Texas Football: Keaontay Ingram highlights Doak Walker Watch List

One of the multiple skilled Texas football running backs in store for this season was named to the Doak Walker Award preseason watch list.

A stocked cupboard of talent in the running back room for the Texas football program in the midst of the 2020 offseason could be very beneficial to the team’s offensive success this fall. That is if everything holds to plan in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. The Big 12 really has yet to make any significant moves to alter the schedule for the 2020 season.

The trio that could be the most potent for the Longhorns out of the backfield this year includes rising junior Keaontay Ingram, rising sophomore converted quarterback Roschon Johnson, and incoming freshman former five-star recruit Bijan Robinson. The future is there with the likes of the Tucson, AZ, native Robinson and the now is there with Keaontay and Roschon.

But only one of those three running backs for the Longhorns was named to the Doak Walker Award Watch List during the 2020 preseason. Ingram was named to the award’s preseason watch list, released earlier this week.

Roschon is definitely a candidate to have another big breakthrough in 2020, as is Bijan. Depending on how head coach Tom Herman and recently hired offensive coordinator Mike Yurcich split up the reps out of the backfield, each of these three could become a true star in the Big 12 this season.

But Ingram did join a number of other talented Big 12 running backs on this watch list. The lone finalist for the honors last season out of the Big 12, Oklahoma State rising redshirt junior Chuba Hubbard, was on the watch list again this year. The other finalist returning for this season, Clemson’s Travis Etienne, is on the watch list too.

Other significant names included on the watch list are Oklahoma’s Kennedy Brooks, Iowa State’s Breece Hall, Alabama’s Najee Harris, Mississippi State’s Kylin Hill, and Texas A&M’s Isaiah Spiller. Ingram was one of less than six running backs from the Big 12 on the list in total, though.

The latest Longhorn running back to win this award was D’Onta Foreman after his 2,000-yard season back in 2016. Ingram registered just shy of 1,100 total yards from scrimmage, 10 total touchdowns, and nearly six yards per carry in 2019.