The Michigan Wolverines' football rushing attack got off to a bit of a slow start this season (just 129.2 rushing yards per game through the club's first five outings), but has picked it up in a big way ever since, thanks to the emergence of two young running backs in freshman Zach Charbonnet and redshirt freshman Hassan Haskins.
In the four games since the Oct. 12 win at Illinois when U-M compiled 295 yards on the ground, the Wolverines have averaged 223.5 rushing yards per outing and have surpassed 140 yards each time.
The victory over the Illini also served as Haskins' coming out party, with the redshirt freshman logging 125 yards that afternoon and averaging 90.5 yards in the four contests since the start of play that day.
Prior to the win in Champaign, Haskins had never tallied more than 45 yards in a game.
Charbonnet, meanwhile, has been more consistent for the Maize and Blue this season, rushing for 190 yards through the club's first two affairs before enduring a bit of a lull (averaged just 23.3 yards in the three contests from Sept. 21 through Oct. 5).
The freshman seemed to find his stride once again in the victory over the Illini, however, registering a career-best 116 yards that afternoon, and averaging 74.7 in the four clashes since.
The Charbonnet/Haskins duo is quickly climbing the ranks of running back tandems in the Big Ten, with a combined 985 yards on the year (559 for the former and 426 for the latter).
The pair is sixth in the conference in combined rushing yards among league duos, but is just 34 yards behind Maryland and Illinois for a fourth-place tie in the Big Ten (the Illini tandem of fifth-year seniors Reggie Corbin and Dre Brown, and the Terrapin pair of junior Javon Leake and redshirt sophomore Anthony McFarland have each racked up an identical 1,019 yards).
The table below takes a closer look at the top two running backs for each Big Ten program (in terms of rushing yards), and where their combined totals rank in the conference.
Ohio State's two-headed attack of junior J.K. Dobbins and redshirt freshman Master Teague has a commanding lead on the rest of the conference (their 1,698 yards are 442 more than anybody else), but there is a bit of a logjam after OSU, with second-place Wisconsin and sixth-place Michigan separated by just 271 yards.
Charbonnet and Haskins are by far the youngest tandem among the top six teams listed above, with the five clubs ahead of Michigan possessing at least one runner who has eclipsed 1,000 yards in the past (Dobbins, Wisconsin junior Jonathan Taylor, Minnesota sixth-year senior Rodney Smith, Corbin and McFarland).
The Maize and Blue's pair moves up the list, however, when the duos are ranked in order of combined touchdowns.
Charbonnet's 11 scores on the ground are a new Michigan freshman all-time record (Mike Hart and Tyrone Wheatley had held the previous mark with nine), and are currently the second most in the Big Ten and the 13th most in college football.
Haskins has also chipped in two rushing TDs this season, meaning the tandem's 13 combined scores are currently tied for the third most in the Big Ten.
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