Breaking down MaxPreps' Top 10 running backs heading into the 2026 season, and what the list actually tells us about the class

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SEO title tag: Top 10 High School Running Backs 2026: MaxPreps List Breakdown & Recruiting Analysis

Meta description: MaxPreps named its Top 10 running backs for 2026. We break down every name, the recruiting math behind the board, and the two uncommitted backs who could flip the whole thing.

Primary keyword: top 10 high school running backs 2026 Secondary: David Gabriel Georges, class of 2027 running backs, Landen Williams-Callis, high school football recruiting 2027

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MaxPreps dropped its Top 10 running backs heading into the 2026 season on July 24, and the headline name surprised nobody. David Gabriel Georges sits at No. 1 — reigning MaxPreps National Player of the Year, Quebec native, Baylor School star, and as of July 22, a Tennessee commit.

But the name at the top isn't the story. The story is what happens when you lay the whole board out and look at where these ten kids are going.

Eight different college programs. Ten backs. Nobody doubled up.

That doesn't happen by accident.

The Board

Here's the full list as MaxPreps ranked it, with class and commitment status:

Source: MaxPreps, July 24, 2026

Nine of Ten Are Class of 2027 — This Is a Snapshot of One Cycle

Strip away the "top backs in America" framing and what you're actually looking at is a 2027 recruiting board with one 2028 name attached.

That single exception is Kevin Hartsfield of Newton, a rising junior sitting at No. 8 with 47 offers already on the table. He averaged better than 12 yards a carry last season on his way to 1,302 yards and 12 scores. When a sophomore posts a double-digit yards-per-carry number against Georgia 6A competition and the offer count is already pushing 50, the ranking is the least interesting thing about him.

Put a pin in that name. He'll headline this list next July.

The Two Names That Aren't Spoken For

Landen Williams-Callis at No. 2 is the most consequential uncommitted back in the country, and it isn't close.

The Randle standout was named 2025 MaxPreps Texas Player of the Year after a season most backs don't get in a career: 3,502 yards and 59 touchdowns, carrying his team to a Conference 5A Division 2 state runner-up finish.

MaxPreps notes he enters his senior year 3,835 yards from the Texas career rushing record.

Do that math for a second. He'd have to outrun his own 3,502-yard junior season — the best year of his life — by more than 300 yards to get there. It's a longshot, and it should be treated as one. But the fact that we're even running the numbers tells you what kind of runner this is.

At 5-8, 190, he's the shortest back on the board and the one with the most production. Whoever lands him is getting a volume back with proven top-end usage.

The Fa'alave-Johnson Wrinkle — And Why SoCal Should Pay Attention

Honor Fa'alave-Johnson is the only West Coast player on this list. He's also, arguably, not a running back.

MaxPreps has the Cathedral Catholic star at No. 5 among running backs. The recruiting industry has him somewhere else entirely: 247Sports lists him as the No. 1 athlete in the country, and ESPN ranks him as its top safety in the 2027 class. USC recruited him as a two-way player and has said publicly they want him on both sides.

The production backs up the confusion in the best way. During his junior season he accounted for over 2,000 all-purpose yards and roughly 30 touchdowns while adding three interceptions on defense, helping the Dons take the CIF San Diego Section Open Division title before falling to Folsom in the state final.

That's the real headline for anyone covering Southern California football: the region's lone representative on a national running back list is a kid the blue-chip services rank as a defensive back. He's that good at both.

He shut his recruitment down in the spring. Oregon and Texas kept pushing anyway. That tells you plenty.

The Numbers That Jump Off the Page

Three lines from this board deserve their own moment:

Ty Keys, Poplarville (Miss.) — 506 yards and eight touchdowns on 18 carries. In a single game. A 60-54 win over Hancock. That's 28.1 yards per carry. The Miami commit essentially scored every other time he touched it.

SaRod Baker, DeSoto — 1,619 yards and 21 touchdowns across six playoff games. Roughly 270 yards a night in the postseason, and DeSoto walked off with the Conference 6A Division 2 state title. MaxPreps calls it one of the best postseasons in Texas history. Hard to argue.

David Gabriel Georges, Baylor — 417 yards and seven touchdowns in a state semifinal. That's the game that clinched National Player of the Year, a 56-35 win over McCallie. He finished the year with 1,749 yards and 27 scores and led Baylor to its first undefeated season since 1973.

The Recruiting Story Hiding in the Commitment Column

Tennessee. Georgia. Texas Tech. USC. Auburn. Clemson. Miami. LSU.

Eight programs, eight backs, zero overlap. In a sport where the same four or five brands usually hoover up an entire position group, that's a genuinely unusual distribution.

The one that should stop you is SaRod Baker to Texas Tech. A top-five national back, a Texas state champion, a kid with a historic playoff run on tape — and he's headed to Lubbock. Five years ago that commitment doesn't happen. The revenue-share and NIL era has real teeth, and the running back position, where production translates fastest, is where you see it first.

Meanwhile Kemon Spell heads to Georgia as maybe the most complete football player on the list. MaxPreps highlights his three-phase impact — two interceptions on defense and three special teams touchdowns to go with 1,755 rushing yards and 28 scores as a junior. He did that while missing five games.

One Correction Before You Repost This

MaxPreps lists David "Tre" Segarra III as attending "Byrnes (Florence, S.C.)."

Byrnes High School is in Duncan, South Carolina — Spartanburg County, upstate, about 200 miles from Florence. Multiple outlets covering his June 16 LSU commitment place him there, including nola.com and TigerRag. MaxPreps' own athlete profile link for him uses the Duncan URL path, so it appears to be a typo in the article copy rather than a data error.

Small thing. But if you're aggregating this list, aggregate it correctly.

What We're Watching

Williams-Callis' decision. He's the last elite uncommitted back in the cycle and the board reshuffles the moment he picks.

Hartsfield's junior year. Forty-seven offers before he's played a snap as an upperclassman. If he holds that 12-yards-a-carry efficiency against a bigger workload, he's the No. 1 back in 2028 by a distance.

Whether Fa'alave-Johnson ever actually plays running back at USC. The Trojans say both ways. Everybody says both ways. Almost nobody actually does it.

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Where does this list get it wrong? Somebody got left off — they always do. Drop the name you'd add and who you'd bump for them. We read every one of them.

Follow RepMax Media for film breakdowns, recruiting intel, and the stories behind the rankings.

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Sources

MaxPreps — Top 10 running backs heading into 2026 season (Zack Poff, July 24, 2026)
MaxPreps video — Top 10 Running Backs heading into the 2026 Season
247Sports — Honor Fa'alave-Johnson profile
ESPN — USC lands five-star safety Fa'alave-Johnson
The Coast News — Fa'alave-Johnson commits to USC
247Sports — David Segarra profile
nola.com — LSU lands Tre Segarra
Chattanooga Times Free Press — Gabriel Georges commits to Tennessee