Texas Football: Longhorns’ RBs prove their Big 12’s best
New Texas football head coach Steve Sarkisian saw a nice chance to bounce back from a bad loss to the Arkansas Razorbacks and head coach Sam Pittman last weekend. On the night of Sep. 18, Texas faced the Rice Owls out of the Conference-USA at home. Texas needed a dominant win to get some confidence built for this team ahead of the Big 12 opener.
Sark and the Longhorns got a nice spark on the offensive side of the ball from the ground game in this win over Rice. In this big 58-10 win over Rice this weekend, Texas got nearly 430 rushing yards and more than 10 yards per carry.
Texas saw star sophomore running back Bijan Robinson lead the way for this offense with 128 rushing yards on 13 attempts, with a whopping three rushing scores. He also tallied up nearly 10 yards per carry, six missed tackles forced, and 37 yards after contact.
But it wasn’t just Bijan that stood out for the Longhorns here. The duo of junior Roschon Johnson and redshirt sophomore Keilan Robinson went off too. They each had a rushing touchdown of at least 65 yards in this game.
Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson, and Keilan Robinson go off for Texas football in a win over Rice
Keilan had just four touches, which went for 81 rushing yards and one rushing score. And Roschon had 112 rushing yards and one score on just three carries. Most of Roschon’s damage was done on a big 72-yard rushing touchdown early in this game that helped to spark a lot of the momentum.
Even true freshman running back, and former underrated four-star recruit Jonathon Brooks had a solid game against Rice. Brooks went for 65 rushing yards on 10 carries, with one rushing touchdown. Even the three most productive running backs outside of Bijan were huge for Texas in a multitude of ways on the ground.
Roschon, Keilan, and Brooks combined for more than 180 yards after contact against this hapless Rice defense. In total, Texas mustered nearly 240 yards after initial contact in this game on the ground.
There will be more time this week to dive into these numbers. But for now, it’s truly impressive how well the top three or four Texas running backs did in this win over Rice.
Next. Why Texas will dominate Rice. dark
Following this 58-0 win for Bijan, Roschon, and the Longhorns, Texas holds a record of 2-1. Next up for the Longhorns is the Big 12 opener against the Texas Tech Red Raiders at home on Sep. 25.