Trying to add a payment method? You can do this on the 
In a world going away from the Bell Cow, the Oregon junior wants to be an every-down back.
Kevin Creasy doesn’t have time to watch the Oregon Ducks play live, so he DVRs games for when he finds a few spare moments.
There are, naturally, instances in which the Oakland High School (Tennessee) head football coach won’t get around to watching though, especially when his Patriots have a big-time opponent on the horizon. It’s in those scenarios when he’ll double or triple up his viewings in a week, a feat he assures is possible with the ability to fast-forward through commercials. The hours add up all the same.
Creasy justifies it by calling it “professional development,” although he really doesn’t have to. Sure, he enjoys what the Ducks do schematically and isn’t afraid to steal some ideas, but that is not why he is there in the first place. He watches because of Oregon’s budding star in the backfield, one Jordan James.
“There are a few things that I see on Saturdays that look like they came right off his highlight film,” said Creasy.
And few would know better than Creasy, who coached James for two seasons at Oakland and saw nothing but those highlights. James transferred in as a junior and tore apart the Tennessee preps scene, accounting for 3,858 all-purpose yards and 52 touchdowns en route to back-to-back undefeated seasons and class 6A state championships.
The 4-star running back committed to the SEC’s elite in Georgia and then decommitted all before eventually picking the Ducks and flying out West to Eugene — a place Creasy knows only from the glimpses he sees on his television every so often and the details that James relays to him during their check-ins roughly once a month.
“The crazy part is,” said Creasy, “I called him in the middle of the night the other night and, of course, he’s a few hours behind. The dude answered the phone and he had just gotten out of camp, so I was like, man, I must be pretty important to him still if he’s answering right after camp, because I would be worn out and I wouldn’t pick up my phone calls from anybody.”
The thing is though, for as eager as the voice on the other end of Creasy’s call was to simply catch up, there’s a bit of an ulterior motive for James: He’s working on getting his former coach out to a game in Autzen this season.
James knows how to pick his spots. There’s no better time for Creasy to get off the couch and see his star pupil play in person.
If it is possible to be the forgotten man in an offense that is widely considered no worse than top five in the nation, James somehow — if only due to the riches which surround him — fits the bill.
You will not hear his name in the projected Heisman race, nor will you spot it on day one NFL Draft boards. Oregon’s case for a national championship run this season has become synonymous with Dillon Gabriel under center, a group of pass catchers widely lauded as the nation’s best, and an offensive line with a serious shot to be the Big Ten’s premier front.
The Ducks’ running backs? James will tell you the nation’s not talking about them enough. Others project it as a nice little collection of faces with room for an alpha to emerge. But if you read between the lines of the chatter coming out of Oregon right now, it’s pretty clear the Ducks have their guy.
“He’s aggressive,” offensive coordinator Will Stein said of James, “he’s fearless, and he runs the ball how everybody envisions the running back to run the football: tough, breaks tackles, and trusts his tracks, trusts his training.
“He’s gonna have a really good year for us.”
All things equal, James had quite the year in 2023. After carving out the role of short-yardage specialist as a freshman — and recording the most rushing touchdowns (5) by a first-year player since Royce Freeman — the 5-foot-10, 215-pounder made the most of an unexpectedly significant role in year two.
Absorbing the carries lost amid the season-ending injury to Noah Whittington, James took off, finishing his sophomore year with 759 yards and 11 touchdowns. He averaged an astounding 7.1 yards per carry, and collected over 400 yards after contact, marks which helped him land atop the nation with a 94.8 rushing grade from PFF.
The hope is that James can scale up his workload from a year ago while retaining similar efficiency as the Ducks enter the jaws of the Big Ten.
“He’s determined man,” said newly-hired running backs coach Ra’Shaad Samples. “He’s confident. He walks out there with a chip on his shoulder, but at the same time he’s coachable, he’s hungry, he doesn’t turn anything down.”
James, who has reportedly reached speeds of up to 22 miles per hour this offseason, thinks the extra touches he got last season should pay off as his role is once more set to expand this year. And despite his mild and soft-spoken nature in front of the microphone, he’s not shy about projecting the specifics of what he hopes that role will look like.
“I do want to show some long speed,” he said. “I want to show people that I can be a big-play type of guy.”
He later added: “I’m an every down back.”
James made a killing at the high school level carving defenses as the focal point of gap and zone rushing schemes. He showcased special instincts between the tackles, the short-area burst necessary to be an effective one-cut runner and flashed the added ability to find extra yards in the margins; traits which were staples of optimistic scouting reports deeming him a potential multi-year contributor at a Power Five program.
Talent evaluators struggled to explicitly poke holes in James’ burgeoning skillset, but questions still arose about his ultimate ceiling.
Wrote one 247Sports scout: “Physical inside runner that could potentially develop into a three-down back at the next level, but more suited in a change of pace type role. … Flashes some pass-catching ability out of the backfield, but is difficult to evaluate off the sample size.”
Really, the narrative around James hasn’t shifted much.
How you view his potential for a true breakout this fall depends heavily on how much faith you have in him to excel in areas where his lack of exposure makes it difficult to craft sweeping expectations.
One of those such facets is his ability to be a target out of the backfield. In Stein’s offense, running backs accounted for a large portion of the receiving pie. Bucky Irving, now with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, vacuumed up 56 catches for 413 yards last season as a safety valve for a Heisman-contending signal caller in 2023.
James, who caught 15 passes for 132 yards and a touchdown last season, fancies himself the Ducks’ top back. Should he stick atop the theoretical depth chart, he’ll be in line for plenty of looks from the incumbent quarterback Gabriel.
Creasy and Co. didn’t have to dial up many plays in the passing game during James’ dominant stretch at Oakland. He insists the back’s ability as a receiver made the whole operation more dangerous, however. James had good hands, Creasy said, and made some “huge” receptions as a junior and senior. They were few and far between, rendering them “tendency breakers,” and always seemed to pop up in big moments; notably, during the pair of state championship games James was a part of.
“He could catch balls in really tough situations,” said Creasy, “and I think that’s what you want in a receiver.”
James, himself, would like them to be more than tendency breakers this season. He has personally asked Samples for extra receiving drills throughout camp, and it seems his reps are leaving quite the impression out on the perimeter.
“He’s a little demon out there,” said Samples.
If Creasy does make it out to Eugene this fall, there will be a perfect storm to thank. There’s some big ones in Autzen this season, and James is in line for quite the workload. Now he just needs to hold up his end of the bargain and lock up the lead-back role.
“I work like I’m the last guy on the depth chart every single day,” he said, “but I knew that (being the top guy) was gonna be a possibility coming in, so it made me attack it harder.”
If you include Nix’s carries, three players ran the ball at least 54 times last season for the Ducks. With Whittington back in the fold as a change-of-pace option, Jay Harris up from the Division II level and other young players jockeying for any touches they can get, the Ducks won’t be bashful about rotation in the backfield.
James will have plenty of competition to fend off. Samples even went as far as to say the days of the bell cow back are over. Still, the junior’s naturally-scaling role from impact freshman to the “guy” of his position group is a testament to patience; a bit of a lost art in this day and age which he seems confident will pay off this fall.
“Jordan’s kind of put his time in there and played behind some really good backs,” Creasy said, “and, you know, they put him in some big ball games and some big situations, and he’s proven himself. So now I think he’s probably going to be the guy they lean on. That’s pretty exciting.”
Call it delayed gratification. It’s time for Creasy to come see what he’s been building towards.
— Shane Hoffmann, for The I-5 Corridor
