Matt Land’s phone wouldn’t stop buzzing.
Land was the coach at Dalton High in northwest Georgia, about 20 miles south of Chattanooga, Tennessee, when the Catamounts lost to Justin Fields’ Harrison High team in 2017 in a nationally televised game on ESPN2.
Georgia coach Kirby Smart helicoptered in for the game to see Fields, then a Georgia recruit who went on to star at Ohio State. But after Fields broke the index finger on his throwing hand in the third quarter, a little-known running back of diminutive stature stole the show.
Jahmyr Gibbs was a 145-pound sophomore then with nary a scholarship offer to his name. He was lightning quick and quiet as crochet, and recruiters everywhere took note of his 202-yard, two-touchdown rushing day.
“The next morning by 10 o’clock I had 45 text messages and emails or phone calls, people saying, ‘Man, who is that kid? And how big is he?’” Land recalled. “I was like, ‘Ah, he’s 165 pounds.’ They’re like, ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah, yeah.’ I called my strength coach the next morning, I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t know what you’re going to do between now and this summer, but you’ve got to put 15 pounds on Jahmyr.’ I said they all think he weighs 162 pounds.”
Gibbs packed on enough weight to attract recruiting interest from across the country, and after three college seasons — two at Georgia Tech and one at Alabama — he joined fellow 2023 first-round pick Bijan Robinson as the first running backs to be drafted inside the top 20 since 2018.
The Detroit Lions took Gibbs 12th overall in the draft April 27, after trading down from No. 6, and are banking on the electric dual-threat to help diversify their backfield, beginning this fall.
Gibbs led Alabama with 926 yards rushing on 151 carries last season and had a team-high 44 receptions for 444 yards. He ran the second fastest 40-yard dash of any running back at the combine (4.36 seconds). He earned all-ACC honors at three different positions — all-purpose back, running back and return specialist — during his time at Georgia Tech.
And his modest upbringing left him with a work ethic and love for football that seem right up Lions coach Dan Campbell’s alley.
“He’s humbled by small beginnings,” former Georgia Tech running backs coach Tashard Choice, now the running backs coach at Texas, said. “If you think about the character, a lot of times these football players got stories behind them. For Gibbs, him bouncing from house to house, the one thing that gave him life, that made him have a purpose was playing outside, playing football, running around. Like I got pictures of him as a little kid, like that’s what he loved to do as a little kid. He had that in him. The Lord had that in him way before.”
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‘I need work’
Gibbs has been reticent to talk publicly about his upbringing, but he was raised by his single grandmother, Angela Willis, who, according to a 2018 profile in the Dalton Daily Citizen, became his legal guardian when he was 13.
Gibbs was joined by his adoptive family, Greg and Dusty Ross and two of their children, at his introductory news conference April 28 in Allen Park. Gibbs first met the Rosses when he and Willis spent time at a local shelter, Family Promise, whose mission is to help homeless and low-income families achieve independence.
Dusty was volunteering at the shelter at the time, and Gibbs passed the days by playing with her son, John, his future teammate at Dalton and Georgia Tech. After a spell living with Dalton quarterback J.P. Tighe and his family, Gibbs moved in with the Rosses, who he calls mom and dad.
Land first learned of Gibbs when his sister-in-law, a teacher at a local elementary school, called to tell him about a sweet, shy, athletically gifted 6-year-old who was in a transient situation and in need of support.
Land gave Gibbs a scholarship to his football camp, made him a ball boy and water boy for his team, and built a bond the two still share today.
“(My sister-in-law) just said he was just a really pleasant kid but that he did have a lot of athletic ability but also that he was just really, really kind of guarded and sweet, but at the same time, just somebody that you just knew that you wanted to kind of be with and help, and was appreciative, but was very quiet,” Land said. “It was more of, instead of telling you thank you, it was more of showing you thank you. He just received that, all the things that we were trying to do. As long as there was a ball, he was connected. I think I could have walked out there with a hockey puck, he wouldn’t have cared. He just wanted to play and compete.”
Gibbs, at his introductory news conference, said he “wouldn’t change anything” about his upbringing. He said an aunt and uncle also gave him guidance early in life, the Rosses did “a great job of keeping me on the right path and not letting me get in trouble,” and football gave him a welcome respite from reality.
“I would say it just lets me to be me,” Gibbs said. “I don’t got to pretend to be anybody. I can just go out there and do myself and do what I do best.”
At Dalton, Gibbs did everything best.
He ran for 2,554 yards and 40 touchdowns and topped 1,000 yards receiving as a senior, when he was named Georgia’s 6A Offensive Player of the Year. Land fed Gibbs constantly on offense, and when he tried to rest Gibbs in practice the next week, he inevitably looked up to find Gibbs with pads on going full-contact as the team’s top cornerback on the defensive side of the field.
“I’m (going), ‘Jahmyr, I’m trying to rest you.’ And he’d be like, ‘Coach, I don’t need rest, I need work,’” Land said. “That kind of became our little tagline, I don’t need rest, I need work. And so when he got into games, I just was like — it’s kind of like that great line in ‘Secretariat’ when the daughter says, ‘Hey, let him run his race.’ It’s that thing. Just let him run. Let him do it, and he’ll do it, man. He’ll go as long as you’ll let him run.”
A four-star recruit who Land called “the best athlete in the state his senior year,” Gibbs begged to cover the other team’s best receiver most weeks, and delivered more memorable plays than Land can count on offense.
In one game against rival Creekview, Gibbs had a Jimmy Chitwood moment after Land drew up an inside zone run that called for him to be a decoy out of a formation Dalton almost always used on sweeps.
“It’s that moment from ‘Hoosiers,’ you know where he’s drawing the play for Jimmy to be decoy, and then all the guys are like … ‘Coach, let Jimmy take the shot, he’s our best player,’” Land said. “He said, ‘Coach, run (the play) Brown.’ And I’m like, ‘No, no, no. They think we’re going to run that, but we’re going to run inside zone.’ He said, ‘Coach, run Brown.’ I said, ‘I know, I know. They’re going to think that, they’re going to overshift, they’re going to stunt and we’re going to gig ‘em on the backside.’
“And he takes his hand and he puts it on my arm, and he says, ‘Coach, run Brown and I’ll score.’ And it was so — it was like this extraterrestrial moment happened, and I can’t say anything but like, ‘Brrooown,’ (real slowly). That’s like all that would come out. Well, what does he do? Goes 67 yards. I don’t even know that we got anybody outside. He runs Brown, goes 67 yards for a touchdown.”
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‘He will be that guy’
Gibbs proved dynamic at Georgia Tech. He returned a kick 75 yards on his first college touch and led the Yellow Jackets in all-purpose yards and touchdowns as a true freshman, despite missing three games with a leg injury.
As a sophomore, he ran for 746 yards on 143 carries, and added another 470 yards receiving. He tired of losing at Georgia Tech, and put his name in the transfer portal after the 2021 season.
“He wanted to win,” Choice, the former NFL running back who also left Tech after the 2021 season, said. “See, Jah was accomplishing so much on the football field, if you go back and look at what he said, he didn’t care about none of that. He just wanted to win.”
Gibbs had his most prolific rushing season at Alabama last year and helped the Tide to an 11-2 record. After a slow start with his new team — Gibbs had single-digit rushing attempts in Alabama’s first four games — he became the Tide’s weapon of choice when the offense needed a big play.
“The Detroit Lions just got the best overall athlete in this draft,” former Alabama linebacker Will Anderson Jr., the No. 3 pick of the draft, told the Free Press at the end of Round 1. “I mean, he can line up at wide receiver, he can line up at running back. He can do it all. He’s so elusive in the backfield, his cuts are amazing, his routes are amazing. Everything he do is amazing. They really just got a really great player that can do everything and be a dynamic threat anywhere on the field for them.”
Yet almost no one — Gibbs included — expected him to go 12th overall in the draft.
Not because he wasn’t talented, because of the position he plays.
Running backs have long had short shelf lives in the NFL, and Gibbs (5 feet 9, 199 pounds) is far from the biggest back. Teams tend to split their backfield workload between two and sometimes three players. Most are wary of giving running backs big second contracts.
Saquon Barkley was the only running back to average more than 50 snaps per game last season, and both he and last year’s NFL leading rusher, Josh Jacobs, are currently slated to play the 2023 season on the franchise tag.
Lions general manager Brad Holmes said Gibbs’ talent defies positional value, and his role on offense won’t be that of a traditional back in Detroit. The Lions signed David Montgomery to a three-year contract in free agency, and he and Gibbs are expected to share backfield reps in 2023, with the ability to play side by side.
“They’re football players and if you believe that they can have an impact for you on the football field then you just go ahead and take them,” Holmes said. “Obviously, we had thoughts of maybe (he would be there with our second first-round pick) at 18, but we didn’t feel great about it and so when we were able to select him at 12, that’s when all the texts started coming in of, ‘He would have been gone by 15.’ Just a lot of picks, a lot of people saying they wanted to trade up. They wanted to get in. So I wouldn’t have even felt good of (getting) him staying at 18. But again, it’s not about just don’t pick a running back because that’s not how we really view him.”
Choice, who coached both Robinson and Gibbs, said he knows of six NFL running backs coaches who were ticked the Lions took Gibbs at 12 because they thought their teams had a chance to land him later in Round 1.
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Like Robinson, the eighth pick of the draft, Choice said Gibbs’ unique skill set is worthy of a first-round pick, especially in today’s NFL.
“Because they’re going to block, and they got to run the football, and you can put them out there, have mismatches against linebackers cause they’ll beat them one-on-one in their sleep,” Choice said. “So they cause trouble for a defense because you got to account for them all three downs. And when you can do that like (Christian) McCaffrey, when you can do that like (Alvin) Kamara, when you can do that, it adds a different dynamic instead of just being a first- and second-down back and coming off the field on third down. Them dudes going to stay on the field on third down, and you better make sure you cover them because they’ll break your heart.”
When NFL teams asked Choice who was better, Robinson or Gibbs, he told them it depended on what they were looking for. Robinson is bigger, has more initial quickness and breaks more tackles; Gibbs has more game-breaking speed and big-play ability.
“Do you need one to do everything, be your bell cow to run it 20, 25 times? That’s Bijan,” Choice said. “If you need one to run it 10 or 15 times but catch it five, 10, that’s probably Gibbs if you’ve got a bigger back. It’s just whatever you deem is important for your team you can pick either or.”
Choice said one of his favorite plays from Gibbs was a block he made on a quarterback draw, when he picked up a blitzing linebacker to spring a 30-or-so-yard gain. At Georgia Tech, Choice said Gibbs turned everything into a competition, even running gassers, when he would sometimes hold back on his start to try to catch teammates from behind.
That jives with what Land experienced at Dalton, where he said Gibbs was so competitive “he’d race you to the hot dog line” and a player he never worried about doing the wrong thing off the field. In recent years, he’d often find his now eighth-grade son up late on the night before games, playing video games with Gibbs.
“If there’s ever been anybody come through the National Football League draft that deserved a moment, that kid deserved that moment from what life has dealt him, and the hard work that he’s put in, and the lemonade that he’s made from lemons,” Land said. “That kid deserved every moment that happened, so I’m just excited that he’s got it, and I’m telling you it’s going to be fun to see what he does with it.
“I can promise you this, in two years, there’s no one in the Detroit organization that’s going to say to themselves, sitting in the locker room or sitting in the suites or wherever and say, ‘We took him too early.’ I promise you that. There won’t be one person that won’t say, ‘I’m glad we put that kid on the team.’ Whether we got him at 12, 20, eight, it don’t matter. That kid is worth everything we’re paying him and he will be that guy. He will be that guy.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.