Their names were linked throughout the offseason.
Who was the nation’s top sophomore running back? LSU’s Leonard Fournette, Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey, Georgia’s Nick Chubb, Oregon’s Royce Freeman, Florida State’s Dalvin Cook and Oklahoma’s Samaje Perine were just a few of the names that highlighted one of the strongest groups of true sophomore running backs college football has seen in years.
Midway through the 2015 season, several of those top ball carriers had cemented their names among the country's best, with Fournette leading the nation with 1,202 rushing yards and Freeman, Cook and McCaffery joining him among the top 10 in rushing yardage and yards per carry average (among ball carriers with 100 attempts or more) midway through October.