K-State running back Joe Ervin once again shining for Wildcats after ‘opt out’ season
Joe Ervin was one of Kansas State’s most promising young football players before the coronavirus pandemic began.
After? Well, he wasn’t technically part of the team.
Ervin was one of a handful of K-State players who chose to “opt out” last season, which is a fancy way of saying that he decided to take a year off from the Wildcats as they navigated an unprecedented COVID-19 landscape filled with testing and social distancing.
That felt like a good decision to him at the time. Now? Not so much.
When asked if he would consider “opting out” again following a recent preseason practice, Ervin replied with one word: “Never.”
It’s safe to say he regrets watching his teammates play from a far last season instead of running out onto the field with them every Saturday.
“It was kind of hard not being around my teammates,” Ervin said. “That was the worst part.”
Nobody seems to be holding that against Ervin now that he has returned to the Wildcats as a sophomore running back.
Aside from some minor teasing on his first day back at winter conditioning, which included his fellow running backs telling him “welcome back from vacation,” K-State has embraced Ervin as if he never left.
There are two main reasons why.
For starters, he stayed in Manhattan and worked out on his own last fall to prove that he was committed to playing for the Wildcats in the future. Unlike the rest of K-State’s “opt out” players from a year ago, who entered the transfer portal, he stayed the course.
He is also a talented runner.
“Joe has been tremendous,” K-State quarterback Skylar Thompson said. “From Day 1 since Joe’s gotten here, I’ve been like, ‘This this kid can run the football.’ And I feel like this fall camp you can really just tell the game is slowing down for him, especially learning the plays and understanding the offense. He’s more reacting instead of thinking, which has made him play faster ... He runs hard.”
All eyes will understandably be on Deuce Vaughn as the alpha running back of K-State’s backfield this season, but he could benefit from having a few playmakers around him.
Ervin, a 5-foot-8 and 178-pounder from Rock Hill, South Carolina, appears to fit the bill. He isn’t as shifty as Vaughn, but he is one of the fastest players on the roster, claiming to max out at 21 mph on the field. While that is almost certainly hyperbole, there’s no doubt he has turned some heads.
“I don’t know if he’s the fastest kid on the team, but he plays the fastest on the team right now,” Klieman said. “It’s fun to watch him because he is an electric kid, and man does he go a million miles an hour. He’s a guy that we can get the ball to, and he can do some good things.”
K-State coaches would love to move Vaughn around this season and occasionally line him up as a receiver, while also having another capable running back in the backfield.
Ervin and fellow sophomore Jacardia Wright give them some options that weren’t available last season.
This story was originally published August 17, 2021 at 12:51 PM with the headline "K-State running back Joe Ervin once again shining for Wildcats after ‘opt out’ season."