Where does Jaylen Wright stand in Tennessee football 1,000-yard club? | Mike Strange
I wouldn’t say Jaylen Wright made it look easy this season. Efficient is a better description. Explosive works, too.
Among the stories coming from Tennessee football’s demolition of Vanderbilt in the regular-season finale was Wright becoming the 19th Vol to amass 1,000 rushing yards in a season.
Wright’s junior season stands at 1,013 yards. None of the prior 18 got there with fewer carries than the 137 Wright attempted in 2023.
His 7.39-yards per attempt is among the best in the nation this season. The Tennessee record is 7.94-yards per rush by Hank Lauricella in 1951, when the single-wing formation was in vogue.
That accounts for Wright’s efficiency. Here’s where explosive comes in: All four of Wright’s touchdown runs this year were 40-plus yards.
So let’s try to put Wright in some all-time Tennessee context.
UT’s record book traces season stats back to 1950. Lauricella gained 881 yards in 1951, his Heisman-runner-up season. That stood as the season record until Haskel Stanback hit 890 in 1972.
In 1983, Johnnie Jones became UT’s first 1,000-yard rusher with 1,116. The next year Jones pushed it to 1,290.
Jay Graham upped the ante to 1,438 in 1995, a season in which he recorded a school-record 11 100-yard games.
Travis Stephens hit 1,464 yards in 2001, and 22 years later that’s still the standard. He did it on a whopping 291 carries, averaging 5.0 per pop.
Jones is often overlooked in the debate on UT’s greatest backs. He shouldn’t be.
He remains Tennessee’s only two-time SEC season rushing leader and only two-time 1,000-yard man, both in 1983-84.
Travis Henry came close. Henry, UT’s career rushing leader, gained 1,314 yards in 2000. Back in the 1998 championship season he just missed at 970. Even if Henry’s 28 yards from the Fiesta Bowl win over Florida State counted, he would have landed at 998.
This is the time to mention the inconvenient asterisk. The NCAA did not start including bowl-game stats until 2002. And there has never been a retroactive update.
Thus, Henry, Jones, Chuck Webb and other 20th century backs do not have bowl stats added to their season or career totals. But 21st century counterparts like Jalen Hurd, Montario Hardesty and Wright do.
Henry began this season ranked 40th in SEC career rushing totals at 3,078 yards. Of the 39 backs ranked ahead of him, 23 were enhanced by bowl yardage.
Back to Wright. He ranked fifth in SEC rushing yards prior to the SEC championship game (at my writing deadline). No Alabama or Georgia back appeared likely to surpass him.
The Vols did their part on Nov. 11 to help Missouri’s Cody Schrader take the title with 1,489 yards. LSU quarterback Jaylen Wright is a distant second (1,134).
Then come Kentucky’s Ray Davis (1,066) and the 2022 leader, Quinshon Judkins of Ole Miss (1,052) and Wright. Judkins had 237 carries, exactly 100 more than Wright.
Wright’s 2023 season reflects a healthy offense. In the past 40 years, Tennessee’s lowest season-rushing-leader totals were Reggie Cobb’s 547 yards in 1988 and Arian Foster’s 570 yards in 2008. Both were five-win seasons.
After three seasons, Wright checks in with 2,297 career yards, 13th on the school chart. At this writing, he had yet to say whether or not he’ll return in 2024.
Henry’s 3,048 total has been sitting there awhile. Another 1,000-yard season would take Wright all the way to No. 1.
Mike Strange is a former writer for the News Sentinel. He currently writes a weekly sports column for Shopper News.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Jaylen Wright's place among Tennessee football 1,000-yard rushers
