Texas Tech football: The 10 best seasons by a RB in “Air Raid” era

No. 7 Washington 2014

The second-best back of the “Air Raid” era was DeAndre Washington.  The only Red Raider RB in the last two decades to run for 1,000 yards, did so in back-to-back seasons to end his career.  And as a senior, he had 1,431 all-purpose yards and 4 TDs in 2014.

That year, he was second in the Big 12 in yards-per-carry average at 5.9.  He also finished third in rushing yards with 1,013.

There was a time when Texas Tech could actually beat Iowa State in football and the last time that happened in Ames was in 2014.  Washington played a huge role in that game with 186 yards on 23 carries and 51 yards on two catches.  He also scored twice, once on the ground and once through the air.

He also had 164 yards against Kansas and 132 against West Virginia.  But there was a huge problem with his junior year…he didn’t score as often as a RB of his caliber should.

In fact, there were only three games that saw him put points on the scoreboard.  In a season when Tech went 4-8, the Red Raiders needed more from their best RB when it came to putting points on the board.

Still, it was a breakout performance for Washington.  The previous season he had run for only 450 yards and had come up with 719 total yards.

Still, he needed to take the ball to the house more frequently than he did that year.  But as we will see later in this post, he corrected that the next year.