Who will Emerge at Running Back for the Mississippi State Football Team?
If the Mississippi State Football team wants to continue the success of the past two seasons in 2016, the Bulldogs will need a running back to emerge.
It’s a rare thing for the Mississippi State football team to go an entire season without any one player emerging as the go-to running back for the team in a single season. But that is what happened in 2015.
Related Story: Mississippi State Spring Practice Overview: Running Backs
The Dan Mullen offense is built around a balanced offense which requires the team to be effective in both the passing and running games. Thanks to Dak Prescott’s emergence as a legitimate passing threat in 2015, the lack of a consistent running game did not cripple the Mississippi State football team a season ago, but trying to rely on an effective offense without a true running threat in two straight seasons would be playing with fire.
Brandon Holloway ended up being the primary running back for the latter part of the season in 2015. He could be that again, but asking Brandon Holloway to be a 20-25 carry back just won’t happen. He isn’t built to handle that many carries.
My candidate to emerge this spring will be Aeris Williams. Honestly, I was a little surprised he wasn’t used more often last season. He had a costly fumble in the game against Texas A&M, and he never received a significant amount of carries in any game after that. He averaged a little over five yards a carry in the times he was used a season ago.
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If it isn’t Williams, the next guy I would look for to emerge this Spring would be Nick Gibson. Gibson was a four star back coming out of high school in the 2015 class, and showed lots of potential. Gibson’s signing was a little overshadowed by Jamal Peters who was the highest rated player in the state of Mississippi, and by the signing of Leo Lewis who was committed to Ole Miss for so long, and then flipped on the week of National Signing Day.
As for the seniors, I’d like to see Brandon Holloway transition into what he is supposed to be. He should be utilized as a third down back and change of pace guy. I’m not sure what will happen to Ashton Shumpert. He showed so much potential as the back-up to Josh Robinson in 2014, but didn’t do much of anything in 2015.
The Mississippi State football team needs to find its running identity. If it isn’t one of these players, the team needs to figure out who it will be and they need to do so sooner than later.