Why Iowa’s Omar Young values having ‘clear and defined roles’ for his running backs

IOWA CITY — Omar Young has a lot to like in his position room.

Kamari Moulton is “buying in, and he’s doing everything that I’m asking him to do,” Iowa’s first-year running backs coach said.

“Once we can slow the game down from a mental standpoint, the physical tools and gifts are already there,” Young said.

Terrell Washington is a “dude that has a lot of tools and lot of gifts.” True freshman Nathan McNeil had a humbling point in spring practices, but “he bounced back really fast.”

The list goes on.

That theoretically offers plenty of options for Young and the rest of Iowa’s staff when the 2025 season begins in nine weeks, whether it be the aforementioned examples or others with experience such as Jaziun Patterson.

But in an “ideal world,” Young’s preference is to have clearly defined roles for each of his running backs in games — roles that still offer flexibility while reducing some uncertainty for players.

“You would like ideally to have one guy, two guys, at the most three, where you’re kind of supplementing each one of them,” Young said on The Gazette’s Hawk Off the Press podcast. “And they each got to have a role and a very specific of have a specific role. So they know when they get in there exactly what to expect.”

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If the running backs have defined roles, Young believes it “allows them to settle down.”

“It makes it really easier to know and accept what it is that you’re being asked to do,” Young said. “You don’t have to be like, ‘Well, is Coach going to put me in right now?’ Or, ‘When am I getting in?’ You know specifically, ‘Oh shoot, I’m the third-down guy. All right, third down, boom, I’m running in there.’”

There was no ambiguity in 2024 about who the Hawkeyes’ top running back was, as Kaleb Johnson took more rushing attempts than Moulton, Patterson, Washington and Leshon Williams combined.

(It worked, too, as Johnson earned consensus All-America honors and rushed for the most yardage as a Hawkeye since Shonn Greene in 2008.)

In the 2023 season, four different Hawkeyes were the team’s leading rusher in the first four games. But by the end of the season, Leshon Williams clearly occupied the top spot in the pecking order.

Young — with coaching experience in the NFL, other FBS power-conference programs, FCS and Division II — has been in situations where “we’ve had to rotate three” running backs.

“And that’s been tough to kind of juggle,” Young said. “And there’s been situations where we’ve had three, but their roles were very defined.”

Roles carry flexibility, too.

“There might be certain situations where we change that up or whatever, but I think when you can have clear and defined roles, those guys can accept those roles, go be the best that they can be in those roles,” Young said.

Ideally, that keeps Young’s players from “wondering, hoping and guessing where you stand in the pecking order.”

“If you don’t, then it becomes a deal by feel, by series, by whatever the case may be,” Young said. “And then you just hope that at some point one of those guys takes it over.”

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Now with Johnson in the NFL, Moulton was Iowa’s first-team running back on Iowa’s depth chart released at the beginning of spring practices, followed by Patterson. But the 15 spring practices, summer conditioning and fall camp offer plenty of time for running backs to earn a bigger role — or relegated to a smaller role.

“We’ll make it work however we need to make it work,” Young said. “There’s some flexibility there, and we’ll see exactly … coming out of this thing where we’re at and what we need who’s better at doing what.”

Comments: john.steppe@thegazette.com

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