As he inches closer to the coveted 1,000-yard mark, running back Mike Warren has made a promise.

When he hits 1,000 rushing yards on the season — he is just three yards shy of the mark heading into Saturday’s game against No. 5 Oklahoma State — Warren wants to do something special for the people who have made his year so successful.

He’s taking the offensive line to dinner. Where they’ll be going, though, they can’t seem to decide. But Warren said he just wants to honor the people who made it all possible.

“We’re still debating [on where to go],” Warren said. “It’s just something to celebrate about with the offensive line.”

While the fans want Warren to take the linemen to a nice, fancy place, others don’t care quite as much. Redshirt sophomore Jake Campos would settle for something much simpler.

“McDonalds wouldn’t be too bad,” Campos said. “Just go out there and feast.”

Regardless of where they’ll end up celebrating, the celebration is warranted. Warren, who entered the season with next to no experience, has exploded on the field by rushing more than 100 yards five out of the past seven games.

Warren is so far averaging 110.8 yards per game and is set to be the first Cyclone to rush for more than 1,000 yards since Alexander Robinson in 2009.

Warren isn’t one to take all of the credit for the newfound success in the run game, though. Throughout the season, Warren has continuously praised his offensive line, deflecting the credit to them.

Offensive lineman Brock Dagel didn’t notice that Warren was doing it at first. He only became aware of i after seeing several articles on Twitter where Warren praised the lineman. But, even then, Dagel still wasn’t that surprised.

“That’s just a testament to him,” Dagel said. “Nobody really gives credit to the o-line, that’s kind of the classic saying, and Mike does. And that’s just another thing that really shows how awesome of a guy he is.”

But based on Warren’s recent statistics, there was a strong possibility that he would have reached 1,000 yards last weekend against Oklahoma. The Sooners held him to just 43 rushing yards on the day, the worst rushing performance he’s had since the second week of the season.

But after what he said was a strong week of practice, Warren feels confident that he and the offensive line can get the job done this time.

“This week so far has been pretty good,” Warren said. “The offensive line, I feel like were going to have one of our best games.”

ISU coach Paul Rhoads has noticed how much the offensive line has improved and impacted the run game, too. Without the line establishing the run game like they are, Rhoads said the offense wouldn’t work the way it is supposed to.

“It’s fun to see the emergence of it and fun to see the development of it,” Rhoads said. “It’s been the line a little bit for their performance. But the fact that they’ve elevated our offensive game, our team play with the run game, has been vital.”

The process started well before the season when the offensive line collectively sat down last spring and committed to improving both the run game and pass protection, something it felt it was fully capable of doing.

“Just being together, we came to the conclusion that we need to do this,” Campos said. “We’re big enough, we’re strong enough. We just needed to start establishing the run game.”

But it hasn’t been easy. Several lineman have gone down with injuries this season, including center Patrick Scoggins, who had season-ending surgery during fall camp. Lineman Daniel Burton missed time early, as well as the game against Oklahoma, and he will remain sidelined this week with an ankle injury.

All of the injuries have disrupted the line’s rotation. 

“Not having [everyone] certainly weakens us a little bit as far as numbers go,” Rhoads said. “I think those guys played hard, [they] made some mistakes, we had too many pre-snap penalties.”

Some of the offensive line, however, is actually playing through injuries.

Dagel, who had season-ending knee surgery last season, recovered during the spring and made it back into the starting rotation this fall.

So far, he has played every week, but Rhoads said it has come at a price.

“[Dagel has] played every game,” Rhoads said. “But he’s practiced in a lot of pain, and he’s in the training room every day hooked up to about three different gizmos to just get himself to where he can be out there working. For kids to do that for other people and to be selfless in that regard means a lot to me.”

Every day, Dagel has to be at the training room by 7 a.m. for treatment. He shows up to practice at least an hour early to get worked on again and then has to stay after practice for another treatment session.

Dagel isn’t alone because several other lineman need similar daily treatments. Warren has noticed how much it takes for Dagel and the offensive line to actually play, he and knows how special it is.

“I don’t know how they do it,” Warren said. “Those guys are really tough to be going through all that. Especially Brock, he has his elbow and all that — I think he’s had his brace on since I’ve gotten here. That’s just really good toughness by him.”

And while Warren may get most of the recognition for eclipsing the 1,000-yard mark, the milestone means a lot to the rest of the offensive line, too, especially Dagel, as his ISU career nears its end.

“It means so much to me personally,” Dagel said. “I’ve never really had consistent success in my career like we’ve been having with this few string of games that we’ve put together with the rushing we’ve been doing.”

The Cyclones will get one last shot to get a win at Jack Trice Stadium this season Saturday, but it will take near perfection and an established run game to upset the undefeated Cowboys.

But Warren is confident. He thinks they can pull it off.

“We just have to be more physical, that’s what I think,” Warren said. “I told the [offensive] line that, and they were all in. They’re all for it, we just have to be more physical up front so we can do the things we want to do.”