DeSean Bishop Earns National Running Back Honor After Powering the Alabama Win

DeSean Bishop turned the Alabama game into a national statement. Tennessee's senior tailback has been named the Doak Walker National Running Back of the Week after carrying 32 times for 159 yards and two touchdowns in the Vols' 26-10 win over the Crimson Tide on Saturday.

Most of the damage came after halftime. Bishop ran for 95 yards and both of his scores on 20 second-half carries, taking over a game that Tennessee's ground attack had only threatened to own early. Josh Heupel said afterward that he had told his tailback at the break to expect a big second half, and that Bishop played the rest of the night like a man who believed it.

The award extends a first half of the season that ranks among the best in school history. Bishop is up to 837 yards and 10 touchdowns on 139 carries, figures that sit near the top of the national leaderboards, and his 2,368 career yards stand 11th in Tennessee history — just 24 yards behind Montario Hardesty and a place in the top 10, in a record book topped by Travis Henry's 3,078 yards. He has done all of it, remarkably, without a spot on the Doak Walker Award's own watch list.

The encore test comes quickly in Columbia. South Carolina ranks third in the SEC against the run, allows barely 104 yards a game, and has not surrendered a 150-yard rushing day all season. Tennessee is 22-3 in SEC games under Heupel when it runs for at least 150 yards, which makes Bishop's afternoon the matchup inside the matchup.