BREAKING: NC State’s Jordan Houston to redshirt, graduate this fall
NC State senior running back Jordan Houston will redshirt the rest of the season and graduate at the end of the semester, the program announced in a post on X (formerly Twitter) Thursday morning.
“RB Jordan Houston will redshirt the season,” the program wrote. “He will finish academically this fall and graduate. We wish him all the best.”
Shortly after the announcement, Houston did not appear on NC State’s online roster.
The news comes just over 24 hours before NC State’s ACC opener at Virginia on Friday night. Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren talked about Houston’s pass protection skills on his radio show Wednesday evening, which he said goes unnoticed by fans, and didn’t mention the impending news that followed on Thursday.
Houston was in his fifth season with the Wolfpack, and he posted his best season on the ground last fall with 544 yards on 136 attempts, an average of 4.0 yards per carry. That put him 10th in the ACC in rushing yards per game en route to earning the team’s Ted Brown Award for Offensive Back of the Year.
But this fall, Houston hasn’t found the same success on the ground. He was averaging 3.8 yards per carry en route to just 32 yards per game. On the season, Houston totaled 96 rushing yards on 25 carries, which is currently the second-most on the team. Quarterback Brennan Armstrong leads the team in rushing with 161 yards and 3 touchdowns on a team-high 37 carries.
Houston, a Waldorf, Md., native, was NC State’s third-leading rusher in 2020 with 143 yards and 3 touchdowns, and the team’s second-leading ball carrier during his freshman season in 2019 with 526 yards and 2 touchdowns. In his rookie season, Houston averaged 5.2 yards per carry, which was the 20th-best mark in program history.
The running back was a highly recruited player out of Flint Hill School in Virginia, where he rushed for 5,405 yards on 532 carries, good for 168.9 yards per game. He also recorded 61 touchdowns over his high school career and helped guide his team to back-to-back private school state titles as a junior and senior.
With Houston’s departure from the playing field, running back duties are expected to be handled by sophomore Michael Allen and freshman Kendrick Raphael.
Raphael is currently third on the team with 92 yards on just 19 carries, while Allen has 81 yards on 11 carries for a team-best 7.4 yards per attempt on the ground.
The freshman impressed many with his 16 carries for 85 yards against VMI this past weekend, and will likely not redshirt in order to help boost the Wolfpack’s depth at running back.
