Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Lang-Snead tandem elevating ASU
JONESBORO — Arkansas State’s 20 rushing yards on 27 carries against James Madison wasn’t awe-inspiring.
That might not have been the case a year ago when the Red Wolves had the nation’s third-worst rush offense, but prior to Saturday, ASU had logged at least 95 yards on the ground in four of its five games.
Take out the Dukes’ six sacks for a loss of 31 yards, and it still would’ve been a worse performance than the Red Wolves’ 53 yards — sacks included — at Ohio State.
It made the absence of running back Johnnie Lang all the more notable.
“Brian [Snead] and Johnnie jell together,” ASU Coach Butch Jones said of his two leading rushers Tuesday. “They play off of each other. Their skill sets are different, so I think that kind of [hurt us] from a continuity standpoint, but also in the return game.”
Lang had logged double-digit carries in every game this season before running just once against James Madison. He returned three kicks for 98 total yards, but Lang, who dropped from first to second in all-purpose yards nationally, was not as dynamic as the week before when he broke a 98-yard return for a touchdown.
Perhaps more impressive than Lang’s totals is the fact that both he and Snead are having career seasons in tandem.
Lang spent four years at Iowa State, redshirting his true freshman year. He never had more than 50 rushing attempts — his best season came in 2019 when he started 4 games, totaled 238 yards and scored 3 touchdowns.
Through six games, he’s already surpassed his previous season-best with 266 rushing yards and with two more touchdowns, he’ll have four — that would match his total from the previous five years.
Snead’s path was more circuitous. A top-100 recruit out of high school, he played two games at Ohio State before being dismissed for violating the university’s code of conduct.
He went to junior college, then played two seasons at Austin Peay — albeit disjointed with a spring 2021 campaign and another season that fall.
Regardless, Snead’s never had a season with more than 95 carries or 522 yards. At 71 carries and 276 yards, he’s on pace to surpass both those marks.
For two guys well into their collegiate careers, that they’re only breaking out now might be surprising.
Lang sees it differently. “I just feel like God works in mysterious ways,” Lang said last week. “His situation brought him here, my situation brought me here, it just felt like it was meant for us to be here and for us to meet each other.”
Lang and Snead didn’t know one another despite both growing up on Florida’s western coast — Lang’s hometown of Palmetto is just 45 minutes south of Snead’s Tampa home.
But in short order, the two have found synchronicity in one another.
They’re built differently physically — Lang is 5-8 and 186 pounds whereas Snead measures in at 6-1 and 212 pounds — but the two Floridians have connected personally as roommates.
Between the lines, Lang and Snead are challenging one another. And with Jones emphasizing a need to stay on schedule more often, the Red Wolves have to get far better performances from their run game than last weekend.
The presence of Lang — Jones said he expects the redshirt senior to be a full-go against Southern Mississippi — should make a difference.
“We’ve just got to be grateful for this opportunity that we even crossed paths,” Lang said. “I’m making a brother and a teammate at the same time and we’re both having success.”