FootballScoop is proud to announce that James Montgomery (Boise State) is the 2024 FootballScoop Running Backs Coach of the Year, presented by AstroTurf as selected by prior winners.
No amount of flowery prose can better explain what happened this season than the plain truth, so the plain truth it is: Ashton Jeanty's 2024 was the best season by a college running back since Barry Sanders's 1988, which is generally regarded as the best individual season in the sport's 150-plus year history.
A consensus 3-star recruit out of Frisco, Texas, who had options to leave, Jeanty rushed for 821 yards as a freshman in 2022, 1,347 yards as a sophomore, and then absolutely exploded as a junior.
Heading into the College Football Playoff, Jeanty has rushed 344 times for 2,497 yards and 29 touchdowns on the season. In 13 games, Jeanty has never run for less than 128 yards, and topped the 200-yard mark half a dozen times. He scored a touchdown in 12 of 13 contests -- missing only Portland State, a 56-14 blowout in which he toted on 11 carries -- and averaged more than 11 yards a carry in three games.
At the risk of listing every game he played, standout performances from Jeanty's 2024 include:
-- 20 carries for 267 yards and six touchdowns in a 56-45 win at Georgia Southern
-- 25 carries for 192 yards and three touchdowns in a 37-34 loss to No. 1 Oregon
-- 26 carries for 259 yards and four touchdowns in a 45-24 defeat of Washington State
-- 34 carries for 209 yards and three touchdowns in a 28-21 win over Nevada
-- 37 carries for 226 yards and a touchdown in a 34-18 win over Oregon State
-- 32 carries for 209 yards and a score in a 21-7 triumph over UNLV in the Mountain West championship
Throughout the season, Jeanty has been durable enough to lead the nation in carries by 52 attempts, and explosive enough to rank 14th in the nation at 7.26 yards per carry. Eight of the 13 players above him registered less than 100 carries on the season, and Jeanty leads the nation in yards per carry (by nearly half a yard) among players with at least 200 carries -- and Jeanty is nearing 350.
If Jeanty was a team, he would rank 21st nationally in yardage, first in yards per carry, and tied for 18th in touchdowns. Jeanty also caught 20 passes for 116 yards and a score.
Despite that production, Jeanty was not the only Boise State running back to put up numbers this season. Freshman Sire Ganes gained 156 yards and a touchdown on 20 carries, freshman Dylan Riley rushed 22 times for 135 yards and two scores, senior Tyler Crowe ran 27 times for 121 yards and two touchdowns, and sophomore Jambres Dubar totaled 23 carries for 100 yards and two touchdowns.
A Heisman Trophy runner-up, Jeanty won the Maxwell Award as the nation's top player and the Doak Walker Award as the game's top running back. The Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year, Jeanty was one of seven unanimous All-Americans as chosen by five major selectors. He is the only unanimous All-American in Boise State history.
Thanks in large part to Jeanty, Boise State will meet Penn State in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Fiesta Bowl on Tuesday.
Montgomery played at Cal and Washington State from 2006-10, then entered coaching at the high school level. He began coaching college football as a quality control at Weber State in 2013, then spent the following six seasons at Sacramento State. Montgomery coached Fresno State's running backs in 2022 before taking the same position at Boise State in 2023.
The FootballScoop Coaches of the Year awards presented by AstroTurf are the only set of awards that recognize the most outstanding position coaches in college football. The finalists (Tashard Choice [Texas], Newland Isaac [Liberty], Deland McCullough [Notre Dame] and Montgomery) were selected based off of nominations by coaches, athletic directors, and athletic department personnel. The prior winners selected this year's winner.
Previous winners of the Running Backs Coach of the Year award are Burton Burns (Alabama, 2008), Willie Taggart (Stanford, 2009), Jim Mastro (Nevada, 2010), Frank Wilson (LSU, 2011), Calvin Magee (Arizona, 2012), Jeff Lebby (Baylor, 2013), Bryan McClendon (Georgia, 2014), Lance Taylor (Stanford, 2015), Jeff Horton (San Diego State, 2016), Tony Elliott (Clemson, 2017), Tim Albin (Ohio, 2018), Jabbar Juluke (Louisiana, 2019), Robert Gillespie (North Carolina, 2020), William Peagler (Michigan State, 2021), Mike Hart (Michigan, 2022), and Curtis Luper (Missouri, 2023).
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