{"id":17047,"date":"2023-07-05T15:29:26","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T19:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/?p=17047"},"modified":"2023-07-10T16:30:57","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T20:30:57","slug":"happy-as-a-hawk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/happy-as-a-hawk\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy as a Hawk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jaden Shirden knows his history. He can recite the names of the guys who\u2019ve blazed the trail he hopes to follow, college football stars who shined out of the spotlight but still found their way to the NFL. Guys like Brian Westbrook at Villanova, Chase Edmonds at Fordham, and of course, the one FCS-to-NFL story that any Monmouth football fan knows by heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMiles Austin!\u201d Shirden says of the former Hawks standout and 10-year NFL vet. \u201cI\u2019m a Cowboys fan; plus, I\u2019m all about the old school. I love all that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old school is a relative term, of course, but one that seems accurate where Shirden is concerned: Hall of Fame running back Barry Sanders, Shirden\u2019s favorite player and the inspiration for his jersey number, retired a few years before Shirden was born. But for all his appreciation of the past, the Hawks\u2019 consensus All-American running back is very much focused on his immediate future\u2014specifically, his junior season at Monmouth. That he\u2019ll be spending this fall in West Long Branch and not some Big Ten or SEC outpost is quietly one of the more fascinating stories of the sport\u2019s offseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the unwritten rules of college football in 2023, Shirden should be somewhere else by now. That he would enter the transfer portal was widely assumed after an astonishing sophomore season in which he ran for 1,722 yards, the most in the nation across all divisions through the end of the regular season. But Shirden himself insists he was never going anywhere. Simply put: Why should he?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoing into the portal was never something in my heart or something I believed I had to do,\u201d he says. \u201cThose \u2018big-time\u2019 schools had their chances when I was in high school. I don\u2019t forget that. But I\u2019ve seen other people come from this level and get drafted. There\u2019s really no need for me to jump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019d be a big man on any campus, but Shirden is unlikely to be appreciated elsewhere like he is at Monmouth. He landed in New Jersey after a terrific high school career in Connecticut, then ran for 497 yards and three touchdowns as a freshman in 2021. \u201cToward the end of that year,\u201d he says, \u201cI saw a glimpse of what I was going to do.\u201d As a sophomore, he racked up 156.5 rushing yards per game and 13 touchdowns\u2014eight of which went for more than 50 yards apiece. And he did it all without losing perspective; longtime Hawks head coach Kevin Callahan calls him \u201ca great young man, and a great guy to have in your locker room. He\u2019s extremely grounded.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shirden says he\u2019s \u201calways carried myself like that. I just think about where I came from, what God has put in front of me. You just have to keep your head on your shoulders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The son of a coach, Shirden knows that hard work has gotten him this far and will take him however much farther he might yet go. He\u2019s spent much of the offseason in the weight room, intent on becoming a stronger, more physical runner. (At 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds coming off last season, he\u2019s about the same size as Sanders, his football hero.) He\u2019s also working to improve his blocking and pass-catching. \u201cI\u2019m focused on being a complete running back,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NFL will accept nothing less. It\u2019s hard to imagine Shirden playing much better than he did last season, but sooner rather than later, he\u2019ll need to prove his domination of CAA opponents can translate to the pros. It\u2019s something he tries not to dwell on. \u201cI\u2019m just living in the moment,\u201d he says. \u201cShoot, I don\u2019t know what my next meal is going to be.\u201d But Shirden believes he\u2019ll be ready when the time comes. \u201cAll I need is an opportunity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The best running back in the FCS says there\u2019s no place he\u2019d rather be than Monmouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":17049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"image_focus":"{\"x\":58,\"y\":34}","hide_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athletics"],"thumbnail":"\"\"","catString":"Athletics","issue":"Spring\/Summer 2023","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17047"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17746,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17047\/revisions\/17746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.monmouth.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}