Zach Evans and Quinshon Judkins pacing Ole Miss rushing attack among nation's best
Somehow, some way the college football season has reached its midway point. Feels like Lane Kiffin was discussing Ole Miss’ season prospects in Atlanta just last week.
But alas, the college football calendar is creeping ever closer to November and the push to a top-tier bowl, or a potential College Football Playoff berth, is high on the minds of No. 9 Ole Miss.
Of course the only way that has become possible for the Rebels is by the play of its rushing attack led by transfer Zach Evans and true freshman Quinshon Judkins.
Through six games the Evans-Judkins duo has placed Ole Miss (6-0, 2-0 Southeastern Conference) among the best run games in the nation, let alone the SEC.
Entering the season the task laying before the Rebels running backs room was to find a way to continue the production and moment created last season by the trio of Jerrion Ealy, Snoop Conner and Henry Parrish, Jr.
The challenge was a tall one but the expectations of Evans and Judkins by third-year Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin were high.
Halfway through the 2022 campaign and that combination has proved Kiffin worthy of having such lofty expectations as Ole Miss is the second-best rushing attack in the SEC with 242 yards per game, only behind No. 1 Alabama.
That number puts Ole Miss inside the Top 10 as the seventh best run game in the country.
Ole Miss has the benefit of two starting running backs in the same room and so far has not seen any negative effects.
Both Evans and Judkins seem to be happy sharing the ball and also one of the firsts to congratulate the other after a touchdown. The teamwork is what has made the run game work so smoothly and become a key threat of the Ole Miss offense.
“I just think they have a really good relationship. Very unselfish, which is hard to do,” Kiffin said during his Monday press conference. “It’s a hard thing, egos get involved and there are only so many carries, and only one guy can be in at a time for the most part. It’s not like playing receiver. I think they’ve done a great job and really complement each other really well.”
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The pair of Evans and Judkins have combined for 14 of the Rebels 21 rushing touchdowns this season.
Evans was expected to be the starting running back when he made the move from TCU to Ole Miss. He has played exceedingly well but an injury earlier in the season has hampered his production.
Saturday’s rout of Vanderbilt saw Evans return to form with a team-high 80 rushing yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. Evans helped set the tone for Ole Miss’ second-half surge.
“(Evans) talked about playing angry at halftime and he came out and ran the guy over on the sidelines instead of running out of bounds, so I think that was good to see,” Kiffin said. Then that followed later on with the touchdown run, another one where you could go out of bounds. I think that was really good and our sideline felt that hit when he ran the guy over on the sidelines.”
With Evans slowly getting back to full strength, Judkins has been more than capable of the added workload.
The freshman in second in the SEC in rushing yards with 581 — behind only Arkansas’s Raheim Sanders’ 695 yards. Judkins is the 19th best rusher in the country with those numbers and only six collegiate games under his belt.
Saturday was the first game Ole Miss did not have a 100-yard rusher this season. The Commodore defense managed to slow down the run game, slightly, but Kiffin was not too concerned.
“Every game is different. It’s why you predict this is going to happen, you don’t know,” Kiffin said. “They coach too, they play too. People know what you do and they start to take it away, otherwise it’d be easy every week. Once you start running and putting up 300-yard games and stuff, people start doing different stuff to you. That opens up different things. To me, they were playing a lot of run stunts and heavy run game in the front. So you saw, when we passed, you have a lot of time to throw. That’s just how it always works, and it’s why you always want balance, so when they take one away, you can do the other.”
