Georgia football: 30 greatest players of the Mark Richt era

• 2x First-Team All-SEC (2007-08)
• Second-Team All-American (2008)
• SEC Freshman of the Year (2007)

He only played two years for the Dawgs, but man, were they special. Knowshon Moreno was one of those running backs you could not take your eyes off in the Georgia backfield. Elite as both a runner and a pass catcher, Moreno is probably the primary reason the Dawgs finished No. 2 in 2007 and began the year ranked No. 1 overall entering 2008.

Moreno committed to Georgia out of Middletown, New Jersey as part of the 2006 recruiting class. For some strange reason, Mark Richt decided to redshirt Moreno. Along with picking Brice Ramsey over Deshaun Watson, this decision will go down as one of the biggest personnel gaffes of the Richt era at UGA.

As a redshirt freshman in 2007, Moreno set the SEC ablaze with his one-of-a-kind rushing style. It was both technically sound, yet reminiscent of a virtuoso jazz musician going to work in terms of his improvisational approach to playing running back. If a linebacker was in the way, Moreno would leap over the guy like he was a hurdle in track. Just ask that poor guy formerly of the Central Michigan Chippewas.

Moreno would be named SEC Freshman of the Year, as well as First-Team All-SEC in 2007. He rushed for 1,334 yards on 248 carries for 14 touchdowns in 13 games. Moreno also had 20 catches for 253 yards out of the backfield. Together, he and quarterback Matthew Stafford formed the most formidable offensive tandem entering the 2008 college football season.

Though Georgia failed to live up to the lofty preseason hype, Moreno continued to assert his dominance in the SEC in 2008. He rushed for 1,400 yards on 250 carries for 33 touchdowns, as well as hauling in 33 catches for 392 yards and two touchdowns. Moreno was First-Team All-SEC for the second consecutive season, as he made a Second-Team All-American squad.

With a large enough body of work, Moreno declared for the 2009 NFL Draft along with Stafford. He went No. 12 overall to the Denver Broncos, where he would spend five of his six NFL seasons with the team. Moreno would be part of an AFC Championship team in Denver in 2013 before playing his last NFL season with the 2014 Miami Dolphins.

Simply put, it feels like Moreno was overdrafted by the Broncos in 2009. That was a weird era for Broncos football, if we’re being totally honest. Denver used its first-round pick in 2010 to draft Georgia arch nemesis quarterback Tim Tebow out of Florida. Outside of that miraculous two months in 2011, the Tebow experiment wasn’t great in the Mile High City. No wonder John Elway recruited free agent Peyton Manning in 2012.

Overall, Moreno finished his brief Georgia career with 498 rushing attempts for 2,734 yards and 30 touchdowns in only 26 games. Though Nick Chubb and Todd Gurley’s numbers have since outshines Moreno’s Georgia numbers, we have to realize that Moreno was a game changer for the running back position at Georgia. The Dawgs now dominate recruit the position in and out-of-state. Just look at D’Andre Swift of out Philadelphia. In a way, Moreno was a trail blazer for future UGA backfields.