State of the Position 2024: Running Backs

Even in the down years, Auburn has been able to run the dang ball fairly well. The Tigers have the tools to build onto that this fall.

This is Part 5 of an Auburn football 2024 season preview series that we’re calling “State of the Position.” It’s a breakdown of the past, present and future of each group on the Tigers’ roster as they look to end their streak of losing seasons and take a significant step forward this fall.

The goal is to run a pair of these each week. The original plan was for these to run on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, but some schedule changes will push them up to Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

As part of those schedule changes, this week’s free podcast episode will either come out on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning. The premium podcast will most likely be back in its regular slot on Friday morning, along with the mailbag.

STATE OF THE POSITION: QB • WR • LB • EDGE

Before we get into this breakdown of Auburn’s running back situation, let’s start with an important note. As you all are well aware, Brian Battie was critically injured in a shooting that also took the life of his brother last month. According to an update from his family this past weekend, Brian is now out of ICU and is making progress in his recovery from what is being called a traumatic brain injury.

Writing about sports can feel so trivial in light of such a tragic situation. I decided to not mention Brian’s injury in any sort of football terms in this State of the Position piece. His absence will obviously have an impact on the Tigers this fall, but out of an abundance of sensitivity and caution, I only wrote about the rest of the running backs.

We are continuing to pray for Brian and his family as they go through these uncertain days, and we are beyond thankful to hear of the progress he has made.

RB Jarquez Hunter (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

The Past

No matter who is in charge, Auburn is almost always going to be good-to-great at running the football.

That’s definitely been true during the glory days of the program. It’s also held up in these recent leaner years, too. For the last five seasons, Auburn has averaged at least 4.5 yards per carry. The only other SEC team that can say that is Georgia, which has been the class of the conference. (Maybe running the dang ball isn’t dead after all.)

While Auburn has struggled to throw the ball consistently well, it has had three different running backs average at least five yards per carry in each of the last two seasons. The last time that happened? The 2013 and 2014 campaigns.

After Tank Bigsby left for the NFL, Auburn’s 2023 season opened with Jarquez Hunter as the expected RB1. But Hunter was suspended for Week 1 against UMass, and he really didn’t get going until the second half of the season.

Starting with a close loss to Ole Miss, Hunter had a four-game stretch in which he rushed for 527 yards on 67 carries — a massive average of 7.87 yards per touch. He was 91 yards shy of a 1,000-yard season, which he most likely would have gotten if he was able to play in the opener.

According to Pro Football Focus, Hunter increased his yards after contact average and had a dozen runs of 15-plus yards for a second straight year. He finished the season sixth in the SEC in rushing yardage, and he’ll be the leading returner for the league in 2024. When he’s in good form, there are few running backs in major college football with as much big-play experience as the Mississippi native.

The Tigers also uncovered some more value in Damari Alston, who had 64 carries for 320 yards and two touchdowns in his sophomore season. Alston suffered a shoulder injury against Texas A&M in Week 4 and missed the next three games. Still, he found a way to be effective when he got the ball in his hands.

Alston wasn’t a breakaway machine at running back — his 56-yard carry against Alabama in the Iron Bowl was his only gain of 15-plus yards for the season — but he had a knack for picking up good chunks of yardage at a time. He did most of his damage up the middle, which made him a nice thunder type of running back to pair with the more lightning-prone Hunter.

Auburn also got several touchdowns both on the ground and through the air from highly efficient true freshman Jeremiah Cobb, who didn’t get a ton of rushing opportunities in SEC play but still found a way to make a difference with his versatile skill set. Like Hunter, Cobb has breakaway speed that allowed him to put up some ridiculous numbers in the high school ranks.

Perhaps the biggest difference-maker for Auburn’s ground game in 2023 was what happened in front of it on the offensive line. According to SEC StatCat, Auburn ranked No. 3 in the SEC in rushing yards before contact per carry at 2.72. The Tigers were No. 8 in the league in that category in the previous two seasons, which were marked by Bigsby routinely having to make something out of nothing.

As a team, Auburn got things done on the ground more often than not — but there were a few notable exceptions. Auburn didn’t have much of a rushing attack in its escape win at Cal or its rough-looking loss at Texas A&M. After catching fire in October and early November, the Tigers surprisingly got overwhelmed at the line of scrimmage against New Mexico State and were unable to carry their ground game success against Alabama into a lifeless loss to Maryland in the Music City Bowl.

Like a lot of other aspects of Auburn’s Year 1 under Hugh Freeze, consistency frustratingly eluded the Tigers on the ground. When things were clicking, they looked like their usual strong selves at running back. But they came up short in several tough losses, and the challenge will be to raise their floor in Year 2.

And Auburn will attempt to do that under new management at running back.

RB Damari Alston (Zach Bland/Auburn Tigers)

The Present

Cadillac Williams was Auburn’s running backs coach for the final two seasons of the Gus Malzahn era, then he was retained under Bryan Harsin before replacing him as the interim head coach in 2022. Freeze made a point to keep him on his staff in 2023.

To put it another way, all five of those seasons in which Auburn averaged at least 4.5 yards per carry were done with Williams in charge of the running backs.

But Williams abruptly resigned from Auburn after the 2023 season. Williams said the decision was best for him and his family and that he would pursue other opportunities. He was later hired by the Las Vegas Raiders as their new running backs coach, marking his first time as an NFL assistant.

Freeze reunited with former Ole Miss assistant coach Derrick Nix — who stayed in Oxford for a long time after Freeze’s departure — and made him both his offensive coordinator and new running backs coach. The move was another sign that Freeze would go back to what he knew best on offense after things didn’t work out in 2023 with Philip Montgomery in charge.