It’s not often that a player with 13 career 100-yard rushing performances gets slapped with an expiration date that reads Sept. 30.

Meet Arkansas’ Alex Collins, who has finally extended his warranty into October this season and now might go down among the best running backs in Razorback history.

Collins leads the Hogs in rushing this year with 960 yards, just 84 behind Derrick Henry for second in the SEC. No one is catching Leonard Fournette at No. 1 with 1,352 yards, but Collins only trails the LSU superstar by three touchdowns (15 to 12) for tops in the conference. With 40 yards against Ole Miss in Week 10, Collins will eclipse the 1,000-yard rushing mark for the third time in the junior’s career.

Despite the garish numbers, including 2,126 career rushing yards entering the season, Collins has struggled outside the month of September. The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., native entered the 2015 campaign having never rushed for more than 100 yards in an October or November game. During that time, he averaged 60.4 yards per game in contests after September — scoring just seven of his 28 career touchdowns after Oct. 1. All told, he’s rushed for more than a 100 yards in a September game nine times, and once in August.

Perhaps it was due to a lack of conditioning or the fact that teammate Jonathan Williams was getting the first-team carries. Whatever was holding Collins back after September, however, has been resolved.

The junior has posted three 100-yard outputs in four October games. In doing so, he’s vaulted himself from being a second option with Williams to an elite back with a chance to sprint out of Fayetteville with some of the most prestigious numbers in Hogs’ history.

Collins’ most recent effort (173 yards against Tennessee-Martin) shot him to No. 4 on the Razorbacks’ all-time rushing list. This October, he’s averaging 114.5 YPG. At his current pace of 120 YPG this season, Collins should be able to pick up another 500 yards in the final four games (five if they become bowl eligible). That would vault him past Dickey Morton (3,317 yards) and Ben Cowins (3,570) for second all-time behind Darren McFadden. If Collins decides to return to Arkansas for his senior year, he’d need about 1,000 yards to eclipse McFadden.

Of course, McFadden had other intangibles going for him, like the fact that he rushed for 4,590 yards in three seasons and finished runner-up in the Heisman voting twice. But Collins has other things going for him that McFadden didn’t, such as being one of the four Razorbacks with five or more touchdowns in a game, which he accomplished against Tennessee-Martin — becoming the first Hog to do so since Madre Hill had six against South Carolina in 1995.

Collins’ five scores against Tennessee-Martin jumped him from No. 10 on the Hogs’ all-time rushing touchdown list to No. 4, trailing program-leader McFadden by 13. That number should come down by the end of this season to about six or seven at his current pace of roughly 1.5 touchdowns a game.

If Collins returns to Fayetteville and stays healthy, he still might have to compete with a rehabbed Williams for carries once again. Williams (2,321 career rushing yards), who missed this season to a left foot injury, is too good to defer many carries. Even with his old backfield partner in the lineup again next season, it’s very plausible that Collins could leave for the NFL as Arkansas’ all-time leading rusher and scorer.

But to do so, he’ll once again have to slay any lingering October demons.