Justin Jackson is a running back for the Los Angeles Chargers. He had an incredibly successful high school football career where he won the Gatorade High School Football Player of the Year for the state of Illinois his Junior and Senior seasons. A whopping 3,172 rushing yards record his senior season landed him second all-time in Illinois high school football history. He committed to Northwestern, where his college stats would flourish just like his high school stats, rushing for over 1,000 yards all four seasons with the team, and also becoming the ninth player in NCAA history to do so. He would emerge as the leading rusher in Northwestern football history. Going into the NFL draft, he was able to impress with his 10.88 (96th percentile) agility score, and 126.5 (85th percentile) burst score, but disappointed with his 4.52 40 time.
Justin Jackson was drafted in the seventh round of the 2018 NFL draft, which had some incredible running back talent including: Saquan Barkley, Nick Chubb, Rashaad Penny, and even undrafted running back talents such as Phillip Lindsay and Darrel Williams. While he commanded most snaps in college, his NFL career has not been the same.
Through his first three years, his Next Gen Stats are uninspiring, specifically his yards created metric, ranking above 50th once in his first three years of his career. There have not been many opportunities to start for the Chargers, but when the opportunity has presented itself, he has made the most of it. In his career he has had two games where he had 70% snap share or higher. The first game was against the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2018 season where he had 85 total yards and a touchdown. The other opportunity was against the Houston Texans in the 2021 season where he erupted for 162 total yards, and two total touchdowns, where he earned the title of finishing the week with the No. 1 fantasy ranking among running backs with 34 fantasy points that week.
A small light of hope with Jackson is that Los Angeles allowed him to contribute as a pass catching back. When starting these games, his routes run was in the double digits for his starts, and he had only two drops over the year. His contract with the Chargers has expired, and he will be rolling into free agency looking to compliment an NFL backfield, but it will be highly unlikely we see him take full control of a backfield and command most of the snaps in 2022. His ADP will remain relatively low even if he does change teams.
