DJ Giddens won't run and hide

This year's RB draft class is rich. Amid the NIL madness, Kansas State's workhorse is a breath of fresh air... and a throwback to one Hall of Famer. One thing's for certain: Giddens will work.

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He started playing football in fourth grade. He immediately gravitated toward the glory position, too: Running Back. But the memories DJ Giddens treasures most growing up in Junction City, Kan., did not feature a pigskin in his hands.

Rather, a fishing pole.

Catfish, trout, crappie, bass. All of his free time is spent fishing. Video games never appealed to him much — Giddens needed to be in nature. If he wasn’t in Kansas, chances are, Giddens was likely casting a line with his father in Texas. It’s hard to pick just one fishing story, but he points to one night camping at Milford Lake in Junction City. It was around 3 a.m. Giddens set up his pole, walked away and it nearly tipped into the water. When he raced back to grab it, the fish was gone. Once, twice, three times, the charade played out.

On the fourth time? He finally set the hook and reeled in a 30-pound catfish.

Others lived for the hustle and bustle of a Friday or Saturday night. Not Giddens. Everyone knew where to find him — on the lake.

Everything slows down when he’s fishing.

“It’s peaceful,” he says. “You go out there with your friend or somebody in your family and you’re spending time with each other, too.”

An entire generation of football fans has been educated in textbooks that an asteroid killed off The Workhorse Running Back ages ago. Committees became the rage. The short passing game rewired the brain chemistry of coaches. Suggesting that it’s cool to batter a defense with a throwback RB1 is akin to showing off your CD collection while rocking a fresh pair of cargo pants. Until last season, that is. For the first time in 15 years, at least six running backs carried the ball 300 times. Twenty-three backs eclipsed 200 carries. Saquon Barkley won a ring. Derrick Henry resembled a miracle of science.

New life was breathed into the running back position.

Conveniently enough, this 2025 draft class is one of the best in years.

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Boise State’s Ashton Jeanty is the 1,000-pound marlin of the group and has a legit chance to go down as the best player drafted, period. But teams should be able to find starters throughout the first four rounds.

Say hello to the 6-foot, 212-pound Giddens — the ultimate throwback.

He’s a graceful glider who’s still fully capable of manufacturing tough yards. The instincts. The sixth sense. Kansas State’s running backs coach couldn’t help but think of Marcus Allen when the ball was in his hands because it’s exceptionally hard for any defender to squarely hit him. Giddens rushed for 2,569 yards on 428 carries (6.0 avg.) with 17 touchdowns through the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Mostly? He’s a welcomed gust of fresh air in today’s college football landscape. The kid who’d rather go fishing in the sticks than party downtown craves hard coaching.

“My mindset. I’m detail-oriented,” Giddens says. “I might mess up on something but I’m coachable. You tell me that I messed up on something, I’m not hard-headed. I’m not going to fight against the grain. I’ve got a next-play mindset. I don’t focus on the past whether it was a good or bad play.

“I’m going to keep working, stay humble, keep working for real.”

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There was no all-out war for Giddens’ services out of high school, no waiting entourage of fawning enablers.

Forget three stars… or two stars… or one star. Giddens was a zero-star recruit. He didn’t even start on his Junction City varsity team until the end of his junior year, and it was because the No. 1 back suffered an injury. He never stressed about the lack of touches, simply waiting for his turn in the backfield. Seven on seven camps were never appealing, either. Head coach Randall Zimmerman told Giddens that it’s all about what you put on film, and he loved the simplicity of that message. Zimmerman went viral in 2023 for saying that only 7.6 percent of high school athletes play in college, while “God willing, 100 percent of them will be adults.”

He wasn’t upset about his lack of options. Giddens planned to prove himself at Butler Community College.

But that’s when the Division I school 20 miles north reached out. Kansas State told Giddens that if he took a handful of core classes, he was in. AP Physics was difficult. “Newton’s Laws,” Giddens recalls. “The different laws of physics. You’re going over gravity. Meters per second. It is a lot. I ain't going to lie.” Still, he managed to score A’s and B’s across all classes to gain entrance. Once he realized playing college football was possible, classroom motivation reached a new level. And thankfully, Junction City still had a high school football season through the Covid madness of 2020 — his senior year. If those games were cancelled, he’s not sitting here.

It also took the belief of one person. K-State running backs coach Brian Anderson had no clue how a kid “that big, that athletic and that tough” wasn’t being recruited by anybody. But he sure was thrilled about it.

Giddens redshirted in 2021. Anderson recalls him being “a little nerved up” with the playbook. He didn’t know how to take notes or how to watch film and his performance in spring ball ahead of the 2022 season was so choppy that Kansas State brought in a JUCO running back to essentially replace him.

The new company lit a fire inside him.

“Fall camp rolled around,” Anderson says, “and he was a different dude. … The way he handles things, he’s a quiet competitor. He’s watching how guys do things. He’s watching what they do good, what they do bad.”

After backing up future pro Deuce Vaughn that 2022 season, he blew up the Big 12 in ’23 and ’24.

Giddens is living proof that it pays to stay at one school for four years.

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What the portal’ing college player misses transfer… to transfer… to transfer — obsessed with greener pastures — is a genuine relationship with his coach. Anderson made Giddens and all K-State backs rip through the same five drills during the individual portion of practice. Nobody was allowed to go through the motions. Giddens remembers Anderson instructing all to “attack” those drills, to be “intentional” with all footwork. Giddens might’ve been 48 to 72 hours removed from the game of his football life. It never mattered how many yards he rushed for the previous Saturday.

He tried to attack practice “like I haven’t done anything yet.”

Anderson has coached college ball nearly 30 years. He never told Giddens what the kid wanted to hear.

“Ain’t no need to sugarcoat it,” Giddens says. “He’ll tell me what I need to work on. He was hard on me. You think you had a good play, you come up to him and he sees something that you weren’t even paying attention to: ‘This one step made you go inside when you could have squared up.’ He really paid attention to the details.”

Giddens never considered bailing when that ‘22 competition was brought in.

Nor did he put his talents up for the highest bidder after busting onto the scene in ‘23.

“In my head I’m thinking, ‘Why leave?’ I had no reason to leave at all,” Giddens says. “There wasn’t any point in me going somewhere else. I can do everything at K State, I could do anywhere else. And it’s a good program. I mess around, leave to somewhere else and I don’t know what I’m getting into. I’ve been there two, three years already. Already built relationships, people I trust. I don’t really do too much talking. So I’m not going to bounce around college meeting all types of new people unless I build trust with you.”

Of course, intense 1-on-1 coaching is rapidly becoming antiquated on college campuses.

On one hand, it’s hard to blame any college coach who’s more Stuart Smalley than Nick Saban. The fear of losing a five-star talent to a rival is real — you’re ultimately judged by wins and losses. Even David Yost, New Mexico’s offensive coordinator, put it best on Tennessee head coach Josh Heupel bidding farewell to quarterback Nico Iamaleava. Yeah, Vol Nation is praising Heupel right now. “They better win games,” Yost said. “That’s what it all comes down to.”

What all 18-, 19-year-olds quick to run away from home with a knapsack over their shoulder must remember is that it pays to work through hard times. A virtue is acquired for life.

Kansas State’s Anderson is frank on this subject. He sees a wave of “me” players overtaking the sport.

“And the way he has attacked his opportunities?” Anderson continues. “We were bringing people in to compete against him and he never blinked an eye. He never said, ‘Hey, why are you guys bringing people in?’ He never questioned anything. He just went to work.”

Anderson is a straight shooter. He’ll tell players that an NFL team is bound to draft a player at their position. And what are you going to do? You’re under contract. There’s no need for your employer to acquiesce a trade request. You’ll have no choice but to compete, to prove yourself.

And that’s the case in any profession.

“You’ve got to learn how to compete and be a competitive person,” Anderson says. “To run and hide? You’re not going to run and hide from your own issues. I’m a big believer in always being honest with guys and telling ‘em, ‘Hey, this is the real world. This is how it’s going to be the rest of your life. Until you become the CEO of your own company and you tell people what to do? You’re always going to be working to compete against whoever.’”

Giddens, he knows, is calloused for the cutthroat nature of pro football.

Giddens never took anything personal.

Both worked toward the same end goal — to see No. 31 in purple slash through defenses. Giddens knew he had a coach treating him like a true pro day-in, day-out and craved more discipline. It also helped that Deuce Vaughn, a future Dallas Cowboys sixth-round draft pick, was in the same room those first two years. Nobody in the conference carried the ball more in 2022. Giddens studied how Vaughn took care of his body, prepared for games, studied film and then took it all to a completely new level.

Vaughn started the tradition of sitting down with Anderson to review the nuances of that week’s pass protection plan. But it was Giddens who sat down with the coach for 30 to 40 minutes at a time. That’s what the greats do, Anderson adds.

“They don’t get caught into, ‘I’m not him,’” he says. “No, you’re not him, but you could be better than him by doing these things. He’s better than Deuce at doing these things now because he watched how he did it.”

The older he got, the more Giddens started watching highlights of NFL backs. In addition to the stars like Derrick Henry and Christian McCaffrey, he found himself getting into Tony Pollard’s film. But it’s not a modern running back he compares to best.

Ahead of this year’s draft, one NFL running backs coach told Anderson that Giddens’ smooth running style reminded him of the all-time great Marcus Allen… which made him spontaneously bust out laughing. That is exactly the player who’s been on his mind all along. Allen slithered out of trouble in tight quarters throughout his 16-year career. He never required much of a crease. One sliver of daylight was enough.

That’s all Giddens needed for his 4.47 speed to take over.

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Many times, Anderson will watch Wildcat film and say aloud: “Holy shit, he just did that?”

In a 28-19 bowl win over N.C. State to cap the 2023 season, Giddens rushed for 151 yards on 28 carries with one touchdown, while also catching another 37-yard score. But one run specifically blew the coach’s mind. Giddens begins by running the ball to the left, Anderson explains, “and basically goes sideways to get vertical.” A couple weeks ago, he made a point to replay that clip for Giddens to ask what was going through his mind. He had no clue. It was all natural.

Anderson sees Allen’s same feet, hips, vision.

“He’s a unique back,” the coach says. “His ability to make people miss on the second and third level. His contact balance is up there with some of the best backs in the country.”

All of those hours Anderson and Giddens spent together are now paying off. NFL coaches keep telling the K-State assistant they’re impressed by his football IQ.

He didn’t waste their time with idle conversation. He’ll talk about fishing, about anything that you ask him. But he’s an extremely quiet person.

Says Anderson: “He’s not going to just bore you with information that doesn’t mean much.”

That much is certainly true in our conversation. Ask about his 182-yard day vs. Colorado, however, and Giddens notes that those Colorado Buffaloes did a lot of talking through the week about how they’d stop him. “That's Colorado,” he says. “You play Colorado, everybody’s talking to you.” Thus, there’s a snarling side to Giddens. Anderson saw it again when a bunch of alumni were back at the facility to train. Giddens made a point to smoke Vaughn, Josh Hayes and Philip Brooks in workouts—quietly. (“You know how some guys said, ‘I’m whooping your ass, I'm going to keep whooping!’ He didn’t say anything, man.”)

So, which running back do you choose? Beyond Jeanty, there’s North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton, Ohio State’s Treveyon Henderson, Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson and Georgia’s Trevor Etienne. At some point Friday and/or Saturday, we’ll see a slew of running backs fly off the board. Giddens has nothing to say about anyone else but makes it clear he’s nowhere near his personal ceiling.

Mainly because he knows how much work he’s about to pour into this job.

“I might be right here when you get me,” says Giddens, via Zoom, holding his hand low in the air, “but it ain’t nothing to keep on progressing. Immediate production. Put me in there, I’m going to do what I got to do.”

No, he’s not concerned one bit about fitting in schematically with any of the 32 NFL teams. Giddens is confident he’ll shine in any role.

The great unknown is geography. As in, where will he go fishing now?

Anderson assured the 21-year-old that he’ll be able find a stream, a lake, an ocean. Wherever he lands, there will be water somewhere. “Some guys go play golf,” Anderson says. “Some guys go to South Beach. He’s going to go fishing.” He laughs. He gets choked up. At Kansas State’s recent senior banquet, Anderson couldn’t help but cry thinking back to the kid from Junction City he inherited — Giddens has come so far. The 5-foot-5 Vaughn brought a compelling story to the pros. His father, a scout for the Cowboys, famously called him on draft day to say he’s been drafted. It’s hard not to tear up watching this.

And yet, Vaughn was around football his entire life. Dad played collegiately.

Not the case with Giddens. He started one season of high school ball, generated zero D-I buzz and had a very long ways to go in Manhattan, Kan. His one advantage? He craved the blood, sweat and tears that frighten many of his peers today.

It wouldn’t surprise Anderson if Giddens lasted a dozen seasons as a starter.

But it also wouldn’t surprise him if he played four or five seasons and walked away.

Either way? He’ll be different.

“He is not going to copy someone else’s blueprint,” Anderson says. “That’s not who he is.”

ICYMI:

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