The hype surrounding running back Nate Carter continues to grow

It's pretty easy to get distracted and not think about Michigan State football star running back Nate Carter enough this offseason. With all the changes to the coaching staff and roster, it's easy to forget the stars of the team that were on the team last year as well.

And there arguably is no greater star that chose to stay at Michigan State than Carter.

Carter is coming off an impressive first season in East Lansing that saw him accumulate 185 carries for 798 yards and four touchdowns. That is an extremely solid season for a college running back, but the expectations seem to be even greater than that for Carter.

Carter was just named to the Doak Walker Award watchlist, which is the award that goes to the nation's best running back at the end of the season. This award may sound very familiar to you all as former Michigan State running back Kenneth Walker won it in 2021.

Walker was the first and only Spartan to ever win this award, so can lighning strike twice and see Carter win it as well?

If he's going to win it Carter's going to have to really improve on his season from a year ago. During Walker's 2021 season, he ran for 1,636 yards and 18 touchdows. So you can see very quickly that Carter is going to have to improve a lot this season.

And in all honesty, I don't think he'll be able to accomplish that. It's not because I don't think he's a good enough player, I just think fellow MSU running back Kay'Ron Lynch-Adams, who just transferred to Michigan State this offseason, will eat up too many carries from Carter. This will prevent Carter from even having a chance to have good enough stats to win this award.

That, however, is OK, because all that truly matters is that Michigan State has two elite running backs in East Lansing with Carter as the lead guy. So even if Carter likely won't win this award, just being named to the watchlist is a huge achievement and a sign of good things to come.