Meet the YAC kings: How Mizzou, FSU, NC State and others are bringing back the run game

Florida State began the season with a paradigm-shifting (or maybe paradigm reshifting) blowout of Alabama. After going 2-10 a year ago, the Seminoles are back in the AP top 10 like 2024 never happened.

Indiana lost a number of key contributors from last year's College Football Playoff team, but the unbeaten Hoosiers just absolutely crushed a top-10 Illinois team. Texas Tech just went to Salt Lake City, played a physical Utah team on its own terms, and walloped the Utes, 34-10, despite losing starting quarterback Behren Morton to injury midway through the game.

Missouri is now 25-5 since the start of 2023. Like Indiana, the Tigers lost a number of players after last season but nailed a series of transfer portal acquisitions and have started this season 4-0. And after a quiet offseason with more middling headlines than positives, USC, 15-11 in 2023-24, is averaging 52.5 points per game and is already 2-0 in Big Ten play. BYU and Washington have outscored their first six opponents by 226 combined points (and BYU has done so despite starting a true freshman quarterback).

UNLV and Navy are unbeaten. Georgia is, too, though that one's not a surprise. Virginia is 3-1 and has nearly cracked the SP+ top 40 for the first time since the 2010s. Iowa is 3-1 and has scored more than 30 points three times, which I didn't even realize was legal in Iowa.

These 12 teams are a combined 41-2. Some were expected to be good but are great. Some had low to middling expectations but are clearly very good. What's the secret to their relatively surprising success? They are 2025's college football YAC kings.

Net YAC leaders are overachievers

YAC, of course, stands for yards after contact. It's one of the most satisfying-sounding acronyms in the history of the planet -- "YACK!" -- and looking at rushing yards gained and allowed after contact, in a measure we'll call net YAC, gives us a pretty good list of 2025 success stories.

Now, yards are yards. They lead to points, and almost any net yardage figure you come up with will probably give you a list of successful teams at the top. But the yards at the end of a run play, after execution has played out and it's down to pure physicality, add up. They give reasonably talented teams chances to become winners and extremely talented teams chances to become champs. Not all YAC is the same -- a defender nicking your ankle as you run by counts just the same as running over a linebacker -- and you can't count on making the top of this list every year (though Georgia and the service academies come close). But when you do, you're probably going to achieve at a high level.

Last year's top six teams in net YAC per game included three playoff teams with incredible running backs (Ashton Jeanty at Boise State, Cam Skattebo at Arizona State and Dylan Sampson at Tennessee), plus two other conference champs (Army, Jacksonville State) and a UNLV team that nearly landed in both categories. In 2023, each of the top 11 teams in net YAC went at least 8-5, six won at least 10 games and two won 13 (Liberty and Georgia). In 2022, 10 of the top 11 won at least eight games, four won at least 11 and two made the four-team CFP (Georgia and Michigan).

On the flipside, it's hard to achieve your goals if you're in or near the wrong quadrant of this chart.

There are seven teams highlighted there. All were in the preseason AP top 20, all rank 65th or worse in net YAC per game, two (Alabama and Illinois) lost early-season blowouts that have impacted their rankings significantly -- Alabama's net YAC was minus-70 against Florida State, and Illinois' was minus-100 against Indiana -- and the other five (Clemson, Florida, Kansas State, SMU and South Carolina) have started the year a combined 7-13. Their combined net YAC in those 13 losses? Minus-570 yards, or minus-43.8 per game.

Obviously looking at numbers this early in the season comes with loads of disclaimers. The 12 current net YAC leaders mentioned above have combined to play just eight games against teams in the SP+ top 50. Granted, they went 7-1 in those games -- proof of concept, perhaps -- but there's a lot of schedule left, and we'll see who ends up atop this list at the end of the season after wear-and-tear has set in. Still, these are stolen yards, and the thieves get the spoils.

Robert Henry Jr., and Ahmad Hardy and 2025's YAC kings

Thriving in the net YAC department requires success in both making and breaking tackles. But when we think of yards after contact, one position tends to immediately come to mind: the running back.

In 2024, two of college football's brightest stars were YAC kings. Boise State's Ashton Jeanty led the nation with 2,601 rushing yards, and he would have still led the nation if you looked only at his 1,773 yards after contact. Second on the list? Arizona State's Cam Skattebo, who nearly led the Sun Devils to college football's Final Four and finished his season with four straight YAC games of 110 or more yards. His bullying of Iowa State would-be tacklers in the Big 12 Championship and Texas defenders in the CFP quarterfinals was one of the indelible images of the season.

Ahmad Hardy was ninth on the 2024 YAC list as a true freshman at UL Monroe, compiling 882 of his 1,351 rushing yards after contact. He averaged 3.72 yards per carry after contact and topped even Jeanty and Skattebo in forcing 0.33 missed tackles per touch. His Warhawks offensive line wasn't amazing, but he made them look pretty good and nearly dragged ULM to its first bowl since 2012. He was ESPN's No. 36 transfer this offseason; safe to say, he'd land a lot higher if the rankings came out today.

Hardy landed at Missouri, where he and Jamal Roberts have quickly come to form college football's most relentless running back duo of the early season. After four games, they have combined for 121 carries (first among all RB duos), 898 yards (first), 582 yards after contact (first), 7.4 yards per carry (seventh) and 4.8 yards after contact (fifth). Hardy ranks second among all backs in both yards (600, behind only UTSA's Robert Henry Jr.) and yards after contact (387, behind only NC State's Hollywood Smothers); in just over 10 carries per game, Roberts is 40th in yards and 30th in yards after contact. They have both benefited from heavy usage -- and, of course, the fact that Mizzou has played four games while others have played three -- but among 91 backs with at least 40 carries, they're fifth (Hardy, at 4.90) and eighth (Roberts, at 4.64) in YAC per carry, too.

Hardy and Roberts have created a level of physicality that few can match. But one of the early stories of 2025 is just how many exciting running back duos college football is producing at the moment. The best one depends on your definition.

Top RB duos, rushing yards

• Ahmad Hardy and Jamal Roberts, Missouri (898)

• Robert Henry Jr. and Will Henderson III, UTSA (741)

• Justice Haynes and Jordan Marshall, Michigan (726)

• Waymond Jordan and Eli Sanders, USC (693)

• Cam Cook and Andrew Paul, Jacksonville State (629)

Top RB duos, yards per carry

• Keyjuan Brown and Isaac Brown, Louisville (8.73)

• Dylan Riley and Sire Gaines, Boise State (8.45)

• Maurki James and Trequan Jones, Old Dominion (8.37)

• Ismail Mahdi and Quincy Craig, Arizona (7.78)

• LJ Martin and Sione Moa, BYU (7.58)

Top RB duos, yards after contact

• Hardy and Roberts, Missouri (582)

• Hollywood Smothers and Jayden Scott, NC State (481)

• Henry and Henderson, UTSA (398)

• Cook and Paul, Jacksonville State (377)

• Bryson Donelson and Rayshon Luke, Fresno State (371)

Top RB duos, YAC per carry

• Brown and Brown, Louisville (6.07)

• Riley and Gaines, Boise State (5.81)

• Jai'Den Thomas and Keyvone Lee, UNLV (5.19)

• James and Jones, Old Dominion (4.98)

• Hardy and Roberts, Missouri (4.81)

Hardy has earned headlines and praise for his early-season work, and justifiably so: He has been even better than expected, averaging at least 5.3 YAC per carry in three of four games and racking up 251 YAC in just the past two games. Mizzou beat South Carolina last Saturday night almost solely on the power of YAC -- the Tigers gained 203 rushing yards after contact, and the Gamecocks gained 21. Linebacker Josiah Trotter's sure tackling played a huge role in that plus-182 net YAC figure, but Hardy (117 YAC) and Roberts (57) were absurd.

Most dominant net YAC performances of 2025 (FBS vs. FBS games only)

1. Missouri +202 vs. Louisiana (score: 52-10)

2. Louisiana Tech +192 vs. New Mexico State (49-14)

3. Missouri +182 vs. South Carolina (29-20)

4. Florida State +171 vs. Kent State (66-10)

5. Fresno State +152 vs. Georgia Southern (42-14)

6. Central Michigan +135 vs. San Jose State (16-14)

7T. Stanford +134 vs. Boston College (30-20)

7T. Navy +134 vs. Tulsa (42-33)

9T. Houston +132 vs. Colorado (36-20)

9T. Michigan +132 vs. Central Michigan (63-3)

9T. Washington +132 vs. Colorado State (38-21)

Hardy isn't the sport's only ridiculous runner, however. We're blessed with a lot of bulldozers at the moment, led by a guy named Hollywood.

Running backs averaging over 70.0 YAC per game in 2025

1. Hollywood Smothers, NC State (100.8, 5.0 per carry)

2. Ahmad Hardy, Missouri (96.8, 4.9)

3. Rashod Dubinion, App State (90.0, 3.8)

4. Robert Henry Jr., UTSA (86.3, 5.1)

5. Cam Cook, Jacksonville State (83.3, 3.7)

6. Dylan Riley, Boise State (82.0, 7.7)

7. Jonah Coleman, Washington (77.3, 4.6)

8. Micah Ford, Stanford (75.5, 4.4)

9. Cam Edwards, UConn (72.8, 3.9)

10. LJ Martin, BYU (72.3, 5.4)

11. Jai'den Thomas, UNLV (71.3, 6.3)

NC State's offense has been afflicted by negative plays and iffy blocking, but the Wolfpack are still averaging 31.5 points per game because if Smothers escapes tacklers behind the line, he's running a long distance thereafter. Projected over 13 games, he's on pace for a 1,600-yard season, and he has done a lot of it himself. If only he could get some help from his defense too: It's the reason why the Pack aren't among the net YAC leaders, and it allowed 45 points to Duke in NC State's first 2025 loss last Saturday.

Robert Henry Jr. is on pace for even more than that. After rushing for 1,294 yards over his first two seasons with UTSA, the senior has hit 144 yards or more in every game, and he had a 75-yard touchdown run (with 76 YAC) on his way to a 177-yard performance against Texas A&M in Week 1. How did Colorado State hold the Roadrunners to just 17 points last week? By holding Henry to 28 YAC, 70 yards below his previous season low.

Dylan Riley, one of Jeanty's many talented Boise State backups last season, got the lion's share of the work in Week 4 because of a nagging injury to starter Sire Gaines, and he responded with a 171-yard, 132-YAC performance and five touchdowns from scrimmage. He and Gaines are currently averaging 8.5 yards per carry between them.

Against the same Colorado State defense that slowed Henry, Jonah Coleman put up 177 yards (and 119 YAC) in a season-opening win. He was limited by Washington State last week in the Apple Cup (59 yards, 35 YAC), but he scored on a 34-yard touchdown catch and would have racked up more yards had the Huskies not been blowing out the Cougars.

Micah Ford is doing his best. The Stanford sophomore is managing just 0.5 yards per carry before contact because of a shaky-at-best offensive line, but he's topped 100 YAC in two games this year; perhaps not coincidentally, those were the Cardinal's two competitive games. He had 101 YAC in a 23-20 loss to Hawai'i and 141 in their only win, against Boston College, in Week 3.

LJ Martin might be the nation's YAC leader if he were getting more than 13.3 carries per game. Granted, that's all he has needed to top 100 yards in each game, but he was good against Stanford and East Carolina, and he was downright unfair in the opener against Portland State, gaining 105 YAC in just eight carries. BYU has overcome youth at quarterback by simply being very mean in 2025.

Jai'den Thomas is making UNLV's offense hum. Cam Edwards, Cam Cook and Rashod Dubinion, meanwhile, are carrying their teams, who win when they top 80 YAC and lose when they don't.