Brian Kelly shares importance of running back depth to LSU offense

Jayden Daniels dominated LSU‘s rushing attack in 2022, but head coach Brian Kelly is expecting a more balanced attack from his offense this season.

Still, the Tigers have been down numbers in the running back room all off-season long. If they ever got to full health, keeping a flexible rotation will only benefit LSU in the long run in 2023.

“We’ve only had four running backs that were actually healthy at one time. Even with the number of eight sounds crazy, there’s the natural wear and tear on backs, we wanna keep them healthy,” Kelly said after practice on Wednesday. “The real advantage is that we can keep these guys fresh throughout the entire season.

Noah Cain leads the returning backs with his 10 touchdowns from a season ago despite rushing for just 409 yards in 2022. Veteran running back Josh Williams averaged 5.5 yards per carry to go along with six touchdowns, and if Armoni Goodwin can remain healthy, he can be a strong goal-line piece having scored on five of his 45 rushing attempts in 2023. John Emery also totaled 504 all-purpose yards for eight touchdowns as well.

Incoming transfer Logan Diggs finished his final season with Notre Dame having carried 165 rushing attempts for 822 yards and four touchdowns. He also added 10 receptions for 211 yards and two touchdowns in the passing game.

Four-star freshmen Trey Holly and Kaleb Jackson also join the fray alongside redshirt sophomore Tre Bradford. The sheer mass of the running back alone has played a major factor in not releasing a true depth chart to this point of fall camp.

“We’ve purposefully not put out one. My experience is once you put up a depth chart, it can go one of two ways. You can become really selfish or really upset. I just kind of stay away from them,” Kelly said. “We just let them go out and compete every day. It’s going to take care of itself when we get to the season.

“I just think the running back room, we know we can’t play eight guys. I just think that experience vs inexperience wins out in that room.”

LSU will put their rushing attack on full display when they kick off their 2023 season on Sunday, Sept. 3 as they look to even the odds against Florida State after last year’s heartbreaking defeat. The Tigers are 2.5-point favorites heading into the matchup, per Vegas Insider.