We’re back with another episode of the Ralphie Report podcast, diving back into the 2026 season preview for this upcoming football squad. If you’ve been following along, we’ve had a few other episodes released prior to this, going position group by position group on the offensive side of the ball to get us and you ready for the season ahead. Today we’re laser focused, so let’s dig into the running backs. We are looking at pretty much a brand new unit for 2026 in every single way for the Colorado running backs.
Who’s Gone
Our old friend, Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk, who was the running backs coach last year, became the head coach at Southern and took some people with him. Dallin Hayden transferred to Memphis after fighting injuries and being a pretty solid back for CU. Dre’lon Miller, who played both wide receiver and running back pretty extensively last year for CU, has also gone to not quite greener pastures at Baylor. Simeon Price, who had a good season for the Buffs last year, landed at Oregon.
Who’s Back
Returning for the Buffs is Michael Welch, who has been playing since he was a freshman two years ago at running back. DeKalon Taylor has returned from injury and looks like he’s going to play a lot on this squad. We have Damian Henderson and JaQuail Smith, both coming in from Sac State with new offensive coordinator Brennan Marion.
Michael Welch is a Maurice Jones-Drew build kind of guy, an absolute meatball. It’s great to have the dichotomy of those backs in the room. He doesn’t really have top end breakaway speed, but he’s one of those dudes who will hit top speed in about three steps, kind of a Philip Lindsay type comparison for a CU fan.
DeKalon Taylor, meanwhile, was legitimately the offensive weapon in Shurmur’s offense last year, which may be damning with faint praise given how rough that offense was overall, but he was a real threat as both a runner and a pass catcher. His build is 5’6″, 5’7″, the fastest guy on the field every time he’s out there. He got run between the tackles last year, which was an interesting choice, and we don’t expect that to continue. We expect him to be the outside back who can swing out on a toss play or an off tackle run and get into space early, which is where he’s going to thrive.
New Arrivals
Richard Young is the big get here, coming in from Alabama, a former five star at 5 foot 11, 210 pounds, who’s been battling to see the field after an ACL tear at Bama but is just massive and hits a hole aggressively. He’s going to be the big between the guards, between the tackles runner in this room.
Damian Henderson might play more than either Young or Welch early on because he knows the system. He was in it last year at Sac State and was almost a thousand yard rusher there. He actually started his career at CSU, believe it or not.
Jaquail Smith, kind of like Dekalon Taylor from what we understand, profiles as a pass catching back, maybe even more pass blocking and pass catching than Taylor, who leans more run heavy.
Coaching and Scheme
It’s kind of hard to assess the situation given we don’t know 100 percent what these backs are being asked to do. We’ve seen past iterations of the go go offense, and we’ve seen what Brennan Marion has asked running backs to do before, so we know the guys in this room are capable of it. But we don’t know for certain if he’s bringing that exact same system over here, especially because he now has a more traditional pocket passer in Julian Lewis, which is not necessarily what he’s worked with in the go go offense in years past.
The famous, biggest visual difference of the go go offense compared to other offenses is where the running backs line up. We’re going to have two backs pretty often in this setup, and what they do with them is line up one directly behind the quarterback in a pistol formation, and then the other one right next to it. It’s not a classic two back look with both split out, it’s a pistol with one back positioned right alongside it, and that guy can often go in motion before the snap to run a wheel route, act as a leak, or help edge block on an off tackle play. There’s a lot of responsibility on these running backs, and there are going to be two very different roles depending on who’s out there.
The two Sac State guys, Henderson and Smith, are a huge help in installing this system because they’ve played in it before, which is a real advantage nobody else in the room has. Keeping DeKalon Taylor and Michael Welch is also gigantic. In the past, especially 2023 and 2024, running backs were perhaps the most de-emphasized position group behind the TEs, because you had Shedeur, Travis, LaJohntay, Jimmy Horn, and you just weren’t going to run the ball that much. And we didn’t, spoiler alert. Last year they talked about running the ball more, and they certainly tried. The game where Kaidon Salter decided to run the ball more, CU won, and we don’t think that’s a coincidence, even though it still wasn’t a successful rushing performance overall. Calling it like it is, Deion Sanders has not run a successful rushing based offense in his time as a head coach. We’ll see if that changes this year, because this is going to be, easily, the most snaps we’ve seen for running backs under this staff.
Position Group Verdict
Acceptable, but at the upper range of acceptable. There’s a lot of talent here, but it’s hard to call it a strength when we don’t fully know who the guys are going to be yet. That said, acceptable is a nice place to land given running backs have been ranked last or second to last in these previews the last two or three years.
This group is definitely not Texas Tech level, whose running backs are insane, and probably not quite ASU level either. But there’s an interesting mix of bodies here, and it looks like a running back friendly offense.
Player to Watch
DeKalon Taylor. He’s a plus playmaker in space by conference standards, and even during the worst stretches of last season, once he got back healthy near the end of the year he was genuinely helpful. Now fully healthy, he looks like he’s going to be a huge strength for this offense.
There’s also real intrigue in Richard Young and Damian Henderson, since neither has played meaningful snaps at the Power Four level (Young was hurt and looked slower at Alabama last year, Henderson has never played above the Sac State level), meaning either of them could realistically blow up in ways nobody’s seen on tape yet. It would not be shocking at all if the two Sac State transfers, Henderson and Smith, come out of the gate crushing it simply because they’re already so comfortable running this system, even if things even out once conference play settles in.
