Way too early to predict Bo Jackson’s production under Arthur Smith

When Ohio State hired Arthur Smith to replace Brian Hartline as offensive coordinator, a lot of college football writers who I respect lauded the choice. It wasn’t a name that got me excited. However, if a lot of people I respected liked the decision, I reasoned it must be a solid one.

Looking a bit deeper, I’m not concerned about the hire, but I don’t necessarily think it will be the home run some expect, although it’s much too early to tell. Looking back at Smith’s running game as an offensive coordinator and head coach in the NFL, the numbers don’t excite me as much as I’d like.

It’s always dicey to try to project what a former NFL coach will do in college football, so (again) I’m not concerned, but I’m going to temper my expectations for how Bo Jackson will fare in his sophomore season after a standout freshman campaign in 2025.

In thinking through how I could best tell how Smith’s teams ran the football, I looked at multiple factors: how his teams ranked against other NFL clubs in total rushing yards, league ranking in yards per carry, and who was toting the rock for that team.

Because the NFL and college football have a lot of fundamental differences in passing style, defensive studs up front to stop the run, and the way quarterbacks are used, it’s good to take the following numbers with a grain of salt.

Here are the numbers Smith’s offenses produced (it’s worth noting he was offensive coordinator for the two seasons in Tennessee and the two in Pittsburgh, with the three years in between spent as head coach in Atlanta.

The first thing I like to do in these situations is usually to throw out the outliers. The worst Smith rushing team his 2021 Atlanta Falcons. Smith had inherited an Atlanta team that struggled to run the ball the year before, finishing 27th in total rushing yards in 2020, the year before his arrival (1,532 yards), and tying for 30th in yards per carry (3.8).

In other words, there was a slight dip in Atlanta’s run game his first year as head coach (2021) before things turned around in 2022. But as noted in the caption in the above table, Smith did not have an obvious No. 1 running back, splitting carries between Patterson and Davis.

The other outlier is Smith’s first two years as an offensive coordinator in the NFL. His Titans offenses finished third in rushing yards and second in yards per carry in 2019, then finished second in both categories in 2020. Smith had Derrick Henry those years.

Henry had posted his first career 1,000-yard rushing career in 2018, gaining 1,059 yards before Smith was elevated from tight ends coach to offensive coordinator, with Tennessee as a team finishing seventh in rushing yards (2,023), tied for 12th in yards per carry (4.5).

There is no doubt the team improved in the run game under Smith, but there is an undeniable correlation in Henry’s rise to the number of carries he got rising sharply each season from 2016 (110 carries, 490 yards) through 2020 (career highs of 378 carries and 2,027 yards).

Henry is a freak, and while Smith may have helped unlock his maximum potential, Smith’s teams only approached league rankings this high one other time in his career — his 2022 Atlanta team. Meanwhile, Henry has only missed the 1,000-yard mark once since 2018, and that was when he was limited to eight games in 2021, when he still rushed for 937 yards and averaged 4.3 yards per carry.

So, if you toss the Henry-led huge numbers in Smith’s first two years as an offensive coordinator and his terrible rushing team the first year he was head coach in Atlanta, his offense has the following NFL average rankings: 12th in rushing yards (2,200 per season) and 14th in yards per carry (4.35 yards-per-carry average).

So, on average, Smith’s offenses finish of just outside the top third of the NFL. Those aren’t bad numbers, but they don’t excite me. If Henry hadn’t continued to be awesome after Smith left for Atlanta — though to be fair, he has never reached the 2,000-yard mark since — I might be more inclined to put more weight on those two seasons Smith ran the Tennessee offense.

Smith at least recognized that no one could stop Henry, so it was smart of him to simply keep giving the big man the rock.

What does all this mean in terms of Smith’s transition to college football is anyone’s guess at this point. The title of this article already informed you that it’s way too early to tell. The NFL and college football are not analogous in many ways, because they typically have a different average number of possessions per game and there is not as much top-to-bottom parity in college.

Getting back to Jackson, what we know is that Smith likes to feature his starting running back, and history shows that outside of when he had Henry, in most seasons he likes to give the backup enough carries to keep the starter fresh.

That’s good news for Isaiah West. Jackson, for his part, will look to build upon his strong freshman campaign, and will likely put on some added muscle ahead of the 2026 season, helping with durability, stamina, and the ability to break tackles that turn short gains into medium ones and medium gains into explosive plays.

This should increase his output, which was among the all-time great freshman seasons in OSU history. Jackson’s 1,090 yards and six touchdowns on 179 carries are all numbers that are likely to go up if he stays healthy as a sophomore.

For example, he won’t start the season behind C.J. Donaldson and James Peoples in 2026.

I expect the Buckeyes to run the football better in 2026 and also to use play action more effectively under Smith. What we simply won’t know (because, again, it’s too early to tell), is whether Smith’s running game will be among the nation’s best this season, or if it will sit just outside the top third as has often been the case during his NFL years.

But it seems fair to expect Jackson’s output to improve in his sophomore year, even though a more difficult schedule may not make it seem like it at times.