Jaydn Ott Moving Up Cal's Top-10 List in Single-Season Rushing

And he is doing it in an era in which quarterbacks and the passing game are increasingly dominating college football

The rapidly diminishing role of the workhorse running back in college football has not prevented Jaydn Ott from having one of the best rushing seasons in Cal history.

Ott, a sophomore, has rushed for 1,260 yards this season, which is the most by a Cal player since 2011 and the seventh-best single-season total in Cal history. If Ott gains 63 yards or more in the Bears’ bowl game he will move into sixth place on the Cal list and have the most single-season rushing yards by a Cal player since 2008.

Ott has rushed for more than 150 yards in a game five times this season, and if he runs for 97 yards or more in the bowl game he will pass Marshawn Lynch’s best season, which is the fifth-best in school history.

Here are the top-10 rushing seasons by Cal players:

1. -- 2,018 yards -- J.J. Arrington (2004)

2. -- 1,580 yards – Jahvid Best (2008)

3. -- 1,546 yards – Justin Forsett (2007)

4. -- 1,460 yards – Chuck Muncie (1975)

5. -- 1,356 yards – Marshawn Lynch (2006)

6. -- 1,322 yards – Isi Sofele (2011)

7. -- 1,260 yards -- Jaydn Ott (2023)

8. -- 1,246 yards – Marshawn Lynch (2005)

9. -- 1,195 yards – Adimchinobe Echemandu (2003)

10. - 1,177 yards – Russell White (1991)

Ott is averaging 114.6 yards per game, which leads the Pac-12 and is fifth in the country. The improvement of Cal's offensive line should not be discounted, but Ott's place on the Cal list is particularly impressive because running backs just don’t rack up of the video-game rushing numbers they did just a few years ago.

Ollie Gordon of Oklahoma State leads the nation in rushing at 131.7 yards per game, and if that number stands through the bowl games it would be lowest per-game rushing average for the nation’s leader in that category since 1964, when Illinois’ Jim Grabowski had the top per-game rushing average at 111 yards per contest.

Last season, the rushing champion averaged 155.7 yards, and in 2021 it was 142.2 yards, both of which rank among the lowest for the top rusher in the past 60 years.

Ott is one of 18 players averaging better than 100 rushing yards per game this season. Six years ago, 30 players averaged better than 100 yards on the ground, and for the seven years from 2013 through 2019, there was at least one 2,000-yard rusher each season, including four in 2019.

Twenty-nine times an FBS-level player has rushed for 2,000 yards or more in a season. You may never see it again.

A couple of reasons for this. Most teams now rely on two or three running backs during the course of the game, limiting the caries one back gets. More important, though, is the fact that pass-heavy spread offenses dominate college football now. That coupled with the ever-improving skills of today’s quarterbacks make the passing game the primary means of moving the ball and scoring points.

Ott is averaging 20.8 carries per game, which is a lot these days. But when J.J. Arrington established his school-record 2,018 rushing yards in 2004, he averaged 24.1 carries per game, even though Marshawn Lynch got a significant number of carries that season as a freshman and the Bears had Aaron Rodgers as their quarterback. Rodgers completed 66.1% of his passes that season, which ranked eighth-best in the country in 2004. This year that completion percentage would rank only 25th in the nation.

Seven quarterbacks completed better than 72 percent of their passes this season. With those high completion rates and the dwindling interception rate – Jayden Daniels and Bob Nix have combined for six interceptions this season; Aaron Rodgers threw eight picks in 2004 – it’s a wonder running backs get any work at all.

The result is that a running back seldom gets the 30 or 35 carries a game needed to put up huge numbers. Against Washington State, Ott carried the ball 36 times, an absurd number these days necessitated by the Bears’ injury-related shortage at the running back position.

Economists like to calculate what a dollar in, say, 1960, would be worth in 2023 dollars based on inflation.

So too should we should view Ott’s statistics in the context of rushing numbers in the decade of the 2020s. His 1,260 yards look more impressive when seen that way.

And Ott has two more seasons of college eligibility. You can never discount the possibility of a player transferring in these days of monster NIL financial rewards, and players can turn pro after their third year of college ball.

But if Ott sticks around in Berkeley he has a good chance to become Cal’s career rushing leader. Russell White is the Bears alltime leader with 3,367 yards, achieved in three seasons. Ott has 2,157 yards through two seasons, putting White’s mark within range next season.

And, by the way, White averaged 19 carries per game over his three-year Cal career; Ott is averaging 17.3 carries over his first two seasons.

If Cal comes up with a productive backup running back next year (Justin Williams-Thomas?) and quarterback Fernando Mendoza improves, Ott's carries and rushing yards may decline. And that might not be a bad thing for the Bears.

Cover photo of Jaydn Ott by Kirby Lee, USA TODAY Sports

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