If there has been one near-constant since the rise of this current Golden Era of Stanford Football, it's been the strength and consistency of the Stanford running game. Since 2008, five different Cardinal backs have reached the thousand-yard mark, and there has been a thousand-yard back in the huddle each season except for 2014 and 2018. Before we talk about how the Cardinal might recover their lost ground game in 2019, let's look back at what happened the last time the Stanford running game struggled.
Toby Gerhart rushed for 1,136 yards in 2008, then set a school record with 1,871 the following season when he was denied the Heisman Trophy by hopelessly biased voters who couldn't open their eyes to the fact that a Stanford player was the best player in the country. Stepfan Taylor assumed the mantle in 2010 and produced three consecutive thousand-yard seasons, finishing his career as Stanford's all-time leading rusher, and in 2013 Tyler Gaffney returned from a brief flirtation with professional baseball and produced one of the best seasons in school history, rolling up 1,709 yards and 21 touchdowns.
So what happened in 2014? It's informative to go back and read my 2014 preview of the running backs, in which I explored the lack of a front runner for carries. Here are a couple highlights:
"Now that [Gaffney]'s gone it looks like Shaw might finally have his running back by committee. With Gaffney and the second-highest gaining running back, Anthony Wilkerson, both lost to graduation, the only players returning with any significant experience are Remound Wright, Kelsey Young, Ricky Seale, and Barry Sanders."
Later in the article, I acknowledged the potential of a true freshman who would make an impact that season and beyond:
"Beyond these backs also looms the possibility of true freshman Christian McCaffrey, whom some expect to be Stanford's next Heisman-caliber running back. Another Stanford player with a famous football father, McCaffrey has long since made a name of his own and is certainly talented enough to see the field this season, even with the thick group of backs ahead of him."
What actually played out in 2014 was disappointing, not just in terms of running back production but also in its impact on the season. Remound Wright would lead the team in rushing with just 601 yards, the lowest team-leading total since Jim Harbaugh's first season on the Farm, and the Cardinal finished a disappointing 8-5. (Of course, we did see flashes of brilliance from McCaffrey.)
There was a definite return to form in 2015, as Christian McCaffrey set a boatload of school, conference, and national records, rushing for 2,019 yards and doing things most of us never thought we'd ever see. (Of course, he was denied the Heisman Trophy by hopelessly biased voters who couldn't open their eyes to the fact that a Stanford player was the best player in the country.) When McCaffrey moved on to the NFL, it wasn't a surprise when Bryce Love took the torch and even broke several of McCaffrey's records as he rushed for 2,118 yards in 2017 -- only to be denied the Heisman Trophy by hopelessly biased voters who couldn't open their eyes to the fact that a Stanford player was the best player in the country.
Much of the same was expected for Love in 2018, but a series of injuries, not only to Love but to the offensive linemen in front of him, led to a disappointing year. Love's rushing yardage dipped to just 739 yards and his yards per carry average fell from a preposterous 8.1 in 2017 to just 4.5 last fall. More telling than all of that is this: the offense rushed for only 1,403 yards, the lowest total since Harbaugh's first year on the Farm and less than half of what the team accounted for in 2009, 2013, and 2017.
So once again the Cardinal will have to replace a transcendent talent at running back in 2019, and similar to when Gaffney graduated, the future is unclear. Fifth-year senior Cameron Scarlett will almost certainly be the starting tailback for the season opener against Northwestern. Scarlett has had the double-edged fortune of sharing the roster with the two greatest running backs in program history. I'm guessing he was fortunate to have learned a great deal from McCaffrey and Love, but there's no hiding the unfortunate reality that the lion's share of carries over Scarlett's first four seasons went to the two legends ahead of him.
Scarlett has carried the ball just 208 times for 836 yards in his Stanford career. For a little perspective on that, consider that Love ran for 908 yards -- in September of 2017. But Scarlett has been an excellent backup, and in moments here and there he's shown enough promise to have people feeling optimistic about his role in 2019. He rushed 14 times for 68 yards in a blowout win over Oregon in 2016, he had a few nice games in 2017 (86 yards against UCLA, 72 against Oregon State, 61 against Cal), and finished the 2018 season by gaining 94 yards behind a patchwork offensive line in the Sun Bowl against Pitt. (It should also be noted that he was one of the top two or three kick returners in the nation in 2017, averaging more than 25 yards a return.)
There are many variables that will impact Scarlett's final numbers in 2019, but given what we've seen from him in the past, it wouldn't be a surprise at all if he were to become Stanford's next thousand-yard back.
There is not much experience behind Scarlett. Seniors Trevor Speights and Dorian Maddox have just 95 and 35 career carries respectively, and even though Speights has seen more of the field, with three separate games of double-digit carries, there isn't enough information on either player to indicate which would be Scarlett's true backup. Don't be surprised if we see the infamous -or- typed between their names when the first depth chart is issued next week.
Perhaps the most intriguing back on the roster, however, is freshman Austin Jones. If you're wondering how the coaching staff feels about his future, you need look no further than the jersey on his back. He's been given Love's number twenty, and if he's willing to carry that weight while that number is so fresh in our minds, you know this must be a special player. Jones went to school across the bay at Oakland's Bishop O'Dowd, and under the tutelage of head coach and Pac-10 legend Napoleon Kaufman, he developed into a consensus top-ten running back in America as a senior as he rushed for 6,905 yards and 92 touchdowns in his high school career, including more than fifteen hundred yards last season. I think it's clear that he'll be Stanford's next great running back, but his role will certainly be limited this fall. Shaw's history shows that he'll likely find a few spots where Jones's skill set can impact games, the same as he did with McCaffrey (42 rushes and 17 receptions as freshman in 2014), Love (29 and 15 in '15), and Connor Wedington (3 and 31 in '17).
Finally, Stanford is one of the few schools in the country that demands a preview of the fullbacks. Junior Houston Heimuli played in twelve games, and although his position is critical to the running game and pass protection, his stat line could not be more simple: one catch, one yard, one touchdown. That score came on a short pass into the end zone against Washington State last season, but based on some of the whispers coming out of training camp this summer, I think we can expect to see Heimuli more involved in the passing game this fall, with his receptions possibly jumping up into double digits.
