{"id":74879,"date":"2025-06-30T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T16:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/?p=74879"},"modified":"2025-09-20T14:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T18:41:10","slug":"best-returning-acc-running-backs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/2025\/06\/30\/best-returning-acc-running-backs\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Returning ACC Running Backs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every Summer, Last Word on College Football goes through the lists of Best Returning\u2026we give you the best returning players by position<\/a> by conference. We have made our way through the Big 12<\/a> and the Big 10<\/a>. Now we get to the best returning running backs for the ACC.<\/p>\n

Just as a reminder, to qualify for the list, you have to have been in the ACC in 2024. Transfers can count, as long as they transferred within the conference. First-year transfers into the conference can\u2019t make the list, which is done in ascending order.<\/p>\n

4. Jamal Haynes, GA Tech; 5th<\/sup> year senior<\/h3>\n

Haynes<\/a> is in his fifth year of college football (all at Georgia Tech), but 2025 will be only his third as a running back. He went to the Yellow Jackets as a wide receiver. The move has paid off.<\/p>\n

In 2023, he had a 1,000-yard rushing season. He just missed it in 2024 with 944 yards and nine touchdowns. Haynes averaged a little over five yards per carry. The highlight of the season for Haynes was his 68-yard game-winning score against North Carolina.<\/p>\n

He rushed for 136 yards on 17 carries against Vanderbilt in the Birmingham Bowl. With an improved offensive line for GA Tech, Haynes can have an all-time big season.<\/p>\n

3. Desmond Reid, Pitt; 4th<\/sup> year senior<\/h3>\n
\"Returning
Photo courtesy: Syndication: Detroit Free Press<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reid<\/a> is going into his second season at Pitt after transferring in from Western Carolina. He came up just shy of 1,000 yards in 2024. Reid ran for 966 yards on 184 carries. He also had five rushing touchdowns.<\/p>\n

He is the definitive dual threat out of the backfield.\u00a0 Reid was the only player in the country who had three games of 100+ receiving yards with 50+ rushing yards. Stanford\u2019s Christian McCaffrey was the last player to do that, and that was all the way back in 2015. So not only was he Pitt\u2019s leading rusher, but Reid was the second leading receiver on the team with 564 yards and four touchdowns on 47 catches.<\/p>\n

2. Demond Claiborne, Wake Forest; 4th<\/sup> year senior<\/h3>\n

Claiborne<\/a> has been close to being \u201cthe guy\u201d in the past. Certainly, he was Wake\u2019s best running back in 2024 with 1,049 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns. He also had 254 receiving yards and two touchdowns. He was only the second player in program history to have that level of rushing and receiving yards.<\/p>\n

Claiborne was the bright spot in an otherwise dormant offense. Which is why we boosted him in the 2025 projections. Because it is now an offense built around him. New head coach Jake Dickert is dispensing with the slow mesh offense and going to a power spread. His stated intention is that everything will be built out of the run game. If you think he wasn\u2019t serious, he met with Claiborne only hours after he was introduced as the new head coach.<\/p>\n

Dickert brought in Rob Ezell as the new offensive coordinator. Ezell had the #29 rushing attack in the entire country at South Alabama last year. Claiborne\u2019s stamina created availability issues late in games last season. Knowing he is going to be the centerpiece of the offense, if he can be action-ready in key moments, he can have a big year.<\/p>\n

1. Isaac Brown, Louisville; sophomore<\/h3>\n

Brown<\/a> is one of the best running backs in the country and is just coming off his true freshman season. He became the first true freshman in Louisville history to rush for 1,000 yards.<\/p>\n

Brown had 99 yards on just 18 carries in the Sun Bowl win over Washington. But his big game of the year was the regular season finale against rival Kentucky. He had a season-high 178 yards and two touchdowns in the win. But perhaps the most impressive 2024 stat for Brown was 4.06. That is the yardage after contact that he averaged last season. It is the best among all running backs returning to the ACC this year.<\/p>\n

And Brown was playing in a Cardinals offense that was built around quarterback Tyler Shough and his ability as a dual-threat quarterback. With transfer Miller Moss taking over at quarterback for 2025, there is no dual-threat quarterback. That puts the running game completely in Brown\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Main Image: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every Summer, Last Word on College Football goes through the lists of Best Returning\u2026we give you the best returning players by position by conference. We have made our way through the Big 12 and the Big 10. Now we get to the best returning running backs for the ACC. Just as a reminder, to qualify […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":74889,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2,17,35643],"tags":[275,90,3683,1249],"class_list":["post-74879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acc","category-featured","category-news","category-wake-forest-demon-deacons","tag-georgia-tech-yellow-jackets","tag-louisville-cardinals","tag-pittsburgh-panthers","tag-wake-forest-demon-deacons"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74879"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74891,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74879\/revisions\/74891"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}