Benjamin Powell/The Dominion Post Curtis Jones Jr., left, celebrates a touchdown with teammate Nick Krahe against Colorado on Saturday.

MORGANTOWN — Pass rusher Curtis Jones Jr., subbed in as a running back, powered through traffic to pick up West Virginia’s first touchdown against Colorado. Later, Jones carried the ball again and picked up WVU’s go-ahead touchdown to beat the Buffaloes, picking up its second-straight win of the season.

Jones plays on both sides of the ball. Two-way players are a rarity in college football. Most players hone in on one side because it’s too difficult to keep up with playing a drive on offense and a drive on defense, especially with tempo offenses speeding up the game, eliminating rest.

Last year, Colorado’s Travis Hunter did what most thought was impossible. Hunter played corner and wide receiver at an above-average level for a Power Four program. His feat won him the Heisman Trophy in 2024.

Hunter’s success wasn’t the only place an athlete was playing both ways. In baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is a top-level pitcher, as well as one of the best hitters in the MLB.

The two-way players were a lot more common when sports were created, but they kind of died off as sports became more popular and more specialized. But now, Rich Rodriguez thinks there could be a resurgence with the shrinking of roster sizes, and not being able to add players midseason.

“You’re going to see more and more teams do that,” Rodriguez said. “We are. A guy can be a fullback and defensive end, or a wide out and DB, or something.”

Playing Jones at running back wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment idea. Rodriguez needed to play Jones out of necessity. Defensive coordinator Zac Alley said Rodriguez came to him asking who on defense could help in the run game. Alley said WVU worked out a couple of players.

Rodriguez looked at Jones’ background, as a successful running back in high school, his 6-foot-4, 226-pound frame, and thought maybe he could help out in the short game, especially with the injuries to Jahiem White and bigger back Tye Edwards.

“It’s the whole thing of necessity being the mother of invention,” Rodriguez said. “Kind of one of those kinds of deals. All our running backs are getting hurt. It’s like our quarterbacks are getting hurt. What are we going to do? Who’s played running back before? There wasn’t a whole lot of thought into that.”

After this season, Rodriguez has to assess areas of need through recruiting and through the transfer portal. Something he’ll look for is if a player can play multiple position, so if there is a need at a position and there’s a player who’s not playing too much, he can help out.

Rodriguez isn’t looking for a player who plays every snap on offense and defense, but can help for a few plays on one side, while playing completely on the other.

“We talked about it in recruiting,” Rodriguez said. “A lot of these guys we recruit played both ways in high school, and if they’re good enough to play both ways in high school, and can transition that to do a little of that in college, we’re going to play them both ways.”

Right now, Rodriguez just has one player playing on both sides of the ball, but if there are more injuries, there could be more.

For now, Jones will continue to see reps at running back until more of the room is healthy.

“Curtis, we’re going to have to get him more reps,” Rodriguez said. “Diore [Hubbard] is banged up. He battled through it last weekend. We got two tough games left. We got to continue to get Curtis some more and more reps.”