How will Oklahoma State reload at running back for 2022 season? Start with Dominic Richardson
Scott WrightOklahoman
STILLWATER — A year ago, when Oklahoma State signed a little-known running back named Jaylen Warren off the transfer portal, it seemed somewhat unnecessary.
The Cowboys had a group of backs — LD Brown, Dezmon Jackson and Dominic Richardson — who had each rushed for over 100 yards in a game the season before, and appeared to provide enough depth to make the Pokes dangerous in the run game.
Yet it’s hard to imagine what OSU’s season would have been like without Warren carrying the ball 256 times.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to see the Cowboys shopping the transfer portal for a running back again this winter.
The only publicly known offer from OSU to a portal running back is to Stanford transfer Nathaniel Peat, who has two years of eligibility left.
He tweeted news of the offer on Wednesday, but not every portal player publicizes his offers, so OSU could be in the mix for others who are keeping their recruiting quiet — like Warren did a year ago.
The 2021 season provided a lot of lessons about the value of depth at running back.
At the beginning of the year, the Cowboys were raving about their four-man backfield.
A couple games in, the committee had turned into a mostly one-man show, with Warren becoming the featured back as Brown and Jackson dealt with injuries.
By the time the Big 12 championship game rolled around in December, Warren and Brown were out with injuries, and Richardson got hurt during the game, leaving Jackson as the lone member of the committee trying to find holes against the biting Baylor defensive front.
In all, OSU running backs touched the ball 480 times (rushing and receiving). Of those 480 touches, 372 are gone in the form of Warren and Brown, who are headed to the NFL, and Jackson, who entered the transfer portal.
That’s 77.5% of the Cowboys’ total running back touches gone. The other 22.5% belonged mostly to Richardson, who had 86 of the remaining 108. The others were spread between true freshman Jaden Nixon, redshirt freshman Zach Middleton and walk-on Andre Washington, all of whom are expected back in 2022.
The Cowboys also signed a pair of four-star recruits in Ollie Gordon of Trinity High School in Euless, Texas, and CJ Brown from Beggs.
Still, there’s a big workload void to fill.
Richardson, who is 6 feet, 210 pounds, and Nixon, who is 5-10 and 175, are at the top of the depth chart.
“We like them coming back,” OSU head coach Mike Gundy said. “We have a couple backs coming in, so we’ll have to get a freshman ready to be that third guy next year, which we’ve done in the past forever. We’ve just been fortunate the last two or three years to have numbers.
“But next year, we’ll have to get a freshman, I think, to be that third guy.”
Of course, the portal could change the mix.
Peat already has offers from Missouri, Purdue, Washington State, Western Kentucky, Oregon State and Iowa, along with the Pokes. The 5-foot-10, 195-pound Peat led the Cardinal in rushing last season with 404 yards (5.1 per carry) and three touchdowns, plus another 63 yards on 11 receptions.
“At a position like that, where you lose two veterans and another guy goes on the portal, that’s what the portal is for,” Gundy said on Jan. 2, the day after OSU’s Fiesta Bowl victory. “So we certainly could pick somebody up in that area.
“The free agency market of the portal is just out of control, but you either join it and embrace it, or it’s gonna run right by you.”
