It’s no secret that Florida revolutionized the SEC with the passing game.

Steve Spurrier’s Fun-n-Gun offense dragged the league out of the 3 yards and a cloud of dust 1980s and into the spotlight of the halcyon days of college football by “pitching it around the lot,” as the HBC used to say.

Florida’s commitment to passing excellence is so great that the school built statues of its 3 Heisman winning quarterbacks — Spurrier, Danny Wuerffel, and Tim Tebow — and a strong case could be made there should another, given that All-American Rex Grossman won every player of the year award in 2001 except the Heisman Trophy.

But for all of Florida’s success at the most glamorous position in sports, its history running the ball, and its legion of excellent running backs, is nearly as rich.

Spurrier’s teams led the SEC in rushing offense in 7 of his 12 seasons. Future NFL All-Pro Fred Taylor is the most famous of Spurrier’s talented backs, but others, including Earnest Graham, Terry Jackson, and Florida’s all-time leading rusher, Errict Rhett, earned All-SEC honors. Before Spurrier, the Gators featured such stalwarts as All-American Jimmy Dubose, Super Bowl winner Neal Anderson, future NFL All-Pro John L. Williams, and All-American Larry Smith, who like Anderson, won a SEC rushing title. Finally, you might have heard of a guy named Emmitt Smith, whose name graces the Ring of Honor at Florida and who is enshrined in Canton as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

That rich history makes this next sentence truly intriguing or, at first glance, a hot take for the ages.

In Montrell Johnson and Trevor Etienne, Florida may have the best 1-2 duo in program history.

Before you get too cynical, at least consider the numbers.

In 2022, Florida ranked 24th nationally in rushing offense, 8th in rushing success rate, 20th in explosive runs, and was 1 of just 2 SEC teams (Ole Miss) with 2 running backs who had 20 runs or more over 20 yards.

Montrell Johnson, the “veteran” of Florida’s underclassman duo, tallied 841 yards and 10 touchdowns as a freshman, ripping off 26 runs of 20 yards or better in the process, including a long touchdown against LSU.

Etienne, a true freshman, ran for 719 yards on just 118 carries, with 6 touchdowns. He averaged 10.5 yards per carry on 3rd down, the highest number in the SEC, and among his 21 explosive runs was an 85-yard touchdown run against South Carolina in November.

Etienne’s touchdown jaunt against the Gamecocks makes him just 1 of 2 SEC backs (Jase McClellan of Alabama) and 1 of 4 backs nationally who had an 80-yard plus run against a team that finished the season in the Top 25, and he was the lone true freshman on that list. If Etienne is anything like his big brother, who was an All-American and national champion at Clemson before becoming a first round draft pick of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2021, the best is yet to come.

Is this the best running back duo in the SEC? Some certainly think so, though that story will play itself out on the field this autumn.

The thing is, both Etienne and Johnson feel they can be better in 2023.

Johnson, the 2021 Sun Belt Freshman of the Year, wants to eliminate the fumbles, like one he had in the Utah game which, but for Anthony Richardson’s heroics, may have cost the Gators a win. Etienne, who joined the heady company of Taylor and Smith as Florida freshman running backs with 700 plus yards and 5 or more touchdowns, wants to show that while he’s thought of as the lightning to Johnson’s grind-the-defense down thunder, he can handle a bigger load than the 9 carries a game he received as a freshman.

“They can both do more, and they prepare well enough to do more,” Jason Marshall Jr. told Saturday Down South at SEC Media Days last week in Nashville.

Teammate Kingsley Eguakun, the All-SEC center who blocks for both, agreed.

“I think we have a great running back room,” Eguakun told SDS. “Those two guys are phenoms, but we have four guys who know what it takes to win and practice like it. As an offensive line unit, we trust those guys to make the right reads and put us in a position to be successful.”

The thunder-and-lightning dynamic beckons back to one of Florida head coach Billy Napier’s old stomping grounds — Clemson, where James Davis wore defenses out and CJ Spiller blew past linebackers and safeties, earning the pair the “thunder and lightning” moniker.

Etienne and Johnson will need their own nickname, but they have the ability to beckon the ghosts of some of the great backfields of SEC past, whether it be Ronnie Brown and Cadillac Williams, Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, or Trent Richardson and Mark Ingram or Eddie Lacy.

“Johnson is a guy who got better as the game went on,” an SEC defensive coordinator told me via text message last week, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “By the 4th quarter, linebackers don’t really want to engage him anymore. There aren’t many guys that physical in college football.”

As for Etienne, he’ll look to replicate the huge jump his big brother took in Year 2 at Clemson. After a successful freshman season where he ran for over 700 yards and averaged nearly 7 yards per carry (sound familiar?), Travis Etienne averaged 8 yards per touch as a sophomore, accounting for 26 touchdowns. Etienne doesn’t have the talent around him that his brother had at Clemson, but a huge jump is possible, and according to Eguakun, likely, if you watch how he prepares.

“You saw what he did as a true freshman,” Eguakun said. “It’s just the way he went out and prepared himself and worked every day. He didn’t approach football like a true freshman. He prepared and approached football like he’s been there before, expects to be great, and will be relentless in his pursuit of winning. That’s what separates him from everyone else.”

Ultimately, what separates this Gators duo from every other running back duo in the SEC may depend on factors beyond their control. How well can new QB Graham Mertz and the Florida passing game exploit defenses that key on the run? Can Florida replicate the absurd 1st-down success rate it had running the ball in 2022 (62%) with Anthony Richardson’s legs out of the fold? How does Florida respond to losing an All-American on the offensive line?

Still, it’s nice to have a duo as hard-working and talented as Johnson and Etienne at the center of things, or, more accurately, behind the center and the quarterback. That will give this Gators team a chance at defying unusually low expectations.

Defying low expectations with a running back duo with high expectations? That has worked before in the SEC.

In Gainesville, a place rich with running back lore, they are hoping it happens again.

SDS columnist Connor O’Gara conducted player interviews during SEC Media Days and contributed to this report.