Where did all the star Sun Belt running backs go?
Last season, Troy’s Brandon Burks managed to just sneak over the 1,000 rushing yards threshold, and he was seventh in the Sun Belt conference in rushing yards. This season, Idaho’s Aaron Duckworth is on pace for only 892 rushing yards, yet he is currently fourth in the conference in rushing yards.
So what the heck happened? It’s been a combination of Matriculation, injuries and lack of offensive variety that has resulted in this drop-off in ground-game prowess across the South.
Appalachian State Mountaineers
Last season, Marcus Cox led the Mountaineers with his second consecutive season of 1,400 or more yards and came into his senior season looking strong. He entered the third game at home against Miami with 248 yards in the first two games, and it looked like more business as usual until he injured his leg and had to sit out.
Jalin Moore has picked up all of the slack in his absence, posting 591 yards in the three and a half games he has played in since the injury. Cox is slated to return for the Mountaineer’s next game against Idaho and will likely pick up where he left off. Neither Moore nor Cox is likely to finish among the nation’s leaders this season, but that will be more about shared workload than lack of production, as both should at least flirt with 1,000 yards.
Georgia Southern Eagles
Matt Breida spent last season on Cox’s tail the entire year, sneaking into 10th place in rushing yards with 1,608 to go with a second straight season of 17 rushing touchdowns. This year, Breida has yet to reach even 75 rushing yards in a single game and hasn’t scored a touchdown since week one, but still leads the team in rushing yards. Part of this is the option-based committee approach to running the ball, as Breida is only averaging 56 yards per game by himself but is one of five Eagles with at least 200 rushing yards for a team averaging 286 rush yards per game.
I’ve not seen enough of the Eagles (only saw them against South Alabama) to know if this lack of a standout tailback is a bug or a feature, but it’s looking like the run game is doing just fine even without a true feature back like in previous seasons.
Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns
Elijah McGuire is a good, strong running back. He is by no means elite, but he entered his senior season with 3,185 yards and 35 touchdowns on the ground, plus another 1,145 yards and eight TDs in the air. You don’t put up numbers like that across three seasons by accident. He was expected to be the bellcow of the Cajun offense again this season… and then this season started happening.
The Cajuns have Anthony Jennings under center, who at this point appears to have struggled at LSU because he was Anthony Jennings, not because he was at LSU. Jennings has played extremely poorly, the other option under center (Jalen Nixon) is now out for the season, and things are not looking bright now that defenses are keying in on McGuire.
Sure, he’s on pace for another 1,000 yard rushing season, but that’s deceptive as he’s got a mere 152 yards in ULL’s last three games after hanging 223 on South Alabama. I’ll be shocked if he even reaches 900 yards on the season, which is an unfortunate way to end what had been a pretty strong career coming into the season.
Troy Trojans
Here is our lone exception. I mentioned Burks above, who was the nominal lead back in what was a pass-heavy attack for Troy last season and kind of meandered his way to 1,000 yards on the year. This season is the year of Jordan “MegaChunn” Chunn (it’s a Calvin Johnson riff, har har), who has already popped off for 130+ yards three times in the Trojans’ first five games and is on pace for 1,100 or so yards of his own.
His numbers could probably higher if he didn’t have such ups and downs – in the two games he hasn’t reached 130 yards he has totaled 108 yards – but he doesn’t need to be much better with Brandon Silvers running the passing attack in the Sun Belt, which is full of bad run defenses.
New Mexico State Aggies
This one comes at the end and is the simplest> Last season Larry Rose III was a beast who cranked out 1,650 yards and 14 touchdowns in the rushing game despite posting less than 70 yards in four games. This season… he injured his groin in the preseason and just played his first game. Larry being Larry, he could still threaten the 1,000 yard mark, but he simply won’t have spent enough of the season healthy and playing at full speed to be one of the nation’s best.
Fortunately for us, he’s still a junior…