Three seasons after James Gray put up a bunch of absurd yards and scored a ton of touchdowns, Byron Morris made his way into the Texas Tech football record book as his stellar 1992 season featured the talented Red Raider running for more than 1000 yards in a single season.
As Morris reached that benchmark, he became just the fourth in Texas Tech football history to get to 1000 yards rushing in a single season. Prior to Morris there is the aforementioned Gray, James Hadnot (who did it twice), and then Doug McCutchen.
That’s it. By the time Morris accomplished this task, more than 20 years had passed since McCutchen became the first in Texas Tech football history to run for more than 1000 yards in a single season.
Texas Tech football history: Byron Morris thrived for the Texas Tech Red Raiders back in 1992
Morris was really solid for Texas Tech in 1992 as he carried the ball 242 times, gained 1279 rushing yards (averaging out to around 5.3 yards per carry), and scored 10 touchdowns for the Red Raiders. While that’s not quite as impressive as what Gray did in 1989, it’s still really respectable and definitely deserves to be talked about.
Against the Houston Cougars, Morris ran for 222 yards on 36 carries (that’s a lot of yards and a lot of carries for just one game). Against the TCU Horned Frogs, Morris managed to gain 199 yards on 24 carries. Then against the SMU Mustangs, he put together a performance highlighted by 175 rushing yards on 29 carries.
But that’s not all!
Morris also ran for 157 yards on 32 carries against the Baylor Bears and then gained 107 yards on 16 carries vs. the Wyoming Cowboys.
In the 11 games that he played in 1992, Morris gained an average of 116 yards per game on an average of 22 carries per game. He was consistent, solid, and proved that he could shoulder the load for the Red Raiders. And that would pay off in a big way for Texas Tech and Morris in 1993. But we’ll get there soon enough.