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1st & 10: Jonathon Brooks is the Doak Walker Award frontrunner and Texas' top offensive player through six games

Joe Cookby:Joe Cook•10/11/23•

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Jonathon Brooks (Will Gallagher/Inside Texas)

After losing Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson to the NFL, the Texas Longhorns running game entered the season with a good amount of uncertainty. Steve Sarkisian places a significant emphasis on the run to set up other aspects of his offense, and while Quinn Ewers‘ improvement provided Sarkisian more aerial options, Sark wasn’t going to abandon the ability to punish opponents on the ground.

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Since the beginning of the season, Jonathon Brooks‘ efforts have not only erased the uncertainty surrounding the run game, but his efforts have maintained award-winning quality play that in my mind has him as the Longhorns’ midseason offensive MVP and the frontrunner for the Doak Walker Award.

Brooks didn’t begin the season as RB1. CJ Baxter did, but Baxter suffered bumps and bruises versus Rice and Alabama to where Brooks became the bell cow Sarkisian relied on. Old hat for an old Hallettsville Brahma, Brooks has rushed for at least 100 yards in the past four games and is the current leader among Power 5 running backs in rushing yardage with 726 yards. In all of FBS, only Troy’s Kimani Vidal is ahead of Brooks with 835 yards.

Brooks tallied 164 yards versus Wyoming, 106 yards and two touchdowns versus Baylor, a career-high 218 yards and another two touchdowns against Kansas, and 129 yards and a score versus Oklahoma. He couldn’t top 60 yards in either of the first two games versus Rice or Alabama, but he found the end zone versus the Owls on a screen pass for the first score of the Longhorns’ season and was the closer on a memorable final drive in Bryant-Denny Stadium following an outing in which he found the end zone. His 726 yards and six scores have come on 108 carries.

Somehow, Brooks has eluded weekly honors from the Doak Walker Award, who issues national running back of the week accolades. In week one, Colorado’s Dylan Edwards took home the honor. Then in order, North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton, Florida’s Trevor Etienne, Kansas State’s DJ Giddens, Kentucky’s Ray Davis, and Florida State’s Trey Benson have earned the distinction.

Brooks was listed as a candidate for his week three and week five efforts. Though he hasn’t won an award of the weekly variety from the Doak Walker Award yet, he’s the top back in the country right now and my No. 1 candidate for the honor at the end of the year.

Texas has won the Doak Walker Award five times, tied for the most with Wisconsin. Ricky Williams won back-to-back awards in 1997 and 1998. Cedric Benson added the program’s third in 2004. D’Onta Foreman earned the honor in 2016. Robinson earned top back billing in 2022.

Should Brooks take home the program’s sixth Doak Walker, it would be the first time two different players from the same school were named the nation’s top running back in back-to-back seasons.

Right now, in addition to being the Longhorns’ midseason offensive MVP, he’s in prime position to make that a reality.

Here are 10 more thoughts…

1: My defensive player of the first half is T’Vondre Sweat. Though Jahdae Barron and even Jaylan Ford have played great football over the first six games of the season, opposing offenses have for the most part abandoned running up the middle mostly due to No. 93.

While Ford and Barron have made the intermediate pass a tough way to earn yardage versus Texas, Sweat has been able to make most opposing team’s primary methodology of moving the football — running up the gut — a non-starter.

2: My offensive newcomer of the year is Adonai Mitchell, who leads the Longhorns in touchdown receptions with four.

3: Anthony Hill is my defensive newcomer of the year. He grows up more and more with every rep while still playing with reckless abandon alongside Ford. He makes his fair share of freshman mistakes, but the number of players more disruptive on the Texas defense can be counted one one hand with fingers left over. On3 saw things similarly, naming him a midseason true freshman All-American.

4: On Texas’ 24 red zone opportunities, the Horns have scored 11 touchdowns. That’s been a problem all year but it was the issue in Texas’ recent loss to Oklahoma. (“It sucked,” Sarkisian said.)

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That’s a stat that, for a team ranked No. 9 in the country and with one loss, does not need much context. It’s simply not good enough. But for what it’s worth, here are the touchdown over red zone totals for the other teams tied with the Longhorns in red zone scoring percentage (touchdowns and field goals over trips) at No. 65.

  • Central Michigan: 13-of-18
  • Georgia State: 11-of-18
  • Iowa State: 7-of-12
  • Mississippi State: 15-of-24
  • Nevada: 7-of-12
  • Rutgers: 18-of-24
  • UTSA: 10-of-12

The only teams above .500 from that group are Texas, Georgia State, and Rutgers, but that the Longhorns are in that company says a lot about how much their red zone woes have been a governor on an electric offense.

5: After the game at the Cotton Bowl, Texas has two remaining games on natural grass surfaces. Both are road contests versus TCU and Iowa State. Much has been made about artificial turf versus natural grass this season, and Texas players have received a few questions over the recent few months about the topic. Nobody seems to really care all that much, but there were some justifiable complaints about the heat of the surface versus Rice. The completion of the new practice facility just south of Darrell K Royal – Texas Memorial Stadium should bring about the return of a natural surface on Campbell-Williams Field.

6: Sarkisian has said in the past that he’d like to see his quarterbacks be in the high 60s when it comes to completion percentage. Ewers is currently completing 70 percent of his passes, a number that’s 12 percentage points higher than his 2022 mark. Ewers is converting on the short and intermediate targets that opposing teams are willing to cede so as not to get beat deep, but he’s also hitting more deep opportunities. He’s becoming more and more of a complete quarterback by the week.

7: Were you curious what the BCS standings would look like if they were still around?

There are a number of voters who have Alabama ahead of Texas. It isn’t just a computer thing. There are also a number of voters who kept Texas ahead of Oklahoma despite Saturday’s result.

While the BCS isn’t around, the College Football Playoff is. As a one-loss team (and likely to be one when the first rankings are released on Halloween), the Longhorns will want to tune in at 6 p.m. on Tuesdays when the committee starts revealing its pecking order.

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8: The game of the week is Oregon at Washington. This year’s U-Dub offense with Michael Penix, Rome Odunze, Ja’lynn Polk, and Jalen McMillon will face possibly their toughest test with Dan Lanning‘s Oregon team. The Ducks can score with Bo Nix at the helm, too. In a high scoring affair, I’ll take the home team in the Huskies, who should be the No. 1 team in the country with a win.

9: Next Saturday marks the first time since 1995 that the Texas Longhorns will play Houston as a conference rival. It’ll also be the first time since 2001 that the Longhorns will play Houston in the Bayou City. The last time Texas made the trip to the Third Ward, the Cougars’ home venue was Robertson Stadium. UH built temporary bleachers for the game that were supposed to seat 4,000 extra fans, most if not all of them Longhorns. Just days before the game, UH told UT those bleachers weren’t safe and those 4,000 fans would be without a ticket despite the game contract calling for 10,000 seats for Texas fans. Despite suggestions to play at Rice Stadium or the Astrodome, Houston kept the game on campus. That left a taste in DeLoss Dodds mouth that made scheduling just about anything with the Cougars, especially football, a non-starter until the Big 12 placed Houston on the Longhorns’ conference schedule.

“I am in shock. I am appalled,” Dodds said according to the Associated Press.

10: Should Jonathon Brooks eclipse the 1000-yard barrier this year, he’ll join this list of rushers to reach that mark in a Sarkisian called offense.

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