With 5 games left in his collegiate career (I don’t dare say 6 with a bowl game in thrown in), Kaytron Allen sits in third place on the all-time leading rushers list with 3,489 yards to his name.
In second
place is Saquon Barkley at 3,843 yards, and in first place is Evan Royster with 3,932 yards.
For those of you not mathematically inclined, that puts Kaytron 354 yards behind Barkley, and 443 yards behind Royster. Which means to take over the top spot on the list, Allen needs 444 yards in the back half of the season.
Can he do it?
Well, for starters, he’d have to average 88.8 yards per game. So far this year he’s averaging 87.4 YPG, and that includes two 140+ yard games against FIU and Iowa. He’s also averaging 6.2 yards per carry, so phrased another way, he’d need 14.3 carries per game at his current clip to get there.
Bad news is he’s only gotten that many carries three times all season. Good news is in the last 2 weeks, he’s gotten 16 and 28 carries against Northwestern and Iowa, with the most recent game coming under the Terry Smith regime.
It will remain to be seen whether Kaytron continues to get true RB1 numbers the rest of the season, but it seems like Terry finally did what we’ve all been asking for, which is give Allen a boatload more snaps.
If he’s able to replicate anything close to his game against Iowa, he would surpass Barkley in 3 games, and Royster in 4, with room to spare. Shoot, at that rate, he’d become the first 4,000-yard rusher in school history.
While I don’t expect that to happen – if nothing else, OSU and Indiana will likely look to limit the ground game and make Ethan Grunkemeyer beat the team through the air – I do think Kaytron will still get some yards as the only consistently viable offensive player on the field.
After those two games, the team may not have much left to play for this season (though a 3-game win streak against Michigan State, Nebraska, and Rutgers to end the year and make a bowl would be funny) other than Allen’s record attempt, so Terry may just feed him the ball to get the top spot.
I fully expect that the coaches are aware of the record, and bonus points that force feeding Kaytron actually is your best offensive philosophy. While they won’t say it out loud, I think they’ll do their best to get him there. Try to secure one goal from this season, at the very least.
What do you think? Do you think Kaytron will sit atop the leaderboard at the end of this season? Or will he come up just short, still a top 3 rusher all time for the Blue and White?
