Kansas State Football Recruiting: 2019 Running Back Jacardia Wright Commits!

After a drawn out recruitment, K-State finally added Jacardia Wright, a 6’0, 200 pound 3*(84) athlete out of Decatuar, Illinois to the 2019 recruiting class. The multi-positional Wright will play running back for the Wildcats. Wright also held offers from Iowa, Michigan State, and Minnesota.

Evaluation

Wright is an elite athlete. One of the major hangups in his recruitment was position. Wright wants to play running back, other teams wanted him as a safety. Kansas State offered him a chance to play offense, and ultimately, that helped bring the Illinois native west to Manhattan.

Wright’s ability to move in small spaces stands out in his film. He cuts with ease. In fact, his lateral movement is so subtle, on some clips the only reason you notice it is a defender missing a tackle. It doesn’t look like he’s cutting, but the defenders are left grasping at air. He has exceptional lateral quickness for a back with good size.

He also shows excellent lower body strength and balance in the open field. When a defender does get a hit on his lower body, they bounce off and he is able to maintain his balance and keep moving down the field. In high school his balance and lower body strength lets him break long runs. In college, it will help him turn 3 yard runs into 5 yard runs. That’s important in the Klieman offense because it needs to stay on schedule to be effective.

Big Picture

I’m not a mind reader, but to me, this looks like Coach Klieman is content with the current running back situation and won’t be adding another grad transfer to the running back stable before the fall. Long term, that’s the best case scenario, because K-State is a team that is going to win through player development, and the more young players you can get into the program, the better. Grad transfers are band-aids, freshman are long term investments.

This probably pushes one of the “athletes” in the 2019 class that may have projected as a running back over to the defensive side of the ball. The Wildcat coaching staff needed to rebuild the depleted backfield in the 2019 and managed to sign 4 running backs and a fullback, and that’s not taking into consideration a couple other players that could potentially play a role in the backfield. The new staff did about as well as you could hope in fixing the biggest area of need on the roster.

This most likely closes out the 2019 class that is long on potential, but somewhat short on guys that project as instant impact players. Considering the recruiting situation the new staff walked into, that’s about as much as could be hoped for in 2019.