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What Should OSU Expect For Production in the Run Game?

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Last Thursday Mike Gundy said a curious thing about his 2016 running back situation. Here is what he said.

” I have in my mind what I feel like that we’re capable of if everybody’s healthy, and we see improvement on the offensive line, and if they play what would be a balanced defense and mix it up, then we need to rush for 125 yards a game. Now that sounds minimal but you have to look at where we were the last two years. 125 yards a game would have been like Christmas for us.”

Here are Oklahoma State’s per game totals in the last five years.

  • 2015: 127 yards
  • 2014: 137 yards
  • 2013: 172 yards
  • 2012: 215 yards
  • 2011: 163 yards

Hmmmmm…

Maybe he was talking about a running backs only total of 125 yards. Last season, J.W. Walsh averaged 28 yards a game and Mason Rudolph averaged -3 yards per game which means OSU was at about 102 yards per game on the ground. So can Gundy coax 23 more yards out of five guys behind a replenished offensive line? I would hope so.

But for me it’s less about the yards per game than it is the yards per carry. Here are OSU’s yards per carry totals over the last five years.

  • 2015: 3.58
  • 2014: 3.51
  • 2013: 4.44
  • 2012: 5.39
  • 2011: 5.39

OSU needs to be back up in that 4.5 range in terms of yards per carry. Anything below 4 is bad. And now it doesn’t have the only thing Gundy could rely on last season: J.W. Walsh. Gundy has talked this fall about how important Walsh was to the run game because you knew exactly what you were going to get.

But Mike Yurcich is creative enough and Mason Rudolph is good enough to eke out 125 a game from Barry J., Chris Carson, Jeff Carr, Rennie Childs and Justice Hill. And if not, then this team is probably not going to win 10 games again.

“I think we were already improved coming out of spring ball,” Zach Crabtree told the Tulsa World. “But obviously the first game is when that’s really going to be tested.”

125 yards doesn’t seem like a lot. Hopefully that’s as true in November as it is right now.

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