Mississippi State trailed No. 1 Texas by just four points late in the first half Saturday and was on the doorstep of field goal range, facing a third-and-2 at the Longhorns’ 35-yard line.
What followed was one of the best play designs the Bulldogs ran all day. Freshman wide receiver Mario Craver came in motion to the left, but he was just a decoy as quarterback Michael Van Buren took the snap and handed off to running back Johnnie Daniels, with left guard Jacoby Jackson coming around to the right to pull for him.
Jackson’s block sprung Daniels free, and Daniels had all the running room he needed to pick up 17 yards into the red zone before defensive back Michael Taaffe chased him down from behind.
The top junior college running back in the nation last year at Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Daniels has been MSU’s top rusher in three straight games, and he leads the Bulldogs with 233 rushing yards through five games, averaging an even five yards per carry.
“He’s just gotten better and better,” head coach Jeff Lebby said. “Johnnie’s a guy who the more reps he’s gotten in practice, the more reps he’s gotten in games. You’ve seen him have production. He’s got really good balance, really good vision. He’s got a chance to hit his stride here in the back half of the season.”
Daniels had three seasons with at least 1,000 yards at Crystal Springs High School, south of Jackson, and scored 61 total touchdowns while also playing basketball and baseball and running on the track team. His only FBS offer out of high school came from Memphis, so he instead enrolled at Co-Lin under longtime head coach Glenn Davis.
As a sophomore with the Wolves, Daniels rushed 183 times for 1,253 yards and 15 touchdowns, leading all Mississippi junior college players in each category. He led all junior college players nationally in touchdowns and was second in both total yards and yards per game.
“The last five games last year, he was kind of a highlight reel,” Davis said. “Every time we needed a play out of him, he could make an 80-yard run. It was just one play after another the last five or six games for us. He carried us when we had some injuries at receiver. He didn’t shy away from the load. The more we gave it to him, the better he got.”
On Nov. 16 of last year, Daniels picked up an offer from MSU — under interim head coach Greg Knox at the time following Zach Arnett’s firing earlier that week — which turned out to be his only major conference offer. Three days after the Bulldogs hired Lebby, Daniels became the first player to commit to MSU under the new head coach, who had yet to name any of his assistants.
Even with sophomore Seth Davis out for the year from an injury he sustained in last year’s Egg Bowl, Daniels figured to be no higher than third on the Bulldogs’ running back depth chart after they added Davon Booth from Utah State in the spring transfer portal window. Daniels, though, rushed for a team-high 64 yards on just six attempts in the spring game.
“Johnnie is Johnnie. I don’t know how he does the stuff he does sometimes,” Booth said. “He might be falling, he’ll keep himself up. He’s incredible.”
During the week leading up to the season opener against Eastern Kentucky, Lebby revealed that Jeffery Pittman — the country’s top junior college running back the previous year — was no longer with the team, which elevated Daniels’ role. MSU struggled to run the ball no matter who was carrying it through two games, but with the game out of hand in the second half against Toledo, Daniels saw his most significant action yet, with 10 carries for 59 yards.
He led the team in rushing again the following week against Florida despite carrying fewer times than Booth, scoring his first touchdown as a Bulldog in the fourth quarter. Keyvone Lee is now out for an extended stretch with an injury, so Daniels had a season-high 15 rushes in the Texas game for 75 yards against one of the best all-around defenses in the Southeastern Conference.
“There’s always a transition from one level to the next, and he’ll be able to handle that transition,” Davis said. “If all kids had the same motivation, it would be easy to coach them. He was an easy guy to coach because you didn’t have to worry about things he didn’t need to be doing. He was always doing the right things.”
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