When Mike Leach took over the Texas Tech football program, the Red Raiders relied heavily on throwing the ball around. The Air Raid, especially the way that Leach implemented it, isn’t exactly known for being an offense that produced a ton of rushing stats.
And it’s interesting because in the small handful of decades leading up to Leach taking over as the head coach out in Lubbock, Texas Tech was producing some pretty potent and reliable rushing threats that were regularly getting over 1000 yards in individual seasons.
So, the Red Raiders very quickly went from somewhat regularly producing 1000 yard rushers to having quarterbacks who were, on an annual basis, throwing for well over 3000 yards a season. That’s a fairly drastic change and it’s one of the reasons as to why Texas Tech didn’t have anyone run for at least 1000 yards for well over a decade after Ricky Williams did it in 1998.
That’s where DeAndre Washington comes in.
Texas Tech football history: DeAndre Washington ended a 16-year drought of 1000 yard rushers in 2014
In 2014, Texas Tech once again had a running back get over 1000 yards rushing in a season and Washington did that in pretty impressive fashion. The man was efficient. He managed to gain 1103 yards on 188 carries, which averages out to 5.87 yards per carry.
Washington also had four games in 2014 where he managed to run for 100 or more yards, including against Central Arkansas, West Virginia, Kansas, and Iowa State.
Now, it is worth noting that while Washington ran for quite a few yards, he didn’t score a ton of touchdowns. In total, in 2014, Washington only had two rushing scores on the season. One against Central Arkansas at the start of the year and then another against Iowa State towards the end of the season.