CAREER YPC STATS against top 50 defenses:
ALL DATA was gathered from College Football Statistics and History | College Football at Sports-Reference.com and accessed today.
If you have a problem with how they ranked the Defenses--take that up with the HOST of the website.
HURD (2014--2016) 400 carries for 1729 yards at 4.3 YPC. (included 2014 UGA defense ranked #53 and giving up 4.1 YPC) over 21 games.
The VOLS played 14 games over the 2015 & 2016 seasons against teams RANKED in the TOP 50 based on YPC allowed.
HURD (2015 & 2016 top 50 Defenses) = 301 carries for 1306 yards at 4.3 YPC
KAMARA (2015 & 2016 top 50 Defenses) = 108 carries for 466 yards at 4.3 YPC
Well, N0W...to break it down a little further:
In 8 games AGAINST TOP 50 DEF IN 2015
HURD: 187 carries for 871 yards and 4.7 YPC
KAMARA: 62 carries for 280 yards and 4.5 YPC
In 6 games AGAINST TOP 50 DEF IN 2016
HURD: 114 carries for 435 yards and 3.8 YPC
KAMARA: 46 carries for 186 yards and 4.0 YPC.
I found that both RBs had 10+ carries in 4 GAMES against top 50 DEFENSES over those 2 seasons.
In those 4 games:
HURD: 68 carries for 353 yards for 5.2 YPC
KAMARA: 54 carries for 281 yards for 5.2 YPC
That's as close as it gets between these two running backs with more than 10 carries per game against the TOP 50 DEFENSES on the schedule.
2015: 5 games against teams with Defenses ranked 63+ in terms of YPC allowed:
Hurd: 90 carries for 414 yards at 4.6 YPC
Kamara: 45 carries for 418 yards at 9.3 YPC
There were 2 of those 5 games where each RB had 10+ carries:
HURD: 38 carries for 195 yards at 5.1 YPC
KAMARA: 30 carries for 271 yards at 9.0 YPC.
2016: 6 games against teams with DEFENSES RANKED 65+ in terms of YPC allowed:
HURD carried the ball 8 times in only one of those games before quitting: USCe (#93 on the list) 8 times for 16 yards.
KAMARA missed the USCe game after being injured in the 1st half of the Alabama game.
KAMARA: 57 carries for 410 yards at 7.2 YPC
KELLY: 85 carries for 500 yards at 5.9 YPC
SPEAKING OF JOHN KELLY--
IN 10 games over the 2016-2017 seasons against TOP 50 DEFENSES in terms of YPC allowed:
JOHN KELLY had 123 carries for 475 yards at 3.9 YPC (I included 2017 Fla defense even though they were ranked #58 and gave up 4.2 YPC).
IN 10 games over 2016-2017 against DEFENSES RANKED 65+ in terms of YPC allowed:
KELLY: 157 carries for 829 yards at 5.3 YPC.
So--there are the numbers. I attempted to put the excel spreadsheet up in the post but I'm too dumb to figure out how to do it.
There's NO REAL DEBATE here.
HURD and KAMARA were pretty equal against the better defenses----with HURD taking the brunt of the beatings in terms in # of carries.
That sure PROVES how durable and tough HURD was at UT.
HURD sure wasn't "sexy" running the ball---but he was effective and durable. And HE SUFFERED for it physically.
Kamara definitely broke more long runs than Hurd did. He just did it against inferior competition.
Kamara averaged about 8 carries per game against the tougher Defenses--and just a little over 9 against the weaker defenses.
Jones and his crew were just plain 'ol stupid NOT TO SHARE the LOAD between these two very good RBs.
And they should've kept KAMARA on the field in the slot while he wasn't lining up at RB.
So, in the end, all of the noise made on here about how much BETTER KAMARA was than HURD is just a bunch of plain 'ol YAK MANURE.
There's a lot of numbers thrown around here but there's also a lot of "forest for the trees" as well. Sometimes you do the best you can with all the variables available. If one is trying to compare X player in the Pac 10 to Y player in the SEC about all that can be done is smooth the comparative stats as much as possible and try to make the oranges look as apple'ish as possible.
We don't have to do that here because we don't need to make a stat puree and attempt to interpret the unavoidably flawed outcomes. Because we are talking about players that played together we can actually make it apples to apples...literally same players/same opponent/same game. It's as even a comparison as can possibly be managed. From what I looked at it appears Hurd and Kamara shared carries in 19 games over the '15/'16 seasons with Kelly only 7 games. Here's the numbers I came up with:
Hurd 365 carries, 1646 yards, 4.5ypc
Kamara 149 carries, 851 yards, 5.7ypc
Kelly 55 carries, 277 yards, 5ypc
Now let's look at that Hurd ypc number. That 4.5 over 365 carries is exactly the same as his entire cumulative career carries of 637. (Baylor included, where he averaged 4.4) This makes sense if you think about it though. The argument has been he's a big and strong but unspectacular back. He'll get you yards more often than not but his ceiling as a RB isn't very high. In 18 fewer games Kamara had only 1 less game of 5ypc or more. (42 games vs 24) Put another way Kamara averaged 5ypc or more in 50% of his college games vs Hurd's 31%.
And it's practically an aside from a different post but bringing up Herschel Walker "only" having a 5.2ypc average is a prime example of an out of context observation. Holy cow. You do realize how one dimensional GA was with Walker, right? During Walker's tenure GA (80-83) only attempted 536 passes. Walker had 994 carries by himself. (in total GA rushed 1,895 to that 536 pass att) Defenses didn't sweat the pass much vs Walker. You want to talk about Hurd having to suffer under the load of carries? The most Hurd ever had was 277 in 13 games.(21pg) Walker had 274 in two game less and that was just his Fr year. His So year he had 410 carries (including bowl) in 12 games. That's averaging just over 34 carries per game. There's pretty much never a reason to put Walker and "only" in the same sentence.