Mountain West Football: Four Players Named to Doak Walker Award Watch List
A quartet of running backs from the Mountain West are in the mix to be college football’s top running back.
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The absolute best of the best.
Watch list season continued today with the release of the Doak Walker Award watch list. Given annually to college football’s best running back, there are four players from the Mountain West on this year’s iteration.
Fresno State’s Ronnie Rivers and Wyoming’s Xazavian Valladay, both of whom also cracked the Maxwell Award watch list on Monday, headline this cream of the crop. This is Rivers’s third appearance on the preseason Walker list and for good reason, as he finished with 507 rushing yards on 100 carries, 27 catches for 265 receiving yards, and nine total touchdowns in just six games.
For Valladay, 2021 marks the second straight year he has appeared on this list. Last fall, he ran for 550 yards on just 99 carries and scored four touchdowns.
Despite being banged up for most of last season, Boise State’s George Holani also returns to this watch list. He was limited to just nineteen carries in four games, but he also averaged 5.68 yards per carry and pitched in with seven catches for 52 yards, accounting for three touchdowns.
Hawaii’s Calvin Turner made the cut after emerging as the Warriors’ jack-of-all-trades in 2020. He finished second to Rivers with 133.4 all-purpose yards per game and led the Mountain West with 11 total touchdowns.
Last year’s Doak Walker Award winner was Alabama’s Najee Harris.
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