Trae'shawn Brown Headlines Alabama's Big Day on the Ground

The Crimson Tide's rushing attack racked up 179 yards in Saturday's blowout win over Mississippi State, with Brown leading the way with his performance.

Alabama running back Trae'shawn Brown celebrates a touchdown in the first half of the game against Mississippi State Oct 3, 2026. | Sarah Munzenmaier/Alabama Crimson Tide on SI

STARKVILLE, Miss. — Through five games, Alabama has boasted four different leading rushers. This week, freshman running back Trae’shawn Brown became the first to repeat as the team’s leading man on the ground.

The former 3-star ran for 66 yards on 14 carries, averaging 4.7 yards per carry while scoring a pair of touchdowns in the Crimson Tide’s 56-23 dismantling of Mississippi State Saturday.

“You can see that he’s running hard,” head coach Kalen DeBoer said. “He just had a really good feel for what's going to happen up front, and you know he hits the holes hard. So, love seeing him breaking tackles.”

Brown burst onto the scene during the program’s spring practices while getting reps for his injured counterparts in the backfield, and people started to see that Alabama had a diamond in the rough.

DeBoer credited Brown’s involvement throughout the offseason for the impact he’s made so far this season.

“Trae’shawn’s benefited from a lot of the reps he got in the spring,” he said. “So he feels very comfortable out there now.”

Fellow freshman and last week’s leading rusher, EJ Crowell, racked up the second-most yards Saturday with 49, further flexing this offense’s depth muscle.

“We’ve got great complementary group of backs, really not just two, but three, four, five guys that can all do some things,” DeBoer said.

Neither of these guys is even Alabama’s leading rusher in 2026. That title currently belongs to junior Daniel Hill, who has 247 yards on the ground and four touchdowns thus far this year.

Unfortunately for Hill, Saturday’s performance was one to forget. The Mississippi native carried the rock just five times for 22 yards with a pair of fumbles. 

His head coach had his back postgame, encouraging Hill to “keep playing.”

“Daniel just needs to keep playing,” DeBoer said. “Keep going about it. Things happen, you know, putting the ball on the ground. He’s a guy that we got a lot of trust in. We’re not going to lose trust in him.”

Alabama’s quarterback, Keelon Russell, who ran for a 17-yard score himself, praised the backs as a whole, noting that it could be anyone’s day on any given Saturday.

“Week to week, it's going to be amazing,” he said. “We’re talking about the SEC. It’s gonna be all types of faces, all types of fronts, all types of guys on the D-lines. It’s going to be special talents every week.”

After vastly improving its rushing attack from its awful form last season, the Tide will face its toughest test yet next week when Alabama hosts No. 2 Georgia. The Bulldogs currently rank third in the nation in run defense.

But as far as Saturday’s game against Mississippi State goes, the unit continues to show its improvement, and Brown was a human highlight reel.

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