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GOLD & BLACK ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 4 36 first time he had ever carried the ball, and it was a 90-yard touchdown kick return." There have been thousands and thousands of yards since. At Colum- bus East, a state power led by Hall of Fame coach Bob Gaddis, Jones was a rare freshman varsity starter, but he did so that first season as a linebacker. He had to wait for lead back Andrew Wilson, now a junior at Indiana, to graduate, paving the way for him to take over. And once he did, he showed imme- diate potential, rushing for more than 1,600 yards and 23 touchdowns, de- spite missing two games with a stress fracture in his leg, in 2012. He added about 2,600 more yards and 20 TDs as a junior, before setting the state's rush- ing record, and scoring 360 points by himself, as a senior. East lost only four games during his career. After, he was named Mr. Football, as well as the Gatorade Player-of-the- Year in Indiana and a first-team Parade All-American. "His strength is that he has a real knack for understanding where to run the football," said Gaddis, who has coached high school football for 36 years. "There's some guys who look like a back, but what he does is have a knack for understanding blocking schemes. He's very physical when he runs the ball. I wouldn't think that many people would think that his strong point is elusiveness, but he really worked on his speed in the offseason and got a lot faster." It was that latter point that Jones has focused on. In the summer after his junior season, Jones joined the Kiel brothers — Gunner, the starting quar- terback at Cincinnati, Dusty and Drew were stars at East — at their family home to work on increasing speed. Jones says he upped his 40-yard dash time from 4.65 to 4.47, although he still knows he could be faster. "If I ran a 4.3 right now and did everything else that I did, I'd be at Al- abama," he said. "That was the ques- tion throughout my high school career, about my speed, because my sopho- more year and junior year, I was too slow. I got caught way too many times from behind. "My senior year, I did not get caught from behind. There's a lot of fast guys in college, obviously, so I'm going to im- prove this spring and summer, and so hopefully I won't get caught in college as often." Jones carries himself with con- fidence, one bred by the seemingly limitless successes he's had over the years: The records, the title and the ac- colades. He admits that he's faced few football-related obstacles, but stresses that it doesn't mean he's had it easy. He's put in hours upon hours of work to get ready for games, ones that have frequently ended with him watching. "There's a lot that goes into it, a lot of hard work that nobody really sees," he said. "I've spent a lot of time on my own, running, lifting, things like that. Because you don't just get big and physical by looking at weights, you have to actually lift them. I haven't had too many challenges to this point in my career, but I plan on things getting a lot more challenging quickly." And they will. Maybe the biggest is adjusting ex- pectations. Gone, most likely, are the days when Jones would rush for 300 yards with multiple touchdowns — he had five scores on only nine carries in a game last season — but less could still equal success at Purdue. A four-yard rush, for instance, is fre- quently a positive in the Big Ten. It wasn't a few months ago. "It's about being more realistic for me," Jones said. "I have to understand — I'm sure Coach Williams and the oth- er guys will help me with this — what reasonable goals are for how many car- ries I'm going to get, how many yards I could get, how many touchdowns I'm going to get. I'll have to come to terms with reality, that it's a lot different out there than it was in high school. I'm ready for that change, and if I under- stand that being productive means four or five yards per run, then I can get that done." j