Penn State Football: position grades for the running backs
By Evan Smith
Grading the performance of the Penn State Football running backs for the 2021 regular season
Is ‘yikes’ an appropriate grade? Whether or not the offensive line could make holes for them, Penn State Football’s runnings severely underperformed this year.
Can you even guess who the Nittany Lions‘ leading rusher was this year?
Not opening day starter Noah Cain .. .not heralded transfer John Lovett …
2021 Penn State Football Running Backs stats
Keyvone Lee — 104 rushes, 495 yards, 4.8 ypc, long of 44, 2 touchdowns
Noah Cain — 101 carries, 322 yards, 3.2 ypc, long of 34, 4 touchdowns
John Lovett — 52 carries, 177 yards, 3.4 ypc, long of 18, 0 touchdowns
Devyn Ford — 13 carries, 57 yards, 4.4 ypc, long of 12, 0 touchdowns
Caziah Holmes — 5 carries, 27 yards, long of 9, 0 touchdowns
Not a whole heck of a lot to write home from the #lawnboyz.
Just over a 1,000 yards rushing from your main five ballcarriers is simply not getting the job done.
Michigan, who is appearing in their first College Football Playoff, almost had two rushers eclipse that number alone.
It’s hard to judge this position group without acknowledging that the offensive line also did not meet expectations.
There’s a reason the O-Line received a grade of D- in their season review.
But, when you have a backfield with highly rated recruits, sometimes you just need them to break a tackle or two on their own. And this year we simply did not see enough of that.