Stat of the Week: OSU Has Two of the Top Seven Rushers in the Big 12 So Far

I’ve been yelling all year about how Oklahoma State needs a second running back. I may have made a boo boo here, though, because it appears they already have one. He wears No. 3 and the media guide calls him a quarterback.

The last 10 years have conditioned me to view QB1 as more or less a statue in OSU’s backfield. Not since Zac Robinson has OSU had such a dynamic full-time threat under 5 yards behind center, which is good for two reasons. The first is that their RB depth is not at its all-time best (to say the least). The second is that rushing with 10 blockers is easier than rushing with nine.

Spencer Sanders is currently ranked in the top seven in rushing yards per game in the Big 12 Conference. The guy he hands off to is first and it’s not really that close.

Here’s a look.

If you want to go one-two punches (and I do), Chuba + Sanders have been outrageous. They’re the best two-headed rushing duo in the conference thus far. Here are the teams ranked by how many yards per game their top two rushers are accumulating.

Am I ignoring the fact that OU has four rushers averaging 55+ yards a game and all four are at least 7.3 yards a pop? You bet I am. On the other end, I didn’t forget about WVU, but they only have one guy in the top 25 in the conference and he’s averaging 37 yards per game. I didn’t want to depress any of our faithful WVU readers by pointing out that WVU’s rush yards per game doubles as a FM drivetime music station (107.3).

OSU has had plenty of outstanding backfield duos in the Gundy era. Justice + J.D., Justice + Chuba, Randle + Smith, Hunter + Randle, Toston + Hunter, Savage + Hunter (and you can tack Zac on to a few of these) and likely the best backfield duo in the history of college football. But I’d put Chuba and Sanders up there with almost any of them (except that one).

And right now — as a two-man wrecking crew — they’re peerless in the Big 12.

I’ll leave you with this: In the last seven years, OSU has only had five games in which two players have rushed for 100+ yards. In four games this season, Chuba and Sanders have done it twice. That doesn’t mean the wins will pile up, but it does mean that Sanders — as dynamic as it gets in CFB — has all of a sudden filled a hole (RB2) in OSU’s offense and made them a bigger threat than they were to begin with.