Buy or Sell: Brandon Holloway Accumulates over 2,000 All Purpose Yards and 10 Total Touchdowns

Brandon Holloway has become an incredibly reliable offensive weapon for Dan Mullen’s Bulldogs. His sheer speed makes him a force to be reckoned with and he is sure to have an important role on this year’s team.

A year ago, Holloway ran for 413 yards, caught 396 yards, and had 567 kick return yards for a total of 1376 yards. He reached the end zone 6 times, 5 through the air and once on a kick return. His showing in 2015 was double what he’d done in his freshman and sophomore seasons combined (he had 728 yards and a single touchdown in 2013 and 2014).

Holloway has improved greatly since he’s arrived in Starkville. He even improved considerably down the stretch of last season when he became more involved with the offense.

But can he improve even further and gain at least 2,000 all purpose yards and 10 touchdowns on the season?

Reasons to buy:

1. More than likely, Holloway is going to have an increased role to start the season over what he had a year ago. He’s going to have plenty of opportunities to get the ball and the offense is going to have to go through him and Fred Ross until a quarterback and an every down back win the job. He’s going to be involved from the get go. He’s going to get the ball. More than likely, he’ll have plenty of chances to rack up yards and score.
2. There’s going to be a lot of speed all over the field for this year’s offense. Gabe Myles, Fred Ross, Donald Gray, Malik Dear, AND Brandon Holloway? That’s a lot for defenses to try to contain. And it’s possible we’ll see lineups that feature those five on the field at the same time. He’ll get his chance to get open if that’s the case.

Reasons to sell:

1. He just isn’t an every down back. And his size might come back to haunt him when there’s a running back competition going on. Sure, his versatility is sure to find him a spot on the field, but the ball may wind up in the hands of other running backs and receivers. There’s plenty of fast guys on this offense that might wind up taking some of his reps.
2. SEC defenses might know what to expect from him at this point. By now it should be clear to everybody in the league that Holloway will gain yards by the dozen if he gets to the outside and can get into space. But if you bottle him up and keep him trapped in the middle, he’s not going to explode on you. And with questions at offensive line, it’s possible that we’ll see Holloway run into a few log jams here and there throughout the season.

Am I buying or selling?

I’m going to sell on this one, but I’m not totally confident in my pick. I think he’ll get close on both goals here, but I’m not sure that Mississippi State’s speedster will be able to take the SEC by surprise the way he did the back half of 2015. I expect him to generate somewhere close to 1800 yards and 7-8 touchdowns because his role with this year’s team is going to expand, but I’m not sure just how far it will expand.

Regardless, he should be able to build off of his success and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him reach both benchmarks.

What about you? Are you buying or selling? We all know that jk_no_kidding is buying this prediction.