(Photo: Brady Klain/WCSN)
The Arizona State Sun Devils (3-2, 1-1 Pac-12) came home to Tempe on a two-game losing streak, looking for a spark to propel them to their first conference win.
A record breaking performance from their sophomore running back did just that.
In the first year of the post-Demario Richard and Kalen Ballage era in Tempe, Eno Benjamin looks to be ensuring that the Sun Devil running game doesn’t miss a beat. He did all that and more Saturday night against the Oregon State Beavers (1-4, 0-2 Pac-12) in a 52-24 thrashing.
The Wylie, Texas native broke the ASU single-game record for rushing yards and then some, recording the first 300-yard rushing game in school history. Benjamin finished the night with 312 yards on 30 carries with three touchdowns, along with 27 receiving yards and another touchdown.
“We had a game plan, we knew we were going to be able to run the ball on them,” Benjamin said. “If you saw the way we practiced this week, you would’ve known it was going to happen.”
After recording just 23 carries and one touchdown as a freshman behind Richard and Ballage last season, this performance was the culmination of Benjamin’s ascension to a feature back in college football.
Through five games in 2018, Benjamin now has 595 rushing yards and six touchdowns. After obliterating the school record for rushing yards of 250, set by Ben Malone in 1973, en route to the Sun Devils’ first conference win of the year, Benjamin spoke about the vision of success he had for himself going back to his prep years at Wylie East High School.
“I had a game plan, not necessarily a game plan but a blueprint from my senior year in high school when I sat down with [running backs] coach [John] Simon, and we had goals, and I knew what had to be done to get those goals,” Benjamin said. “Sitting that year… I learned a lot from [Richard and Ballage], and that’s one thing that I really enjoyed and I really appreciated, so I think last year really set me up for something like this.”
In a conference that has seen the talents of some of the most prolific running backs in recent college football memory such as LaMichael James and Royce Freeman of Oregon, along with current studs such as Stanford’s Bryce Love and Washington’s Myles Gaskin, it can be hard to stand out as a truly special running back.
However, for Sun Devil head coach Herm Edwards, he sees great qualities in his sophomore running back, coming from his more than 30-years worth of experience in the NFL.
“[Benjamin] reminds me a little bit of Curtis Martin, about the same stature, doesn’t look big, doesn’t look like he can break tackles but he does,” Edwards said. “And he can run inside, that’s what I like about him. He runs inside for the tough yards and finds a way to wiggle and stretch…and has pretty good hands, can catch the ball fairly well… he can do everything a good back needs to do.”
After two weeks of at least 46 passing attempts against Michigan State and San Diego State, the Sun Devils have dialed back in the passing game and put more of an emphasis on the ground game since conference play has begun.
For Edwards, despite having explosive playmakers on the outside such as N’Keal Harry and Kyle Williams, the emphasis on offense has to be with Benjamin and the running game.
“I like running the ball because you control the clock. And in college football, the way I look at it, you better control the clock,” Edwards said. “When you can run the ball, you basically every time you make a first down, you’re taking three minutes off that clock. And once you get a lead, you play the clock… you’re not playing the opponent anymore.”
Despite the back-to-back losses for Arizona State against San Diego State and Washington, every person associated with the team still firmly believes that all of its goals for the season are still attainable, and Benjamin’s performance Saturday night put them back on track toward them.
For quarterback Manny Wilkins, Benjamin’s excellence is certainly worthy of praise, but now that the clock has reached 0:00 on Oregon State, it’s time to reset and re-focus for a new opponent and a new challenge in one week’s time.
“It’s lovely. It’s lovely. To have a back run for 300 yards anytime, it doesn’t happen often,” Wilkins said. “I’m really proud of him cause I know how hard he works in practice, I know the beating his body takes. It’s not easy to get 30 carries a game. Not a lot of people can do that. I got a ton of respect for him, but he’s the first person to know that I ain’t gonna be all happy happy with him. It’s time to go back to work and hopefully he does it again.”
Bobby Kraus is a football beat writer for the Walter Cronkite Sports Network. You can follow him on Twitter @bobbykraus22
