After a solid college career, Justice Ellison appeared to have a shot to get some consideration for a role at the professional level.
He rushed for 848 yards (5.3 ypc) and 10 scores in his lone season as Hoosier. All together over five seasons, he gained over 3,000 yards from scrimmage and amassed 26 total touchdowns. And with all of that production, an NFL training camp invite didn’t seem out of the question.
But at some point since Indiana’s final game at Notre Dame in mid-December, Ellison decided he’d had enough on the gridiron.
So Ellison picked up the phone and reached out to IU football coach Curt Cignetti.
“I think I got a text from him (Ellison) a month, month and a half or so that he was going to be in town, would like to talk,” Cignetti said on Saturday. “He decided that he was done with football, and he wanted to coach.”
Ellison was regularly a team captain and regarded as a strong voice in the locker room, making him a natural for a coaching role.
With the help of IU AD Scott Dolson, Cignetti found a spot for Ellison to stay in Bloomington and move on to the next phase in his football career.
“He was one of our leaders last year, and Scott created the opportunity within our organization for him to help us coach as a graduate assistant or a quality control coach,” Cignetti said. “So he will help Coach (John) Miller with the running backs, and he’ll do a good job.”
In 2024 Ellison had a streak of seven-straight games with a rushing touchdown (Week 2-6, 8-9), the longest single-season streak at IU since Tevin Coleman in 2013. He rushed for 100 yards in back-to-back games against Nebraska (105) and Washington (123) and was the first IU running back with back-to-back 100-yard rushing games since Stevie Scott III in 2019.
Now Ellison will be providing guidance to some of his former teammates of a year ago to step into that production, including Kaelon Black, Solomon Vanhorse and Khobie Martin. That trio will join several new faces in the running backs room, including Maryland transfer Roman Hemby, and UAB transfer Lee Beebe, Jr.
Although IU lost Ellison and Ty Son Lawton as the two lead backs from 2024, Cignetti likes the potential in the room.
“Hemby has got a body of work as a starting football player in the Big Ten conference and has been a good player, both running the football and catching the football,” Cignetti said. “Kaelon Black obviously is a veteran. Lee Beebe had a nice year last year at UAB. Martin, a freshman, I thought showed promise last year, and Vanhorse is back for his eighth year. He was actually the starting running back games 2 through about 6 or 7 my first year at JMU.
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