Here's why Carlos Locklyn's Oregon running backs don't fumble

Oregon's running backs coach on Prince, superheroes and the one Duck great who needs to ditch the Android.

Rob Moseley photo/UO

Really, I just wanted to find out why Carlos Locklyn’s running backs don’t fumble. 

Through two seasons as Oregon’s running backs coach, UO’s RBs have dropped the ball twice and lost it once. It’s a trait that’s made Oregon’s rushing attack especially deadly when blended with the effectiveness of runners like Bucky Irving (6.3 yards per carry in 2023), Jordan James (7.1 YPC) and Noah Whittington (7.3 YPC). 

Simply, Locklyn’s group is just about as productive as any in Oregon history, and it’s largely thanks to a room that refuses to concede anything. But after 15 minutes of a 20 minute conversation with the Alabama native earlier this week, I began to realize the answer to my initial question carried a far deeper answer than just hand position and technique.

If I really wanted to show why Oregon doesn’t give up the football, I was going to have to talk about The Brown Hornet. 

Locklyn is known as the “Walk on” coach. 

It’s in his Twitter bio, it’s how he’s often profiled in the media and it’s the story that Dan Lanning has the 46-year-old tell new players and families as they’re first getting acquainted in Eugene. In those talks, Locklyn shares the story of a high school football coach working in law enforcement who jump-started his collegiate career by volunteering in the Memphis weight room as an assistant in 2017. 

The point? 

“There’s nothing unique or fascinating about my story,” Locklyn said. “Everybody has their own journey — my own head coach drove 13 hours to get his opportunity. I walked over to Memphis every day just to get an opportunity. There’s nothing fascinating about that. 

“The fascinating part is this: Are you willing to share your testimony to inspire people?” 

Nobody inspired Locklyn quite like his uncle Ray. 

Reginald Ray Gardner served his country, loved football and fought through his own adversity losing both of his parents within a year of graduating from Alabama State University in 1983. Everybody deals with something, Locklyn likes to say, it’s then what comes next that’s important. 

“Growing up a young kid in Montgomery, Alabama without a father, I was born to a teenage mother at the age of 14, and her brother took me under his wing, and he was just my hero,” Locklyn said. “I wanted to do everything that he did.

“The Brown Hornet — he was my first superhero.”

Ray listened to Prince, so Locklyn listened to Prince. Ray cheered for the Crimson Tide and Cowboys, so Locklyn cheered for the Crimson Tide and Cowboys. Ray liked running backs, so Locklyn became one.

Locklyn rushed for 1,555 yards over three seasons at Chattanooga, signed with the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent and, since his playing career ended due to injury, has devoted his coaching career to being a Running Backs Coach — not just someone who happens to helm the position.

“I’m so focused on changing the narrative of what a running backs coach is in this profession,” Locklyn said. “I’m passionate about this position. They don’t just hire anybody to coach quarterbacks or offensive linemen.

“In college most RB coaches are viewed as recruiters, but everybody on your staff should be an elite recruiter because everybody should be out there focused on building relationships with these families.”

Relationships — it’s what Locklyn came back to repeatedly throughout our conversation. Whether it was the relationship he built with his uncle, or the one he built with Mike Norvell at Memphis or the one he started building with Irving when the soon-to-be NFL running back was in the 10th grade. If someone is running the ball at Oregon, it’s because Locklyn knows everything about them.

“I’m not an elite recruiter,” Locklyn said. “I’m an elite relationship builder.

“I tell my guys I’m going to be in their lives long after you get through playing. When you become a husband and a father, I’m always going to be there. That’s important to me.”

Before Ray died in 2021, Locklyn said his uncle told him that one day he’d have a job like this at a big school with a big influence. In 2024, the coach is entering his third spring with the team, only UCLA rushed for more yards during that time in the Pac-12 and Locklyn is continuing to add to a growing group text of former Oregon running backs.

LaMichael James is in there. Jonathan Stewart is in there.

“We would have Derek Loville in there if he got an iPhone instead of an Android” Locklyn said. “There’s more out there to add, but it’s a who’s who of Oregon running backs, and it’s important to me that the running backs I bring in here understand the history of what Gary Campbell built here.”

Gary Campbell? Now that guy was a Running Backs Coach, Locklyn said, and it’s evident in the reverence his former runners show for him. Campbell was a coach who took time to get to know his players completely on the field and off of it. It created a room where, when Campbell needed something done, he knew exactly who he was asking it from. Relationships like that matter, Locklyn said, and he’s known that ever since the days when The Brown Hornet would show up to sit in the stands and cheer on his youth football games.

When you ask Locklyn why his players don’t fumble, he will tell you a little bit about technique. He’ll talk about looking for a runner who carries the ball pulled tightly into his breastplate — “a lost skillset when you got guys swinging the ball all over the place” — but then he’ll also give a far simpler answer that carries a lot more nuance behind it.

"They don’t fumble because I make it a daily habit to talk to them about how they carry the football,” Locklyn said. “I tell people all the time, players are going to take on the temperature of their coach. If you ever talk to the backs here, they all sound like they’ve been taught one language. That’s something I believe in.

“And the reason they don’t fumble? It’s because they know it’s important to me.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor