Iowa football: Mekhi Sargent faces uphill battle to win Doak Walker Award

In a bit of surprising news, Iowa football player Mekhi Sargent was named to the 2019 Doak Walker Award watch list. Winning will be an uphill battle though.

Coming into 2019, one of the big question marks for the Iowa football team is how will the run game progress?

Last year it was a mess until Mekhi Sargent came on late in the season, and for the most part, the media has been low on the status of the Iowa football team’s run game.

Sargent, for example, didn’t even make Athlon Sports list of top-60 running backs in college football. In fact, the only remotely positive media posting about the Iowa football team’s run game came Thursday when he was named to the 2019 Doak Walker Award watch list.

That being said, getting named to the Doak Walker Award watch list this year is like getting a participation award. 71 players were named to this list, which is over half of the total teams in Division 1 FBS.

Regardless, let’s entertain the though that Sargent could be the first Doak Walker Award winner since the great Shonn Greene.

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And let’s stop entertaining it because it isn’t going to happen. This isn’t anything against Sargent. In fact, quite the opposite. I think Sargent is going to have a great year for the Iowa football team, but there are few key things working pretty heavily against him.

First, he splits carries with bulldozer running back Toren Young, speedster Ivory Kelly-Martin, and possibly some combination of Henry Geil and some 2019 recruits.

Second, there are a lot of great running backs this year led by Big Ten rival Jonathon Taylor who won last year’s award. If it isn’t Taylor, there is Travis Etienne out of Clemson, D’Andre Swift out of Georgia, and more.

Third, while I like Sargent, I just don’t see the elite talent that made a guy like Shonn Greene so special. Part of what makes Sargent an effective college back is his versatility, but he doesn’t particularly excel in any one area. He’s shifty and can make guys miss, but he’s not going to break defenders ankles like Akrum Wadley, or run guys over like Shonn Greene.

So while it’s exciting to see Mekhi Sargent on the 2019 Doak Walker Award watch list, he faces a pretty tough uphill battle to actually winning the award.