Texas Tech football: Team records that may never be broken

2,084 rushing yards in a season

While coaches are starting to trend towards a semblance of balance in the spread offense, we probably aren’t ever going to see a return to the days of the I-formation run-heavy offense that was prevalent until the turn of the century either.  Thus, it’s hard to picture any Red Raider ever topping Byron Hanspard‘s 2,084 rushing yards from the 1996 season.

That year, he carried the ball a school-record 339 times.  By comparison, the entire 2019 Red Raider team (including quarterbacks, whose sacks are considered rushing attempts for some reason) ran the ball 404 times for just 1,795 yards.  SaRodorick Thompson led the team with 160 carries.

That’s what makes Hanspard’s record seem so untouchable.  He was the type of old school RB that never came off the field.  That’s a breed of player that simply doesn’t exist in today’s game.

In fact, we continue to talk about how imperative it is for Matt Wells to add a new RB to the roster this offseason to give the 2020 team three backs to help carry the load.  Even a so-called workhorse back like Deandre Washington never had more than 223 carries in one year.

Washington’s 1,492 yards in his senior season of 2015 are the most of any Red Raider running back in the 2000s but are still 592 yards short of Hanspard’s record.  And given the way running backs are utilized differently these days, his 1996 rushing output is going to remain atop the program’s rushing charts for as long as we can imagine.