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PAC 12

UCLA's 'runningbacker' Myles Jack leads two-way revolution

Daniel Uthman
USA TODAY Sports
Myles Jack asked himself, 'What separates me from the other guys?" and became one of a handful of elite two-way performers on the football field.

LOS ANGELES — Myles Jack was on the verge of tears. And he had brought them on himself.

Just a few months earlier he had accepted a scholarship to play linebacker for UCLA, an opportunity he had so craved as an early adolescent. But he viewed the piece of paper that was his letter of intent as a written offer he would have to live up to, not a ticket to an exotic destination.

Earlier that year, he says, he saw expressions of doubt about his talent when teammates and others at the U.S. Army All-America game when he told them he had played his high school football in the Pacific Northwest, not one of the nation's traditional hotbeds. Those expressions made him realize that he might need something extra to prove himself in college.

So Jack did something he had done since he was 6 years old and continues to do today in Westwood. He rounded up some friends to play football.

But these particular friends, Budda Baker and Stanton Truitt, happened to be four-star receivers ranked in the top 20 nationally at their position. Jack wanted to develop the ability to cover slot receivers in college, so for two weeks he tapped Baker, a former high school teammate now a freshman at Washington, and Truitt, now an Auburn freshman whose father has dated Jack's mother for three years.

Each day for three or four hours at Wilburton Hill Park in Bellevue, Wash., Baker and Truitt would alternate playing quarterback and receiver, with Jack covering.

"They were cooking me," Jack says. "I was frustrated, like damn near in tears. My eyes are red, and I can't cover them."

Yet he was determined to figure out a way. Jack says he knew there would be a big jump in competition at UCLA and in the Pac-12, and though he could have accepted the idea of redshirting as a freshman, he held fast to the words of Bruins coach Jim Mora, who had told him if he worked hard, he could play right away.

"I said, 'All right, how am I going to get on the field?' " Jack said. "I was thinking, What is separating me from these other guys? I looked at everybody's highlight tape, and I felt like one of the things that could kind of set me apart was if I could cover (the pass). So that's something I really worked on all day long."

Which makes it all the more improbable that the aspect of his sport that has made him one of the most-talked-about players in college football is one in which he invests almost no effort.

***

UCLA's 2013 season had only seen two defensive snaps when Jack first took the field for the Bruins, four days before his 18th birthday. He started at linebacker the next six games, leading the team in passes defended and making a game-ending interception in a 34-27 win at Utah.

Jack says that he and QB Brett Hundley were joking around about him taking a handoff. "And then it got called," he said.

Then on Nov. 4, as the Bruins were beginning preparation for their game at Arizona, offensive coordinator Noel Mazzone mentioned to Jack something about playing running back that week in relief of the injured Jordon James. Jack had been solely a running back until his junior year of high school, when he added linebacker duties. His final high school carry was a 95-yard touchdown run that sealed Bellevue's 2012 Washington 3A title. Still, Jack says of Mazzone's suggestion, "I took it as a joke. But he was serious."

Four days later, Jack was pulled out of a defensive meeting to take air handoffs from quarterback Brett Hundley in a hotel ballroom the night before UCLA's game vs. the Wildcats. "We were kind of joking around," Jack says. "And then it got called."

UCLA had third down and 1 at its own 34 early in the second quarter when it sent Jack in to line up 7 yards behind Hundley. He took a handoff, got the 1 yard the Bruins needed ... and gained 28 more. He finished with five more carries, totaling 120 yards and a touchdown. Meanwhile at linebacker, he made eight solo tackles, one for loss, and recovered an Arizona fumble.

"His running back tape from high school was absolutely ridiculous," says Jeff Ulbrich, UCLA's defensive coordinator. "Whether he was a freshman or not, he's a phenomenally freakish athlete. We had some injuries at the position and thought he could give us something in that short-yardage package. Then he turns what should have been a 2-yard gain into a 40-yard gain."

Jack finished the 2013 season with the second-most tackles of any freshman in UCLA history and a 7.0-yards per carry rushing average. He scored one touchdown on defense and seven on offense. He was a finalist for the Paul Hornung Award recognizing the nation's most versatile player and was named the Pac-12's Offensive Freshman of the Year and Defensive Freshman of the year — and unprecedented honor. He also earned a new nickname, courtesy of classmate Eddie Vanderdoes: The Runningbacker.

Entering this season, oddsmakers have given Jack consideration as the first two-way player since Michigan's Charles Woodson in 1997 to contend for the Heisman trophy.

But one thing he hasn't acquired is a UCLA offensive playbook. "I thought my running back days were long gone," Jack says. "The way we did it last year was so unorthodox. I'm sure it will be like that this year.

"This offseason I haven't worked on any running back drills, I don't know any plays. You'll see me on games I'm asking Brett which direction I'm going. You can literally see it on tape. They just kind of said, 'Get the first down and then do what you do.'

"Offense is fun to me. It's like playing special teams or something. But defense is my real job. Offense is like my hobby."

***

Jack has loved football since his parents found him in a onesie sleeping in a football-colored bean bag clutching a football. But he's always treated it like a job, too.

During his first year of Pop Warner football, a 6-year-old Jack overheard his coaches talking about reviewing game film. Jack said to them, "Can I watch it sometime?"

"That one time turned into the next six years," says Jack's mother, La Sonjia. "Every single team we would play, Myles would have to have a copy."

Jack started 12 games as linebacker on defense and had one start at running back. He had 75 tackles and scored 7 rushing touchdowns, including a 66-yarder against Arizona.

Each Sunday, three DVDs would be left in the family's mailbox — one for each of the team's next two opponents, and one of Jack's own team. He would watch them on a DVD player in his room and on a player slung over the front passenger seat of his mom's Ford Expedition.

When La Sonjia Jack parks her car in her garage today, she sees a giant suitcase where the DVDs remain. Beside it is the other tangible evidence of the investment her son has made in his training: Cones. Orange cones. Perhaps 100 of them.

"Cone drills, I guess you could say that's what made me who I am today," Myles Jack says. "Grass, garage, concrete, I didn't care. Cones are my bread and butter."

Jack and his younger brother Jahlen continue to use them when they are home together, designing elaborate obstacle courses to work on their agility, quickness and footwork.

Ulbrich has seen the same habits from Jack on UCLA's campus. "Even when the practice fields are locked, he'll find a way to get out there," Ulbrich says. "He's just committed to being great. He's willing to do whatever it takes, he really is."

Jack says his inspiration is his mother, a director of business development for MicrosoftStore.com. "She's up all night working. She's always doing something," he said. "I can't take that for granted.

"It's stuck with me, and I feel like I always gotta improve, evolve, try to become the best player I can be, whatever it takes."

As he evolved as a football player, Jack prized more and more the chance to have live reps, and that's what motivated him to organize his sessions with Baker and Truitt a year ago. Jack and Truitt, who was visiting from the Atlanta area, would drive to pick up Baker, arrive at the park, turn on some music, run through the drills for hours on end and then treat themselves to a trip to IHOP. After the struggles of the first week, Jack found himself getting better and better.

"If it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be able to cover," Jack said. "When you get two fast dudes that can run your hamstrings off, that's the best look you can get."

These days, when the Bruins break into one-on-one drills matching up linebackers with running backs and tight ends, Jack looks for every opportunity to get reps against a receiver. "He loves the challenge," Ulbrich says. "We were always apprehensive; Can he do it? Can he cover? When we finally gave him the chance, in Utah, he made the game-saving play. From that point on, we said, 'We can't keep this guy off the field.' "

On defense or offense.

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