Knile Davis out for the Season: What Does This Mean for the Arkansas Offense?

Arkansas RB Knile Davis, the SEC’s leading returning rusher, will miss the entire 2011 season with an ankle injury he suffered in yesterday’s team scrimmage.

The loss is a major hit to the Arkansas offense, which already lost RB Broderick Green for the season with a torn ACL in the spring.

This means the Razorbacks will be without their two most productive rushers from 2010.

Pile that onto the fact that the offense will be breaking in talented yet unproven new QB Tyler Wilson and it’s easy to see that Arkansas will have an uphill climb in the SEC West, college football’s toughest division.

Davis enjoyed a breakout season as a sophomore in 2010, rushing for over 1,300 yards and 13 TDs.

He wowed onlookers with his blend of power and speed and he established himself as one of the top eligible running back prospects for the 2012 NFL draft.

Without Davis and Green, it seems the team will now be forced to turn to Ronnie Wingo Jr., who only carried the ball 41 times last season.

Up to this point, Wingo Jr., a former 4-star recruit out of University High School in St. Louis, has mostly made his mark as a receiver out of the backfield, catching 27 passes and four touchdowns in 2010.

I personally think highly of Wingo Jr., who opened eyes in the spring with a renewed, passionate running style, and I even wrote an article back in July about how he could steal some of Davis’ thunder.

Sadly, that article now seems prophetic for all the wrong reasons.

At 6’3’’, 230 pounds, Wingo Jr. is big and sturdy enough to handle a large workload, but it’s obvious that coach Bobby Petrino is going to have to rely on his passing game even more this season.

Arkansas is lucky enough to have one of the best wide receiver corps in the country with four proven difference makers in Greg Childs, Joe Adams, Jarius Wright and Cobi Hamilton.

It’s now going to be up to Wilson to mature quickly enough and develop into the impact signal caller that many think he can become.

While the loss of Davis doesn’t necessarily kill Arkansas’ chances of competing for an SEC West division title this season, it certainly diminishes them a bit.

Wilson and Wingo Jr. will have to step up and play bigger roles than initially expected for this team to compete with the likes of LSU, Alabama, Auburn and Mississippi State.

This offense should still be potent enough to hang with every opponent on the 2011 slate, but without Davis, nothing is going to come easy this year.