Although James would go onto stardom very quickly at Oregon, he wasn’t some widely-regarded five-star recruit that Chip Kelly and the Ducks landed. Instead, he was actually a three-star and rated as the 42nd running back nationally and the 69th best player from Texas alone in the 2008 recruiting cycle according to 247Sports.
However, that didn’t stop James from putting up over 5,000 career rushing yards and 57 total touchdowns with the Ducks from 2009-2011. If you don’t remember watching him in the days that it was still the Pac 10, take a look at a couple minutes of his memorable highlights below.
James twice finished in the top 10 of the Heisman Trophy voting peaking with a third place finish as a sophomore in 2010 before finishing 10th in 2011.
Now it doesn’t hurt that Notre Dame commit Edwards plays for a high school team that has seemingly their own version of Oregon uniforms, but watch the couple of highlights from Friday night and tell me you don’t see reflections of James with the Ducks.
How are you supposed to stop this cut from #NotreDame commit @dylan_edwards02? Putting defenders on skates ⛸
And then he scores on a 4th & 3 to bring @DerbyPanther within 14-13 of Maize. @PeteSampson_ @NDrecruiting01 @TJamesND @EHansenND @PatrickEngel_ pic.twitter.com/0aGAm4d70S
— Taylor Eldridge (@tayloreldridge) October 8, 2022
Derby 41, Maize 28, 7:34, 3Q. Derby answers with a 31 yd pass from Brock Zerger to Dylan Edwards.#KSHSAACovered pic.twitter.com/nm6oDCAF6l
— Scott Paske (@PaskeKSHSAA) October 8, 2022
Plenty of reasons for Notre Dame fans to be excited for the pledge from Edwards and what will come in the future.
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