That might not be more true anywhere than the Ohio State running backs room.
The Buckeyes have four running backs with at least 500 career rushing yards, and a fifth option who was among the top 10 recruits at his position coming out of high school.
“It’s exciting,” Ohio State running backs coach Tony Alford said. “I mean it’s great to have depth. Everybody wants depth. How it gets dispersed, we’ll figure that out as we go. But it’s good to have depth, and it’s good to have guys. It’s good to have good players and proven players. Again, how we manage it and how we get guys on the field, that will play itself out.”
TreVeyon Henderson leads the way with 1,819 career rushing yards and 21 touchdowns.
He was the team’s top back as a true freshman in 2021, but a foot injury bothered him most of last season.
Miyan Williams, a fourth-year back from Cincinnati, took Henderson’s place as the top back, at least when he was healthy. Williams ran for 825 yards and 14 touchdowns in 2022, giving him 1,396 career rushing yards, but he was also unavailable for two games and limited in several others.
Dallan Hayden picked up the slack as a true freshman with 553 yards, but Alford seemed reluctant to ride him too hard late in the season even with Henderson and Williams both sidelined.
That created an opportunity for Chip Trayanum to show he can still play the position he did for two seasons at Arizona State, but the pair of Hayden and Trayanum lacked the punch over Henderson and Williams when it counted against Michigan and Georgia.
They are all back, as is Evan Pryor, who played in four games in 2021 but maintained his redshirt only to see his 2022 season wiped out by a serious knee injury.
Of course, Alford would rather have too many options than not enough, and the presence of so many potential weapons allows him to be exacting and demanding of the whole group as he works on what his rotation will be when the regular season begins.
“You get what you earn,” Alford said. “You earn it every single day by how you walk in this building, how you carry yourself really outside the building as well. You earn it how you sit in meetings and how attentive you are in meetings. How intentional you are about every single rep because every single rep matters, whether it be a walkthrough rep or in the meeting room, whether it be a game-speed rep whether it be a mental rep, every single rep matters and you earn those.
“You do well on rep one, chances are you’ll get a second or third rep. If you don’t then chances are you won’t, but that’s the life that we live in.”
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