Bulldogs’ Hokit back in football mode, but bringing a little extra this season
Say this for Josh Hokit, he has that recovery from wrestling thing down. The Fresno State running back weighed in at 228 pounds on Tuesday before the Bulldogs’ fourth practice in fall camp, all of it in the right places. He is bigger than he was last football season, stronger and maybe even faster, having come a long way in four months.
“Andy Ward, our strength coach, he got me right,” said Hokit, who wrestled at 197 pounds last season and when the Bulldogs were going through spring practices in March and April still was around 205, maybe 207 pounds.
“I started light getting my muscles back, but slowly and surely it started coming back to me and I even increased my maxes in most of my lifts.”
Included was a bench press at 365 pounds, but much of the focus for Hokit was the legs.
“With strength comes speed,” he said. “I’ve just been working on the leg strength, the foot speed. I haven’t really been doing that in previous summers. I’ve been focusing on upper body, just to make sure I look the part, but this summer I put that all aside. I’ve just been focusing all on legs, leg strength, leg speed, explosion.”
Hokit does have some extra pop on the practice field. But will it add up to a greater workload this season in a loaded backfield?
Fresno State last season had three running backs with 100 or more carries with Jordan Mims at 151, Hokit at 128 and Ronnie Rivers at 101, and all return.
That is almost unheard of in college football; three backs with 100 carries was the most in the Mountain West Conference.
Air Force, which rushed the football 765 times, third-most in the nation, had only two backs with 100 or more carries and one was its quarterback. Five teams had only one back with 100 or more carries and two had two, with one a quarterback.
That rotation worked for the Bulldogs, their running backs accounting for 1,847 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns and another 60 receptions for 402 yards and one touchdown.
Rivers has not yet been cleared for contact coming back from a foot injury suffered in the spring, but senior Dejonte O’Neal also is in the mix along with Washington State transfer Romello Harris and sophomore Savion Johnson.
Coach Jeff Tedford and running backs coach Jamie Christian said the Bulldogs will continue to rotate their running backs; all solid with the football in their hands and in pass protection, and at this point there’s little separation in the position group. Mims last season rushed for 627 yards at 4.2 yards per play, scoring six touchdowns with a long run of 24 yards. Hokit was second with 583 yards and 4.6 yards per play, seven touchdowns and a long run of 26 yards. Rivers, who missed time with an elbow injury, had 480 yards at 4.8 yards per play, five touchdowns and the longest run in a group that didn’t break many, 30 yards.
“I try to keep guys fresh, so that’s why I play a lot of guys, and no one has really separated themselves as a top guy to where no one else can play,” Christian said. “They all do good things, they all have strengths and weaknesses so we’re going to continue to play a bunch of guys.”
This story was originally published August 7, 2018 at 6:27 PM.