The Sun Devils are in the College Football Playoff because of Cam Skattebo. But how he got to Tempe in the first place is a remarkable story.
With six former Texas Longhorns on the roster of the Arizona State Sun Devils, does Kenny Dillingham owe Steve Sarkisian a player like star running back Cam Skattebo for all those loaners?
“In all reality, I wish I would have discovered Cam when he was transferring the first time around. I was unaware, so kudos to them — they found him, and he’s a heck of a player,” Sarkisian said on Monday.
Sarkisian was far from the only coach to miss on Skattebo.
The rise of the 5’10, 215-pounder from Sacramento-area high school star to FCS standout at Sacramento State to one of the nation’s best running backs at Arizona State has captivated the attention of college football fans across the country and raised questions about how someone with such a unique skill set went overlooked for so long.
A coordinated and competitive athlete from a young age, Skattebo broke through on varsity at Rio Linda High School as a sophomore when he rushed for nearly 1,000 yards and nine touchdowns, setting the stage for a huge junior season that saw the Knights record their best season in 14 years, gaining 3,550 yards and scoring 42 touchdowns on the ground on the way to a state title.
In that championship matchup against San Gorgonio, Skattebo posted one of his three 300-yard performances by rushing for 393 rushing yards and three touchdowns on 29 carries, including a truly iconic play — a 67-yard touchdown run that featured 11 broken tackles.
It’s the type of play to cap a massively productive season that ought to catch the attention of college coaches recruiting one of the most talent-rich states in the country.
And, indeed, Skattebo’s high school coach told the Athletic that top programs did come through Rio Linda, but opted to pass on the physical back.
“We would hear everything from he’s too small, he’s too short, he’s not fast enough,” Rio Linda head coach Jack Garceau said. “There was the stigma of the white running back, the fact that we weren’t a giant school. There was just always that one little thing.”
Former Texas wide receivers coach Brennan Marion, now the head coach at Sacramento State, gave Skattebo his first Division I offer at William & Mary. Skattebo also visited Cal Poly before committing to Sacramento State in October 2019. The then-Hornets head coach, Troy Taylor, now the head coach at Stanford, saw that run against San Gorgonio and offered Skattebo even though almost no one else would.
“I just couldn’t believe that no one else would go on the kid. I’m not always right but I decided on the spot. We were his only offer. Everybody missed on that one,” Taylor told the Athletic.
Skattebo set out to prove the doubters wrong, averaging 9.1 yards per carry as a freshman before earning Big Sky Offensive Player of the Year in 2022 after rushing for 1,382 yards and seven touchdowns while adding 31 catches for 371 yards and three touchdowns, helping the Hornets go 11-0 in the regular season and become the No. 2-ranked FCS team in the nation. In a quarterfinal loss to Incarnate Word, Skattebo was at his best, recording nearly 200 yards from scrimmage and two touchdowns in the 66-63 shootout loss.
When Taylor left for the Bay Area, Skattebo entered the portal, where he was once again an undervalued commodity, earning offers from San Jose State and Texas State. Skattebo’s biggest break came when Arizona State offensive coordinator Beau Baldwin called Taylor, which whom he had worked at Eastern Washington in 2016, asking about Skattebo.
Taylor told him to take the chance and Skattebo headed to Tempe.
As a junior with the Sun Devils, Skattebo was a finalist for the Paul Hornung Award given to the nation’s most versatile player, spending time at running back, quarterback, tight end, wide receiver, and special teams, including eight punts, three of which traveled over 50 yards.
In Skattebo’s primary role at running back, he ran for 783 yards and nine touchdowns, along with 286 receiving yards and a touchdown. He forced 55 missed tackles on his 164 carries with 494 rushing yards coming after contact (63.1 percent).
Repeating the trend from Sacramento State, Skattebo blossomed into a star in his second season at Arizona State — he trimmed down about 10 pounds to improve his max speed to over 20 miles per hour on the field and currently ranks second nationally in yards from scrimmage at 2,074, behind Heisman Trophy finalist Ashton Jeanty, Boise State’s superstar.
Skattebo has rushed for 1,568 yards and 19 touchdowns and is the team’s second-leading receiver with 37 catches for 506 yards and three touchdowns, second in the country among FBS running backs. Bringing Skattebo down has continued to be a massive problem for opposing defenses as the Arizona State star has forced 92 missed tackles, good for 4.1 yards after contact per attempt and 1,085 yards coming after contact (69.1 percent).
And while Skattebo believes he’s the best back in the country, he wasn’t invited to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist and he’s still trying to use every possible slight as motivation.
“I look at it like, if people still think they can stop me, then they’re disrespecting me, and I’m going to continue to think that way because that’s what drives me as a player. It’s nothing on them. It’s just the way life is,” Skattebo said on Saturday.
“I continue to fight through those motivational doubts, and like I said earlier, if you don’t have any doubts in your life, it’s going to be very hard to be successful because doubts bring you adversity and adversity makes you successful.”
As 12.5-point underdogs, Arizona State is also without its leading receiver, Jordyn Tyson, who suffered a season-ending injury late last month. Since Skattebo accounts for nearly 38 percent of the team’s total offense, there’s no secret to what the game plan will look like for the Sun Devils on New Year’s Day in Atlanta.
“Obviously, we’ve got to get Cam going in some way shape or form. Everybody knows that — you’ve got to get your best players the ball. They know that. It’s not a secret,” Arizona State head coach Kenny Dillingham said on Monday.
Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian and the team’s defensive staff have already gotten a head start on scouting Skattebo, tracking him in their limited free time as fans of college football because he’s so much fun to watch.
“Skattebo is a heck of a player. He’s got a ton of fans in our building, I can tell you that. We didn’t know we were getting ready to play Arizona State and we’ve been watching them here for about the last year and a half. This guy is a monster and now we’ve got to try to figure out a way to stop him,” Sarkisian said on Monday.
As the defensive players for Texas met with the media on Saturday, they expressed a healthy level of respect for Skattebo.
“All-around back. I think some people lose sight that he’s just a hard-nosed, try-to-run-you-over type of back. And yes, he’s very capable of doing that, but he’s also got great patience, great contact balance, great contact courage to where he’s learned his shoulder and maybe somebody is trying to go for his legs, and he stumbles up and stays on his feet and go runs for 40 more yards,” Texas redshirt junior safety Michael Taaffe said.
“So the way that he can be so versatile as a running back, jump cutting, running people over, spin move, he’s got the whole package. And then he leads the team in receptions as a passing threat, too, No. 0 being injured the last couple of games. He’s just a guy that can do it all, and clearly they call his name and he’s ready to play every single Saturday.”
Texas defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowsk didn’t have trouble securing that level of respect from his players — after all, the tape doesn’t lie, even evaluators can overthink what it’s telling them, as they did with Skattebo.
“It’s easy to grab our guys’ attention when you just put the tape on and watch him run, break tackles, keep his feet, make guys miss, catch the ball in the backfield,” Kwiatkowski said on Friday.
One of the difficulties of preparing for Skattebo at this point in the season is the practical limit on the amount of live tackling the Horns can do in practice because of the wear and tear on players’ bodies after 14 games.
As game day approaches, Kwiatkowski is aware that playing sound team defense will be paramount against Skattebo.
“Techniques, fundamentals, leveraging the ball, leveraging the blocks, all that stuff has gotta tie in together,” Kwiatkowski said.
Dillingham wants to get Skattebo to the second and third levels of the Texas defense to create favorable matchups against smaller defensive backs, the type of one-on-one situations that the Arizona State star regularly turns into big plays.
“This guy, right when you think he’s getting to run somebody over, he makes them miss. He uses his stiff arm. He’s really good in the open field. He can run away from you. Then all of a sudden, you’re like, but wait a minute, this guy catches the ball really well out of the backfield. He’s got really good initial quickness after the catch to get vertical. So he’s a really versatile player,” Sarkisian said.
As leaders of arguably the nation’s best defense, Taaffe and sophomore linebacker Anthony Hill Jr. are excited for the opportunity to face one of the nation’s top running backs.
“At the end of the day, we have a challenge and we’re an elite defense, so I can’t wait to play against him and see who’s really the best,” Hill said.