The College Loop’s Harrison Tarr believes the “greatest of all time” superlative could one day apply to the Auburn football running back room group of Jarquez Hunter, Damari Alston, Brian Battie, Jeremiah Cobb, and Sean Jackson, sharing the opinion on his War Rapport-sponsored show.
“Not only will we look back and say this is maybe the best running back room in the history of Auburn, we may look back at this in half a decade and say this might be the greatest running back room in the history of college football,” Tarr said.
Unfortunately, something that may hold this group back from getting the true recognition it deserves is the emergence of Redzone Robby taking all of the touchdowns away from the Tigers’ RB room. History also stands in this group’s way; history on the Plains, that is.
Auburn football RB room will need to produce at least two pros to be greater than Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown
It’s very difficult to consider this current running back room greater than the 1-2 knockout punch of Cadillac Williams and Ronnie Brown, who accounted for two of the top 5 picks in the 2005 NFL draft after helping AU run the table in 2004 along with Jason Campbell and the vaunted Tommy Tuberville-era defense.
While Hunter seems like a surefire draft pick once he returns from a suspension from a potential offseason conduct violation, no other RB looks poised to garner any significant draft hype based on what we’ve seen. But we haven’t seen much. Alston and Cobb in particular have workhorse-back potential, while Battie is always an opening away from taking it to the dish based on what we saw from him at USF.
Maybe this RB room will become the G.O.A.T. group. But to do that, it’s going to take overcoming massive history in AU’s own history before ever confronting the rest of the country to achieve that.