Isaiah
Davis.
Isaiah
Davis.
South Dakota St.
"A downhill FCS hammer whose tape is all contact balance and finish — the question was never whether he could run through arm tackles, but whether NFL fronts would let him."Pre-draft read
Davis is a downhill one-cut back who lived in gap and duo concepts at South Dakota State, pressing the line with his pads square and letting a 218-pound frame do the negotiating. His feet are patient behind pullers, the burst is straight-line rather than lateral, and once he picks a crease he runs through the first arm tackle and finishes forward.
The second trait is contact tolerance late in games: he wore FCS fronts down, averaging nearly 128 rushing yards across eight postseason games over his last two seasons. He is a reliable checkdown outlet with soft hands, but he is a build-up athlete rather than a separator, and 4.57 speed caps the explosive-run profile. The signature is the stiff-arm, used as a weapon rather than a reflex.
Gap/duo-based downhill run game with play-action off inside zone
Year 1: 8-12 touch complementary early-down back plus kickoff coverage and returns. Ceiling: 1A in a committee who owns short yardage and closes out games.
A wide-zone offense that asks the back to bang cutbacks off one-step lateral reads, or a spread passing attack that needs him to win option routes out of the backfield.
Best paired with a burner so the offense is not asking Davis for chunk plays outside the tackles.
Isaiah Davis — FCS leading rusher, 2023 season highlights
Full-season cut of the 1,578-yard campaign: gap-scheme presses, contact balance and finish.
Isaiah Davis stiff-arm on an 85-yard touchdown run
The signature rep — stiff-arm as a weapon on the way to a long score.
Isaiah Davis highlights — Welcome to the New York Jets
Draft-day reel assembled by the Jets after the fifth-round selection.
Davis is a big-framed, straight-line power back whose identity was never in question: get him downhill on gap schemes, let him press and finish, and accept that the home-run element is situational. He is not a jitterbug and he does not need to be. Everything he does well happens between the tackles, inside the first five yards, against defenders who have to tackle him twice.
The production was real and it scaled. He rushed for 4,548 yards and 50 touchdowns on 676 carries across 46 games at South Dakota State, closing with 1,451 yards in 2022 and 1,578 in 2023 as the Jackrabbits won back-to-back FCS national titles. He was a first-team FCS All-American and MVFC Co-Offensive Player of the Year in 2023. The flags were the level of competition, a sophomore season shortened by injury, and pass protection reps that were more willing than technically sound.
Boards liked the profile and doubted the ceiling. Most staffs had him as a fourth-to-fifth-round rotational early-down back with special teams value, and the Jets took him at 173 after trading back out of the fourth. For a team that needed a thumper behind Breece Hall, it was a sensible, unglamorous swing.
- 01
Contact balance
Runs through the first arm tackle consistently and rarely goes down on initial hits, converting three-yard looks into six-yard gains against FCS fronts.
- 02
Gap-scheme vision
Presses the line patiently behind pullers, sets up second-level blocks with his pace, and takes the crease that is there instead of bouncing.
- 03
Finishing temperament
Falls forward on nearly every carry and treats the stiff-arm as a real weapon, generating extra yardage after the tackle attempt starts.
- 04
Big-game production
Averaged close to 128 rushing yards per game across eight FCS playoff contests over his final two seasons, with two national titles attached.
- 05
Receiving reliability
Soft hands on checkdowns and flat routes, with 53 career catches, giving him a functional third-down snap rather than a hard substitution tell.
- 01
Long speed
4.57 forty shows up on tape as a back who is caught from behind once he clears the second level, limiting the explosive-run share.
- 02
Lateral agility
Change of direction is a build-up process, so outside zone and wide stretch reps ask him to do things he does not do naturally.
- 03
Pass protection
Willing but inconsistent in technique, with late hand placement and hips that drift on interior blitz pickups against NFL-caliber rushers.
- 04
Level of competition
The bulk of the tape is FCS defenses, and the tackle-breaking margin narrowed noticeably in early NFL exposure against bigger fronts.
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | South Dakota State | 10 | 96 | 818 | 10 | 7 | 107 |
| 2021 | South Dakota State | 7 | 95 | 701 | 7 | 2 | 8 |
| 2022 | South Dakota State | 14 | 249 | 1451 | 15 | 21 | 173 |
| 2023 | South Dakota State | 15 | 236 | 1578 | 18 | 23 | 199 |
| Career | — | 46 | 676 | 4548 | 50 | 53 | 487 |
Verified season-by-season vs South Dakota State/Jets release and Wikipedia; season sums match career totals (46 G, 4,548 rush yds, 50 rush TD).
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Reliable committee back who produces on volume and short yardage without being the offense's engine.
Same big-bodied contact-balance profile that grew into a lead role once the passing-down reps came.
Roster-holding depth back whose value lives on special teams and change-of-pace snaps.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The Jets used Davis exactly as advertised. He played all 17 games as a rookie in 2024 behind Breece Hall and Braelon Allen, carrying 30 times for 174 yards and a touchdown while adding nine catches for 75 yards and a receiving score. Year two brought a bigger role: when Braelon Allen went down, Davis became Hall's primary backup and finished 2025 with 43 carries for 236 yards at 5.5 per attempt and a 50-yard long, plus 21 catches for 186 yards, before a late-season concussion cost him practice time in Week 18. Through two seasons he has 410 rushing yards on 73 carries, two rushing scores, 30 receptions and 261 receiving yards, all of it on kick-coverage snaps and complementary touches rather than a defined workload.
In hindsight the pick has been quietly fine. Davis is not a lead back and the efficiency comes on a small sample against light boxes, but a fifth-round runner who holds a roster spot, plays teams, and averages 5.6 a carry over two years is doing the job a fifth-round runner is supposed to do. The ceiling questions from the evaluation held up — he is a complementary early-down piece rather than a workload-taker — but the floor was underrated. The 2026 camp knee injury that opened the door back up for Allen is the reminder of how thin the margin is at this tier: the depth chart moves the moment you are unavailable.
Data note: Verified season-by-season vs South Dakota State/Jets release and Wikipedia; season sums match career totals (46 G, 4,548 rush yds, 50 rush TD).