West Virginia freshman Donaldson impresses in debut

CJ Donaldson’s welcome to the Backyard Brawl moment was strikingly similar to one from the past.

Donaldson, a true freshman converted tight end, took the first carry of his college football career 44-yards to set the Mountaineers up at the Pitt 10-yard line.

It brought back memories of the first carry of Amos Zeroue’s career dashing 69-yards down the sideline for a score against the Panthers.

“I wouldn’t say it was a shock. Coach (Chad) Scott always tells us practice with game like behavior so every day at practice you try to finish to the end zone,” he said.

Obviously at 6-foot-2, 240-pounds, the similarities between the pair end but it’s clear that Donaldson has the potential to be special in his own right. The Miami native carried the ball seven times against the vaunted Panthers defensive front for 125 yards, an average of 17.9 yards per carry.

Out of those totals, 88 of those yards came after contact and Donaldson forced 4 missed tackles along with having 4 different carries over 10+ yards in the contest.

Donaldson described the experience as living in the moment as he made a name for himself in an actual game after all the under the radar buzz throughout fall camp.

“I felt that my performance was very solid,” he said.

At times the Mountaineers had dialed up a pass play, but junior quarterback JT Daniels checked into giving the freshman the football due to his success.

“CJ is pretty special and it doesn’t seem like anybody wants to tackle him and if it doesn’t seem like anybody wants to tackle him then I’m going to give him the ball,” he said.

Donaldson didn’t seem to mind.

“Him just trusting me knowing that when I get the ball I’m going to make a big play with it,” he said.

Donaldson amassed 1,300 yards during his senior season and was recruited to Morgantown to play a combination of wide receiver, tight end and running back. The latter wasn’t something that he expected to occur early into his career but due to depth reasons the coaching staff bumped him over.

It’s something that Donaldson was very open to and turns out it’s not all that different from playing other spots once you get down different techniques behind the line of scrimmage.

“Once you break through that first level, second level it’s just natural I’ve been doing this since high school so making people miss is kind of my thing as you saw,” he said.

He didn’t just make his impact felt on offense either, as Donaldson was responsible for the blocked punt that helped put the Mountaineers ahead 17-10 early in the third quarter. It was something that he had been practicing all week and once he saw the punter holding the ball he took an angle and blocked it.

It was a strong debut for Donaldson, but the hope is that it’s only the beginning. That is certainly the case if the freshman has anything to say about it.

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