Spring Position Preview: Depth a Strength at Running Back for Cowboys

Ollie Gordon continued a legacy of outstanding running backs at Oklahoma State, but who is next?

We continue our spring position previews with a look at the Cowboys’ ball carriers.

Other position preview: Quarterbacks

Returners

Incoming Transfer

Freshman Signee

Career Stats

Overview

This room obviously lost a super star in Ollie Gordon, but there are some fun pieces still there heading into this new era.

Being an Oklahoma kid, Fields will likely be the fan-favorite of the group, and he showed flashes as a true freshman last season that only further that admiration. He played in four games while maintaining a redshirt in 2024, running for 99 yards and a touchdown on 4.7 yards a carry. He had a 19-yard touchdown run in the Texas Tech game. Even entering last year, Fields was name dropped a few times in fall camp by teammates excited about his potential.

Howland had a bit of an odd year in that he finished third among running backs in carries (behind Gordon and Vailahi) but produced just about any time he touched the rock. In the final four games of the year, Howland carried 23 times for 141 yards (6.1 yards per carry). His tank-like size also provides a nice Thunder to Fields’ lightning.

It’s evident there is something there with Vailahi. He runs hard; he’s shifty. It just hasn’t quite all come together in his first two seasons on campus, but his opportunities have been relatively limited with a Doak Walker winner ahead of him.

Hicks enters the fold after two seasons in Norman. Coming out of Denton-Ryan High School, he had offers from OU, Alabama, Miami, Penn State and others. So, the potential is there.

Allen-Hendrix is also a fun, jumbo running back prospect. It might not be his time to contribute quite yet, but having a 235-pound freshman who ran for 2,215 yards as a high school senior in the room certainly doesn’t sound like a bad thing.

This room will get a little bit bigger in the summer when true freshman DJ Dugar Jr. joins in the fold. He picked the Pokes over offers from the SEC, Big Ten and Big 12.

Two-Deep Prediction

RB1: Rodney Fields Jr.
RB2: Trent Howland

It would be fun if this Fields-Howland tandem could mimic OSU’s 2016 running back duo of Justice Hill and Chris Carson. There are honestly a lot of similarities between the two duos. Fields and Hill are both Oklahoma kids. Hill was a freshman in 2016, and Fields is a redshirt freshman in 2025. Howland and Carson are both bruisers from outside of the Cowboys’ normal recruiting footprint (Carson from Georgia; Howland from Illinois). Carson was a senior in 2016, and Howland is a redshirt senior in 2025. Maybe Howland will spend 2025 truck-sticking defenders while Fields jump cuts them out of their cleats.

Or maybe there is a world where this looks more like OSU’s 2018 running back room that was flush with depth — Hill, Chuba Hubbard, LD Brown and JD King — with Vailahi taking that next step and Hicks hitting the ground running.

Regardless, depth is a strength of this room, and if OSU can figure some things out up front, I think these guys have the talent to flourish.