Texas Tech backup RB Cam'Ron Valdez lost for the season with knee injury

Another weekly injury report brings more bad news for the Texas Tech football team. This time, it is running back Cam'Ron Valdez who has been lost for the season due to a knee injury, news the Red Raiders shared on Monday.

This continues a frustrating trend of suffering injuries for the junior backup. However, his prior injuries were all far less severe in nature and only cost him a couple of weeks at a time.

As the season began, Valdez was expected to shoulder a greater load behind star running back Tahj Brooks. The Texas Tech coaching staff had said that Valdez had put together his best offseason yet and that the plan was to decrease Brooks' carries after he ran the ball 290 times a season ago.

However, this year, Valdez had just nine carries in the first two games of the season before missing the week-three game against North Texas on Saturday. Even when Brooks was out of commission for the week-two loss to Washington State, Valdez got just eight carries on which he amassed 34 yards.

For his career, Valdez has appeared in 18 games carrying the ball 85 times for 511 yards and one touchdown. Now, with the junior lost for the remainder of the 2024 season, it will be up to a pair of true freshmen to spell Brooks from time to time.

The plan all along for Tech was to deploy freshman Cam Dickey each week. The Austin, Texas native is highly regarded within the program and he's shown some flashes of starting to figure out the college game in recent weeks.

At Washington State, he ran seven times for 25 yards and caught five passes for 34 yards and a touchdown. Then, this past Saturday, against North Texas, he managed to rush for 75 yards and a touchdown on 10 carries.

However, the plan was also to redshirt fellow true freshman J'Koby Williams. That might not happen now that Valdez is no longer part of the running back equation.

Williams is a speedy back from Beckville, Texas who is only 180 pounds. Thus, the hope was that he could redshirt and work on adding weight to his frame before having to play serious snaps for the Red Raiders. That likely won't happen now.

This season, he has appeared in only one game, the North Texas blowout. Playing mostly in garbage time, he ran for 27 yards and a touchdown on four carries.

Of course, the silver lining of all of this is that Tahj Brooks played this past weekend after missing the previous game. He is without question Texas Tech's bell cow on offense and he will get the vast majority of the carries for this offense.

However, Valdez's injury means that Brooks' only backups will both be true freshmen. That's a scary thought when considering what life might look like should Brooks miss another game somewhere down the line.