Rebuilt Texas RB room hopes to regain ground game explosiveness

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Of all of the position groups on campus in 2026, the Texas Longhorns’ running backs group will look the most different from the 2025 campaign. 

When the transfer portal opened, the Longhorns saw their top four running backs make the choice to take their talents elsewhere — Quintrevion Wisner left for Florida State, Christian Clark went to South Carolina, CJ Baxter transferred to Kentucky, and Jerrick Gibson landed at Purdue. While losing that much at one position group normally sends up red flags, last year’s crop was missing something vital to the offense’s success — explosive playmakers. 

If you remove quarterback Arch Manning’s production on the ground, Texas rushed for 107.1 yards per game and just seven touchdowns in 13 games. In fact, Texas failed to eclipse the 100-yard rushing mark on five occasions a year ago, including the narrow overtime win over Kentucky and the two conference losses to Florida and Georgia.

“Our inability to create any explosive runs tonight showed up and I thought we had some opportunities to do it,” head coach Steve Sarkisian said after the offense sputtered in Lexington. “We missed some opportunities in the run game to maybe be a little bit better… Consistency in the run game, efficiency in the run game is critical, and we weren’t efficient enough tonight in that aspect of the offense either.”

Injuries played a role, as Baxter and Clark both suffered season-ending injuries in 2024 before Baxter and Wisner both battled hamstring issues early last season.

Diminished volume was a factor in Wisner seeing his number of runs that went for 15-plus yards decrease from 15 to six, but the bigger problem was arguably the lack of an explosive secondary option following the departure of Jaydon Blue, who had a breakaway rate of nearly 40 percent in producing nine runs of 15-plus yards, including touchdown runs of 38 yards and 77 yards in the College Football Playoff win over Clemson.

Baxter, in contrast, didn’t have a run longer than 10 yards after sustaining his hamstring injury for a breakaway rate of 9.3 percent.

So as a team, the Longhorns were downright abysmal in creating a spark in the backfield, finishing the year tied for No. 78 in the country with just 57 running plays longer than 10 yards. If you remove Manning’s explosive runs, that total falls to just 36. Compare that to the 31 runs from Brown or the 24 runs from Smothers and the need to reassess the running back room becomes clear. 

That lack of ground success was the biggest gap in the Longhorns’ resume as a legitimate championship contender. Over the last decade, the lowest rushing yards per game total belongs to 2024 Ohio State who averaged 166 yards per game during their run. In fact, five of the last 10 champions averaged more than 200 yards on the ground per contest. 

While a big piece of the blame can sit with the offensive line, one of the top portal priorities for the Longhorns was securing a ground threat that defenses must account for, leading Texas to add not one, but two big playmakers in the backfield in Arizona State transfer Raleek Brown and NC State transfer Hollywood Smothers.

“I just felt like we had an opportunity to get back to the style of players that fit what we were trying to do,” Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian said. 

“Two really versatile players that are explosive, players that can run the style of runs that we like to run, that are very versatile of catching the ball out of the backfield and have home-run hitting ability. We have to get back to being the explosive offense that we’re accustomed to be, that those two guys fit.”

Smothers and Brown fit the bill in every way possible, respectively, as the No. 3 and No. 6 transfer running backs during the 2026 window — Brown is coming off of a 1,000-yard season, averaging 6.13 yards per carry, while Smothers eclipsed six yards per carry in his two seasons with the Wolfpack, a per-carry mark Texas hopes to get back to in 2026.  

It’s unfair to expect the level of production or talent of Bijan Robinson, who averaged 5.8 and 6.1 yards per carry in his two seasons in the Sarkisian offense, but Blue and Jonathon Brooks both managed to eclipse the 6-yards-per-carry mark in the 2023 season. And while that’s not meant to invalidate the contributions of players like Wisner, who went from a former three-star to a 1,000-yard rusher on a team that competed for a national championship, Texas needed a skill set that Wisner and the rest of the departed backs didn’t bring to the table. 

Now Texas sits in an enviable position, bringing two players who would be RB1 in their own right to help the cause. In most cases, elite transfer players would avoid a situation where they aren’t going to be the bell cow coming in, but according to coaches, the pair sees it as an advantage, not a detriment.

“Oddly enough, since they’ve come in they’re probably two of the closest transfers. They’ve almost become best friends on our team already — they understand they need each other,” Sarkisian said in the spring. “I think they understand, historically for us in our program, we’ve always done well when we’ve had two that can play off of one another, and so it’s been a great marriage.”

The Longhorns hope the honeymoon lasts long, and this marriage of convenience ends in Las Vegas, rather than starts there, for the national championship game.

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