will likely be more disastrous as he moves up a level. He also didn’t display breakaway speed at the FCS level, getting caught from behind on several of the long runs on his tape, and the stats would say most of his production came more from steady pounding than long sprints. His yardage came on 252 carries, so his efficiency is a little less impressive than the raw totals. He also only played 12 snaps in Austin Peay’s only game against an FBS team last year — Tennessee — and the Govs run a super-spread-out, go-go system, so Jackson wasn’t facing heavy boxes often. He also had no production as a pass catcher out of the backfield.
Still, his profile indicates he should be at least a decent early down back at the FBS level.
UTEP, though, finishes last based on the depth behind him. Jackson is not likely to be able to take as massive a workload in the FBS as he did for Austin Peay, and no one else on the roster has run the ball outside of garbage time. Jolly and Triche were on the Miners’ roster last season and would seem to be the next players up, with Jolly logging just 15 carries last year and Triche four. Jolly did get some work as a passing-down specialist, catching five of six targets for 32 yards. The new UTEP staff’s system at Austin Peay didn’t throw to backs much last year, but Jolly could be a good candidate to step into a third-down role. But the other four RBs on the roster are either redshirt or true freshmen who haven’t logged a collegiate snap.
Jackson seems like he’s going to be a good player, but if he goes down or isn’t effective at a higher level, UTEP would find itself with an otherwise deeply inexperienced and unproven room.
12. Colorado
PROJECTED STARTER: Dallan Hayden, third-year sophomore; Isaiah Augustave, second-year freshman
PROJECTED ROTATIONAL PLAYERS: Charlie Offerdahl, fourth-year junior
PROJECTED DEPTH: Micah Welch, first-year freshman; Brandon Hood, first-year freshman; Christian Sarem, third-year sophomore
CU lost its three top backs to the portal, including freshman star Dylan Edwards. The Buffaloes brought in two transfers in the hopes of replacing them in Hayden and Augustave, but there are a lot of warning flags here.
Hayden comes over from Ohio State, where he played as a true freshman (111 carries for 553 rushing yards and five touchdowns) amid injuries to the Buckeyes backfield, then took a redshirt last year while barely seeing the field despite further injuries in Columbus. He was the No. 47 back in the portal per 24/7Sports, well behind Edwards (No. 8) and trailing fellow CU departee Anthony Hankerson (No. 37), though Ohio State fans seemed upset Hayden was leaving the program and were impressed with his play. His advanced numbers as a freshman show a decent power back/tackle breaker (3.24 YCO/A) plus with little explosiveness, and he’s got good size at 5’10, 205 pounds. Other than that, though, his profile just seems like a replacement-level early-down back.
Augustave has a smaller sample size but was a much better player per the advanced data. A top 250 recruit in the 2023 class, he was Arkansas’ highest-graded overall offensive player per PFF as a true freshman last year while running for 202 yards on 35 carries. Almost all of the production came in the final two games, when Augustave started and went for 101 yards against Florida International and 80 yards against Missouri. He’s a taller, long-striding speed guy at 6’2, 205, but his profile also shows an ability for him to run through contact and avoid tacklers altogether. His numbers were a bit inflated by a few bigger runs, but had he qualified with enough carries his 4.29 average yards after contact per carry would have finished fourth nationally. He was the No. 62 running back transfer, behind Hayden, but he sure feels like the better player.
The Buffs’ offense uses its backs in the passing game frequently — CU had 76 targets to RBs in 2023 — both as checkdown options and split out into the slot on linebackers. Hayden and Augustave both have a combined eight career targets, so it’s unclear whether either can fill that role. Augustave has the build and athleticism to handle it and be a match-up weapon but no reps in a game.
The even more glaring problem is depth. Offerdahl is a former walk-on who had just two carries last year but was promoted to a scholarship in the offseason as it was clear he was going to have to serve as the No. 3 back. He’s also just 185 pounds, so he can’t really take a big workload if someone goes down. Sarem is also a walk-on who hasn’t really played, and Welch and Hood are both non-descript three-star recruits who probably aren’t going to be players you want to put on the field in Year 1. Yikes!
Colorado’s run game is sort of incidental within the scope of its offense — it largely just needs someone to handle taking the ball occasionally on RPOs or keeping the defense honest from super light boxes — and Hayden and Augustave largely seem capable of at least just getting the yards that are blocked for them. Augustave might even break out to become a good/plus player. But the loss of Edwards’ production in the passing game is really going to hurt; he was already one of the best pass-catching backfield weapons in the country as a true freshman. And neither of the incoming transfers is a player anywhere near that level, either as a rusher or a pass catcher. It’s hard to make the case the top of this room didn’t get significantly worse over the offseason, and then you add in major depth issues. Seems … not great!
11. Indiana
PROJECTED STARTERS: Justice Ellison, fifth-year senior; Kaelon Black, fifth-year senior; Elijah Green, fourth-year junior
PROJECTED ROTATIONAL PLAYERS: Ty Son Lawton, seventh-year senior
PROJECTED DEPTH: Daniel Weems, third-year sophomore; Solomon Vanhorse, seventh-year senior; Khobie Martin, first-year freshman; Kyler Kropp, first year freshman
This one is The Irishman of running back rooms: The Hoosiers’ rotation will likely be led by two fifth-year players, they’ll likely bring a seventh-year player off the bench, and they’ve got another seventh-year back on the roster as a kick returner. If the Indiana game ops department is smart, they’ll start giving out AARP subscriptions to fans after every rushing touchdown.
New head coach Curt Cignetti built this position from scratch from the portal. Ellison, Black, Green, Lawton, and Vanhorse are all adds, with Ellison coming from Wake Forest, Green from North Carolina and Black, Lawton, and Vanhorse from James Madison (Cignetti’s previous job).
Ellison, Black, and Lawton are all players with remarkably similar profiles: All are 5’9 or 5’10 but around 210 pounds, are predominantly inside zone runners, don’t break many tackles, provide middling down-to-down efficiency as rushers, but are good pass catchers. Ellison, Wake’s leading rusher with 548 yards in 10 starts, probably profiles as the best pure ball carrier, as he showcased slightly better power through tackles than the other two (3.07 average yards after contact, though still below average). Black was JMU’s starter for 10 games but only totaled 637 yards on the ground, though he is the most explosive player here and did add 27 catches and 177 receiving yards. Lawton started his career at Stony Brook, redshirted in 2018, was a Freshman All-American in 2019, took a COVID year in 2020, was an all-conference player in 2021, took a medical redshirt in 2022, and then transferred to JMU last season, where he put up essentially the same profile as Black but slightly worse.
None of those players seem particularly good or even average.
Green is a more interesting player. He started five games for UNC as a redshirt sophomore in 2022 and looked like a promising young back, rushing for 558 yards and eight touchdowns and putting up the seventh best PFF rushing grade in the ACC. His play that year showcased both power running and some big-play generation. Then he completely lost his job last year to Omarion Hampton and logged just four carries. I couldn’t find any reporting about the demotion, other than that Hampton is really good, but if Green is able to return to his 2022 form he’s comfortably the best player in the room and would also represent a much better early down option.
The rest are unknowns. Weems transferred up from Indiana Wesleyan after his true freshman season in 2023 and is the only returning back on the roster, but he didn’t play at all last year while taking a redshirt. Vanhorse was a bad rotational back at JMU who took a medical redshirt last year (he was a good kick returner and likely was brought over for that role). The true freshmen, Martin and Kropp, were both low-ranked recruits whose only Power 4 offer was Indiana, so they don’t seem like options to contribute Year 1.
The new Hoosiers staff has thrown bodies at this position, so they’ll probably at least get someone to give them floor-level production. And Green’s career might even rebound to him being an above-average player. But, ultimately, this isn’t a lot of value beyond general collegiate experience.
11. Northern Iowa
PROJECTED STARTER: Tye Edwards, sixth-year senior; Amauri Pesek-Hickson, fourth-year senior
PROJECTED ROTATIONAL PLAYERS: Harrison Bey-Buie, fourth-year junior
PROJECTED DEPTH: Josh Jenkins, third-year sophomore; Zach Brand, fourth-year junior; JC Roque Jr., second-year sophomore; Jaden Hodge, second-year sophomore; Shakur Wright, first-year freshman
Northern Iowa returns all five of its backs to log a carry last season and will start a couple of high-end players with FBS experience and interesting skill sets.
The headliner of this group is Edwards, a 6’4, 230-pound monster with power, straight-line speed and lateral shake. A four-star recruit in 2019, he signed with Florida Atlantic out of high school but also had 16 other offers, including from Alabama, Baylor, Oregon, Florida State, and Texas A&M.2 He never made it to FAU, failing to qualify academically, and spent the first three years of his career at a pair of junior colleges. His second season — at Hutchinson Community College in Kansas — he was a first-team JUCO All-American, but he would suffer an early injury his third year and barely play. That limited his recruitment, but he still earned an FBS offer and committed to Texas-San Antonio. But Edwards would log just 14 carries for the Roadrunners behind three other backs in 2022 and hit the portal, landing with UNI.
His raw stats with the Panthers in 2023 aren’t mind-blowing, a team-leading 536 yards on 109 carries.3 But his underlying stats indicate a much better player: His 3.86 average yards after contact would have finished in the top 30 in the FCS had he qualified with enough touches, and he also showed elusiveness with 31 missed tackles forced and a breakaway run rate of 45.1%, which would have finished ninth if he had qualified.
His tape is pretty damn good, too. He shows burst and punch in hitting holes up the middle, and the times he did get into open space, he’s got straight-line speed that backs up his FBS recruiting pedigree, and he’s obviously big/strong enough to run through arm tackles:
UNI shows a diverse run scheme with lots of different concepts, but he was primarily used as the Panthers’ gap-scheme runner on plays like Counter and Power (he had 62 snaps of gap to 44 snaps of zone, whereas the other backs were more zone than gap), but he also had the speed to handle outside concepts like Wide Zone and Pin-Pull plays. He’s also got decent lateral agility and good vision to dance through the line and find holes when his blocking blows up:
Edwards was competent as a pass catcher, reeling in 10 of his 11 targets, though most came on backfield checkdowns. In the Panthers’ one game against an FCS team, in Week 1 vs. Iowa State, he went for 72 yards on 16 carries vs. the Cyclones’ top-20 defense, so the talent holds up at a higher level, too.
One thing he did struggle with (and possibly why UNI isn’t giving him 20 carries a game) is bouncing runs outside on his film, with him taking plays designed to hit the B and C gaps to the edge, sometimes justifiably but also sometimes unnecessarily. That did result in a few big runs where he out-athleted FCS players, but it also led to TFLs and no gains at least as often. That could partly be because the two games of All-22 film of UNI available were against Iowa State and North Dakota State, two teams that immediately detonated Northern Iowa’s offensive line most plays, so many of these snaps weren’t going as designed. But there were also a decent amount of reps where he had some space to bang a Counter or Split-Zone play into the crease for 3 or 4 yards and instead took it to the sideline for no gain or a loss.
He’ll likely split carries with Pesek-Hickson, an Omaha native who started his career as a recruit for Les Miles at Kansas, near where he played prep ball at Blue Valley North outside Kansas City. He put up 145 rushing yards in his freshman season with the Jayhawks before transferring down to UNI. There, he’s split time as both a tailback and a linebacker, but he eventually moved to offense full-time toward the end of last season.
Pesek-Hickson also has good size, at 6’0 and 225, but profiles as more of a zone runner and receiving back. He’s not nearly as powerful as Edwards and ran too upright at times on film, but he’s also got noticeable burst to hit holes that exceeds the FCS players around him and was dangerous in the open field, forcing nearly the same amount of missed tackles as Edwards on about 20 fewer carries. He finished last year second on the team with 441 yards.
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