With 2015 winner Derrick Henry of Alabama off to the NFL, there will be a new winner of the Doak Walker Award in 2016. Based on the projected performances of a couple of other finalists from a year ago, this year’s winner could very well come from the group below.
Thursday, the PwC SMU Athletic Forum announced a watch list that contains a whopping 76 players. The Walker Award has ben handed out annually since 1990 to the nation’s top running back and is named in honor of former SMU great Doak Walker.
Two finalists for last year’s award have made the cut this preseason -- LSU’s Leonard Fournette and Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey.
The SEC led all conferences with 13 watch listers, followed by the Big 12 (9), Big 12 (9), Pac-12 (9), ACC (8), Mountain West (6), Sun Belt (6), MAC (5), Conference USA (4) and AAC (3). There were also four from independents (BYU, Notre Dame).
Those two independents were two of the 13 schools with two running backs listed, the others being Alabama, Arkansas, Baylor, Cal, Duke, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, USC, Western Kentucky and Western Michigan.
Below is the complete 2016 Doak Walker Award preseason watch list:
