HERO Sports is counting down the days until the kickoff of the 2018 college football season on Saturday, Aug. 25, by featuring the best player in the FBS at each jersey number, from 99-1. Each day, from May 18 through Aug. 24, we'll publish one article showcasing the best player whose jersey number matches the number of days remaining.
No. 24 Rodney Anderson
Oklahoma – RB
Rodney Anderson took the shotgun handoff from Baker Mayfield and approached the left side of Oklahoma's offensive line, which had been penetrated by an army of Kansas State defenders.
Anderson planted his right foot at the 25-yard-line, disposed of Wildcats' linebacker Jayd Kirby with a stiff arm, bounced beyond the far hash marks and bolted for an opening along the sideline. He outran a few other defenders and beat Tanner Wood and Sean Newlan to the goal line, breaking a 35-35 tie with seven seconds remaining.
"He got some momentum," head coach Lincoln Riley said after the game, in which Anderson had a career-high 19 carries for a career-high 147 yards and his second career touchdown. "He was difficult to tackle. It was one of those games where we needed his burst, and something was there. He got hot, ran the ball, did a good job in pass protection."
Anderson entered that game as a redshirt sophomore running back averaging 3.8 yards on 23 career carries. That 147-yard effort was the first of four straight 100-yard games (and six over the Sooners' final eight games). The 6-foot-1, 220-pounder finished the season ranked second in the Big 12 in rushing (1,161 yards), nearly half of which came on breakaway runs — runs of 15 or more yards, like his game-winning 22-yard dash vs. K-State.
Rodney Anderson — whom Rotoworld's Thor Nystrom recently gushed over in an episode of The Hot Route — now enters his redshirt junior season as one of the best running backs in the entire country, a Heisman Trophy candidate and the best No. 24 in college football.
