Michigan Football: Chris Evans Could Be Breakout Player In 2017

One of the biggest departures from last season’s Michigan football team is running back De’Veon Smith. There’s now room for someone else to step up.

In a reversal from last season, it might be the Michigan football offense that has a leg up on the defense heading into this season. Still, there were some departures that could be hurting the Wolverines offensively.

One of those departures was De’Veon Smith, who rushed for 2,235 yards in his four seasons at Michigan. In his senior season he posted career-highs for carries (181), yards (846) and touchdowns (10). Michigan’s going to have to make up for that somehow; Tim Drevno’s offense probably isn’t going to settle for 50 pass attempts per game. Just a hunch.

As I’ve said before, the dream of having a feature running back is both unnecessary and irresponsible. In Jim Harbaugh’s first two seasons with the Wolverines, he hasn’t displayed a tendency to even want that, so there’s no reason to look at only one running back and say they’re going to pick up the slack.

That said, the 2017 season could be a big one for sophomore back Chris Evans. As you probably remember, Evans broke out in Michigan’s first game of the season against Hawaii for 112 yards and two touchdowns.

He also had a very memorable run against Florida State in the Orange Bowl.

Evans only got more than 10 carries once during his freshman season (against Rutgers), but his 88 total ranked No. 2 on the team. He also owned the No. 2 slot in yards at 614.

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Ty Isaac and Karan Higdon are also right in there as potential benefactors of there being 181 carries to replace. Plus there’s sophomore Kareem Walker (who focused on academics last season and didn’t play in a game) and incoming freshmen O’Maury Samuels and Kurt Taylor. Harbaugh showed last year that freshmen are going to play.

So these guys—especially Isaac and Higdon—may not be hurting for carries. If last season is to be believed as a precursor to 2017, though, there’s no getting around Evans as the back who’s going to get a bulk of those missing carries.

Smith got 31.5 percent of last season’s carries (574 total). Michigan ran the ball a lot, so let’s compensate for the starting running back being gone, as well as having a second-year starter under center, and say there are 500 carries to dish out in 2017. If Evans gets just 30 percent of those and sees his inflated yards-per-carry rate drop from 7 to 5, he’s looking at about 750 rushing yards.

There are many hypotheticals (and math) thrown in there, but that looks like a very reasonable season for Evans.

Next: Top 10 running backs in Michigan history

It wouldn’t be surprising to see Michigan’s ground game not miss a stride next season, despite losing a staple like Smith.

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