2020 Mountain West Football Top 50 Players: #12, Fresno State RB Ronnie Rivers
The Bulldogs running back is the highest-ranked Fresno State player on this year’s list of Mountain West football’s top athletes.
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A little bit of everything adds up to a lot.
The Mountain West always seems to be flush with talent at running back, but very few in each season’s bumper crop are quite as skilled as the next player on our countdown of the conference’s top talents, Fresno State’s Ronnie Rivers.
Since he began earning more playing time out of a running back committee in 2017, Jeff Tedford’s offenses became increasingly more reliant on both his tough running between the tackles and his ability to catch passes out of the backfield, leading to a 2019 campaign where he racked up 899 rushing yards, 348 receiving yards on 43 catches (both of which were tops among Mountain West running backs), and a conference-best 16 touchdowns.
To give you a sense of the rarified air that Rivers could join after 2020, consider that another year of production like 2019 would place him eighth all-time among Mountain West running backs by yards from scrimmage, second all-time among Mountain West running backs in total receptions, and fifth by total touchdowns. With a new quarterback under center and a young receiving corps around him, don’t be shocked if head coach Kalen DeBoer makes an effort to get the ball in his best weapon’s hands early and often this fall.
