SBLive Oklahoma All-State Football 2023: Midwest City Carl Albert senior tailback Xavier Robinson selected as MVP
Note: The remainder of the All-State team, including other superlative award winners and the first and second team members, will be published later in the week.
Midwest City Carl Albert head coach Mike Dunn had a plan.
After seeing his talented tailback, Xavier Robinson, carry the ball 276 times to lead Carl Albert to a 2022 state championship, the long-time skipper vowed to change up a few things.
While Robinson was still going to have to be the primary focus of the Titans entering the 2023 season, Dunn knew he couldn’t run his workhorse with the same frequency as he had the year before.
“We would like to be a little more balanced,” Dunn said. “At Carl Albert, we've always run the ball a little bit more than we throw. But if you go look at that run from 2017 to 2020, those four state championships with Ben Harris, we were probably 60-40, 55-45 run/pass. We were really balanced.
"We'll take what the defense has given us. If they're loading the box, we're going to throw the ball. If they're trying to keep people in front of him and playing coverage, then we've got a guy in Xavier that can really exploit that.”
That was Dunn’s thinking months before the Titans played their first game. But once the season actually started, Dunn and his coaches saw it was going to be tougher than they expected to limit Robinson’s touches. At 6-foot-2, 225 pounds, he was a bulldozer with Porsche speed.
While Dunn saw Robinson's season carries drop down to 229, he was still able to put up the same level of production in 2023. He finished the year with 1,789 yards and 34 touchdowns. He averaged 7.8 yards per carry and 128 yards per game.
During the past two seasons, Robinson has 4,370 rushing yards and 77 touchdowns.
But those numbers do not tell Robinson’s full impact. It was in Carl Albert’s biggest games that the future Oklahoma Sooner did his most damage.
That includes the 5A state championship in which he finished with 22 rushes for 133 yards to go with three catches for 64 yards and three total TDs in his final game in a Carl Albert uniform.
Xavier Robinson (with ball)
“I just want to leave it all on the field my last game my senior year,” Robinson said. “It’s a great feeling. It means a lot, leaving it the way I wanted.”
It was Robinson’s 65-yard touchdown dash to start the fourth quarter to put Del City away and cemented Robinson’s legacy.
“Everybody keys on him and we’ve been telling him to be patient, it’s going to bust,” Dunn said. “And then it busts big-time and he goes 65 yards and outruns a group that’s really fast, so that was awesome.”
Focused Midwest City Carl Albert finishes the job, repeats as Class 5A state champions
Robinson went on to be named MVP of the OSSAA 5A championship for the second straight year. That was just the first of a myriad of postseason honors he added to his expanding resume.
Three weeks after completing his high school career, Robinson signed his national letter of intent with OU and is already enrolled at the university for the spring semester.
But Robinson doesn't plan to put his time at Carl Albert completely in the rearview mirror. What he was able to accomplish with the Titans not only added to the program’s long and storied history, he also set a high standard for those who follow him.
“I just can’t wait to come back, and see how the program's doing,” Robinson said. “Maybe come back and give a speech. I want to be one of those kind of people.”
-- Michael Kinney | @SBLiveOK
