Kentucky Football: The SEC’s best running back you don’t know about

There are 13 days till college football season, and today is about the best running back in the SEC that no one is talking about.

The 2016 Kentucky football team was all about running the football. With all the great backfield duos and running quarterbacks in the SEC, only one team in the conference managed to have two players rush for 1,000 yards: the Kentucky Wildcats.

Stanley “Boom” Williams led the Wildcats and was sixth in the SEC with 1,170 rushing yards. But with Williams gone to the NFL, the guy that no one seems to be talking about is Benny Snell. As a freshman, Snell was eighth in the conference with 1,091 rushing yards.

And that leads us to no. 13 on the Southbound and Down College Football Countdown.

Kentucky’s Benny Snell ran for 13 touchdowns last season

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Snell’s 13 touchdowns were not only tied for the third most in the SEC last season, but he also broke Randall Cobb’s school record for touchdowns by a freshman. Only Nick Fitzgerald and Derrius Guice rushed for more touchdowns than the Wildcats’ stud freshman.

Despite being one of the conference’s most productive backs while splitting carries, there is very little hype surrounding Snell going into the 2017 season. At SEC Media Days, he was not picked to the first, second, or third team All-SEC.

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Guice and Nick Chubb were the first-team selections. Kamryn Pettway and Bo Scarbrough were named to second-team, and Ralph Webb and Sony Michel were the third-team selections.

At 5’11, 223 pounds, Snell has that rare combination of size and speed. Along with being Kentucky’s primary red zone back, he also ran a lot out of the Wildcat formation. In a story that Jennifer Smith wrote for Kentucky.com last season, she pointed out that in Kentucky’s games against Missouri and Georgia late in the season, they ran 27 percent of their offensive plays out of the Wildcat formation.

Against the Tigers, Snell had a career-high 38 carries while also running for a career-high 192 yards. The next week against Georgia, Snell carried the ball 21 times for 114 yards and two touchdowns.

“Georgia went into the game against Kentucky last week allowing just 109.8 yards a game on the ground, but UK ended up with 119 yards out of that wildcat package alone,” Smith pointed out.

The Kentucky football program is no longer a doormat program that they once were. And if you don’t know who Benny Snell is by now, take notice. By season’s end, everyone will be talking about him as one of the SEC’s best.