Oklahoma football: RB Eric Gray closing in on Sooner 1,000-yard ground club
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football season has been uncharacteristically disappointing for a Sooner team that has won six of the last seven Big 12 championships.
As of Week 8 in the 2022 season, Oklahoma is buried deep in the Big 12 standings with a very un-Oklahoma like 1-3 record in the conference and looking up at eight other teams.
Despite the sub-standard performance thus far, one of the bright spots for the Sooners has been the performance of senior running back Eric Gray. The former Tennessee transfer is having a career season in leading the Oklahoma rushing attack.
Through seven games, Gray has 695 rushing yards on 97 carries, an average of 7.2 yards per carry, which ranks third best in the country among FBS teams. He also has five rushing touchdowns.
With Gray leading the attack, Oklahoma ranks 17th nationally in rushing offense, averaging 222.6 yards per game. The Sooner run game hasn’t been ranked that high since the 2019 season, when Jalen Hurts, Kennedy Brooks and Rhamondre Stevenson combined for over 2,500 yards on the ground.
Gray has four games this season with more than 100 yards rushing and a high of 176 a week ago against Kansas. For his career, which spans two seasons at Tennessee and two at Oklahoma, the 5-foot, 100-inch, 2010-pound running back has nine 100-yard games. As a freshman at Tennessee in 2019, Gray set a freshman record with 246 yards and three touchdowns in a game against the other SEC school in the state or Tennessee, Vanderbilt.
With five regular-season games remaining for Oklahoma, Gray is 306 yards shy of going over 1,000 rushing yards for the season, a career first for the native of Memphis, Tennessee, native.
When, not if, that milestone is reached, Gray will become the next in a long line of outstanding Sooner running backs who has rushed for 1,000 or more yards in a season. Gray will become the 40th Sooner player to reach that distinguished club. Adrian Peterson owns the single-season rushing record at Oklahoma, collecting 1,925 yards his freshman season in 2004.