Sam Pittman confirms Rocket Sanders will miss BYU game with injury

PeterWarrenPhoto2by:Peter Warren•09/11/23•

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Arkansas running back Raheim “Rocket” Sanders will miss Saturday’s game versus BYU as he is still recovering from a knee injury, Razorbacks head coach Sam Pittman said.

“Rocket will be out this week and then we’ll figure it out, how fast he can recover,” Pittman said at his Monday press conference. “We’ve got to get some swelling off of him. Once we do that, we’ll see how fast and whether we can have him back for LSU. I just don’t know.”

Sanders did not play this past weekend versus Kent State. He ran the ball 15 times for 42 yards and two touchdowns during Week 1 against Western Carolina.

The junior tailback entered the season as one of the top running backs in the country and a potential All-American candidate. He earned All-SEC first team honors in 2022 after running for 1,443 yards and seven touchdowns on 222 attempts.

Last week, Pittman talked about the team’s running back depth and how he was confident in their abilities.

“I love our depth,” Pittman said. “I think (Rashod Dubinion)’s really good and all of them. AJ (Green) and (Dominique Johnson), I keep going back to two years ago we had the same guys on the team and (Johnson) was the starter later in the season. We kept trying to get him more and more carries. Sometimes we did, sometimes we didn’t. But when we did he was very successful.”

AJ Green led the rushing attack against the Golden Flashes with 15 carries for 82 yards. Rashod Dubinion had 10 carries for 34 yards and a touchdown. Dominique Johnson ran the ball seven times for eight yards.

The team also gets significant contributions from quarterback KJ Jefferson in the run game. He had 13 runs for 48 yards against Kent State.

“Well, we had to run him today, because if we didn’t, we’d been in big trouble. So, we had to run him to win. The plan was not to do that. So, we’ve gotta be better up front. We’ve got to do better at wideout. We’ve gotta run the ball. Our backs have got to run better. So, that all goes back to me and I’ve gotta get it fixed,” Pittman said after last week’s game versus Kent State.

Jefferson rushed for 664 yards in 2021 and 640 yards in 2022 with 15 combined touchdowns.