OSU football
touchdowns.
For the year, he averaged 5.5 yards per carry on 100 attempts, finishing with 547 yards and four scores. Sixty-five of his carries came in a two-week stretch against Tech and TCU when he accounted for 353 yards.
“You don't want to go out on a limb too much, but for his performance in the games he played in, he probably played as good as anybody in the country for the amount of reps he got in games,” Gundy said.
This season, Jackson is part of a running back committee of which Gundy plans to use all four members — expected starter LD Brown, Jackson, Jaylen Warren and Dominic Richardson.
Jackson is originally from El Dorado, Arkansas and came to OSU from Hutchinson (Kansas) Community College, where he rushed for 1,216 yards and 13 touchdowns on 163 carries as a sophomore in 2018.
Throughout his first two seasons at OSU, he was — gulp — mostly a practice player, redshirting in 2019 and getting just 18 carries over the first seven games of 2020, until Chuba Hubbard and Brown were sidelined by injuries in late November.
Gundy describes Jackson as a slasher and an upright runner, similar to former Cowboy Keith Toston.
“There is a big role for him on our team with what he brings to the table,” Gundy said of Jackson. “We put him in games last year and asked him to be successful, and he was very successful.”
Still, Jackson will have competition for carries in games this season, because each of the four players in the committee have had game-day success.
Brown is a sixth-year senior with elite speed who has proven himself over the course of his career as a talented back. Warren was productive at Utah State before coming to OSU as a graduate transfer, and Richardson, as a true freshman last year, had 169 yards on 23 carries in his only game of significant action against Baylor.
So the group is loaded, and that excites Gundy.
“We're very fortunate, we've got a number of guys that we trust can carry the ball and be effective for us at the running back spot,” Gundy said. “I've never had the luxury of having this many backs. If we have 40 rushes a game, the perfect scenario would be 10s across the board. Will it happen that way? I doubt it. If somebody gets hot, they'll stay. But we do have the luxury of not letting one player get completely fatigued or getting beat up throughout the season.”