There’s not another player since Bob Stoops took over to be more under-appreciated than Landry Jones.
Following Sam Bradford’s two-year reign on college football that culminated in a Heisman Trophy doesn’t help. Nor does the Lincoln Riley Era bombs-away style offense that saw Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray take the tops off of defenses on a weekly basis.
Landry Jones is statistically the greatest quarterback to ever play at Oklahoma. Yes, his flaws in big games and the eye test tell a different story, but the numbers and team success can’t be denied.
Now?
The same can be said for Kennedy Brooks, who is on pace to become one of the greatest statistical running backs in Oklahoma history.
There was a national narrative about how big of a loss Trey Sermon was to Ohio State, but many forget what Brooks has been able to accomplish in his first two seasons for Riley and the Sooners.
The Mansfield, Texas, product has eclipsed the 1,000 yard rushing total in both seasons despite not becoming the feature back until late in the 2018 season. In 2020, Brooks could tie Adrian Peterson, De’Mond Parker and Samaje Perine as the only Oklahoma running backs to have three 1,000 yard rushing seasons.
His running style has been described by Riley as if he was walking a dog in a park. Brooks is smooth. He anticipates rushing lanes by setting up blocks. His patience, vision and one cut-and-go running style has allowed Brooks to average 7.5 yards a carry in his first two seasons. That number is good for a tie at No. 1 in Oklahoma history with Greg Pruitt among rushers with at least 200 attempts.
For a moment, it appeared as if Brooks may move on to the NFL after his redshirt sophomore season, but he’s back. Thus far in his career, he has shared a backfield with another top running back whether it was Sermon and Rodney Anderson in 2017 or Sermon and Rhamondre Stevenson in 2019. With Sermon’s transfer and Stevenson’s pending suspension for the first five games of 2020, the workload just increased for Brooks in his redshirt junior season.
At his current rate, Brooks will need a fourth season to catch any of the Oklahoma running backs in the top-8 of all-time rushing yards. At 137 attempts a season in his first two years, only Billy Sims would have less attempts a season (136) to get into the top-10 of the Sooners’ all-time rushing leaders. Pruitt averaged 131 attempts a season from 1970-72 and currently stands at tenth.
Surely Brooks’ carries will increase from 11.4 a game in 2020 with all the factors heading into the season. With Oklahoma playing 14 games his first two years, if Brooks carries increase to 15 a game, he will rush for 1,575 yards at a 7.5 yards per attempt. That would give him 3,642 rushing yards for his three-year career and the eighth spot on Oklahoma’s all-time rushing list right behind DeMarco Murray (3,685).
In four years with Jones as the quarterback from 2009-12, Oklahoma had the NCAA leader in pass attempts, pass completions and third all-time in passing yards with 16,646 yards—one of the all-time best to ever do it.
In two years with Brooks at running back, Oklahoma has one of its greatest running backs in its storied program history. College football will either appreciate him now or they will later.
Sources:
sports-reference.com
soonerstats.com
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