Skip Myslenski delves deep into the art of running the football with true freshman Justin Jackson, whose contributions crescendoed in a 162-yard effort against Wisconsin on Saturday.
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This is in the midst of the mayhem that was the 'Cats game last Saturday with Wisconsin, and running backs coach Matt MacPherson is talking to his standout true freshman Justin Jackson. The topic of this discussion is the play they might run when the offense returns to the field and here he is saying, "Hey. The last time we ran this play, the tackle got around and we should have been outside with it."
But then, just before Jackson and the offense do return to the field, MacPherson adds this. "Now listen," he adds. "Once you get out on the field, don't listen to a damn word I say. You just run. I'm just telling you what happened before."
"I don't want him thinking. I want him reacting," MacPherson will later explain. "My job is to make sure I get his eyes in the right spot, I get his feet in the right spot, and let him run. Once the ball's snapped, everything I say should be gone."
Now it is minutes later and Jackson chuckles softly when asked about that moment. Then, as serious as a proud craftsman discussing his work, he says, "You want to take heed of that. But, again, you just want to run with what you see. You have it in the back of your mind, but you don't want to be thinking about it.
"Me personally, I feel I was thinking about a lot of things at the beginning of camp, which is why I was messing up a lot, instead of just running the ball. That's really something that's very instinctual, especially for me. So he really just wants us to go out there and play. The techniques we've worked on in practice, that should become instinct. Then in the game you just read what you see and then go and play."
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Forty-one years ago, in the belly of that season when he would become the first NFL runner to rush for over 2,000 yards, O.J. Simpson sat in his rental home in Buffalo and declared, "Running. Man, that's what I do. That's me."
"Definitely. I'm on the same page with him on that," Jackson will say when that avowal is related to him. "It's something I love. All the guys in our room just love running the ball. We want to run the ball 45, 50 times a game if we could. It's something we love. That's why we come here to work every day, to just try and get better and help our team win. We know if we run the ball well, like we did against Wisconsin, like we did against Penn State, then we'll win a lot of football games."
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There has never been a question about Justin Jackson, The Runner. He piled up 6,531 yards during his brilliant career at Glenbard North and, each Saturday this fall, he has ended the game as the `Cats leading rusher. He went for 40 against Cal (on just eight carries), for 52 against Northern (on 12), for 94 against Western (on 21), for 54 against Penn State (on 15) and then, last Saturday, for 162 against Wisconsin on 33 carries.
The steady increase in his workload is not insignificant here. It instead reflects an immutable truth, the stark reality that operating as a running back in college is far different from doing the same in high school. Back then, back at Glenbard North, Justin Jackson rarely ran any pass routes and was almost never asked to protect his quarterback. But here, with the `Cats, those are requirements for even the most brilliant of performers, and so he very much needed some on-the-job training.
This is where the plan kicked in, the plan MacPherson had for his true freshmen Jackson and Solomon Vault. "My thought process was they were going to play and I was going to get them prepared to play," he says, beginning an explanation of that plan. "It really starts with the run game. Get the ball in their hands. That's what's easy for them. That's what's natural for them. Get the ball in their hands and let them go.
"Then the more that they can start picking up what we're supposed to do route wise, the more that they can start picking up what we're supposed to do from a protection standpoint, then they can start becoming an every-down back where I don't have to script out where they're going, or only put them in in certain situations. For me it's really when they start turning over the protection. That's usually the biggest difference between playing running back in high school and playing running back in college. It's learning those protections. Once they start turning over those protections and show they can physically hold up, then they're going to be every down backs."
And how close is Jackson to being just that?
"He's pretty darn good. He's pretty darn good," says MacPherson. "He's at the point now where I'm comfortable putting him in in any situation. Third down. First down. Backed up. Goal line. It doesn't matter. I really feel comfortable with him."
"I didn't really recognize it until the past two weeks," Jackson will soon say when asked about that plan. "I've seen my workload increase, and they're putting more stuff on me in practice as far as pass blocking and things like that. So I just started to realize the last two weeks that they're giving me more and more each week, which has really helped in the transition from high school to college. I was doing a lot of different things I hadn't done in high school, so the plan has really worked so far for me. It's helped me play mistake-free because they didn't put too much on me."
Here he is asked about the steps from running to routes to protection.
"Obviously, running is first and foremost for me, for all running backs," Jackson says. "I was doing that very well from the beginning. But the routes and stuff like that, that was something I had to work on and I've gotten a lot better since I got here. Running pass routes, that's something I didn't do a lot of in high school. Protection, we didn't have any protection where we had to read linebackers, read coverages, stuff like that. So that was something I definitely had to pick up once I got here.
"I really had to be diligent studying that. They didn't put too much on me and I've been doing a good job in games identifying things. That's the first thing. Identifying it. Now the next step in the process is becoming great at the technique. But just being in the right place at the right time, I think I've done a pretty good job of that."
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There are, then, now some nuts-and-bolts involved in Justin Jackson's job, some blue-collar stuff that he is striving diligently to master. But still, at root, in his heart, he is a runner, who is always the featured soloist in the symphony of crashing bodies that is a football game. He will be that again Saturday when the `Cats visit Minnesota and then, on display, he will reflect that pinball wizard The Who sang about in their rock opera Tommy, "That deaf dumb and blind kid. . .(who) plays by sense of smell (and) Always has a replay, `n' never tilts at all."
"It's an instinct thing. Really instinct," O.J. Simpson said 41 years ago when that song was mentioned to him. "I play my man, do little things, get him in a position I want. I'm just doing my thing. And my thing is running."
"Fair enough," Justin Jackson says 41 years later when that same song is mentioned to him. "Running the ball is really such an art. It's something that becomes instinct over time. It's something that's crafted very carefully. I've tried to do that. I watch a lot of film. I critique myself. I try to improve my game, do anything to get better. I think my coach is putting me in a great position to succeed and, slowly but surely, I'm becoming a lot more comfortable.
"When I become more comfortable in anything, I become a lot better. That's how I'm progressing."
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