Ian Jernagin Ran for 91 Yards in a 52-Point Loss. Bakersfield Should Be Paying Attention.

Talia Ramos | RepMax Media Published August 31, 2026

Texas Wesleyan opened its season on August 27 and got run off its own field, 59-7 against Central Oklahoma. Week 0, first meeting between the programs, and the Rams never got out of the parking lot.

Ian Jernagin carried it 16 times for 91 yards and scored a touchdown.

Look at the scoreboard again. Seven points. One touchdown, one extra point. The Bakersfield kid was the entire offense.

That is 5.7 yards a carry against a defense that spent the rest of the night in the Texas Wesleyan backfield — and Central Oklahoma is not an NAIA opponent. The Bronchos are NCAA Division II, MIAA, and they came to Fort Worth to open a home-and-home. Jernagin averaged nearly six a pop on them while nothing else worked.

The Garces record nobody in Kern County forgot

Go back to April 2021. Jernagin, a junior at Garces Memorial, rushed for a school-record 381 yards on 26 carries with four touchdowns in a 58-12 win over Bakersfield Christian. One of the four went 65 yards. Cal-Hi Sports handed him Offensive Player of the Week for it.

Here is the part that gets skipped. That was a COVID-shortened spring season, and he finished the whole thing with 685 yards. Fifty-six percent of his season came in one night.

Then he did it again the normal way. As a senior he put up 737 yards on 85 carries — 8.7 per touch — including 102 yards on four carries against Stockdale and 169 against San Joaquin Memorial. Eighty-five carries is not a workhorse number. That is a guy his own coaches were rationing.

San José State signed him out of that. He arrived in 2022 listed at 5-10, 195, wearing 36, his brother Isaac on the same roster. Per his Spartans bio, his father Dejon played professional basketball with the Phoenix Suns and the Harlem Globetrotters, and Ian made honor roll at Garces.

The part the scouting services get wrong

Most profiles jump straight from San José State to Texas Wesleyan and call it a fall. They lost a year in the middle.

He went home and played at Bakersfield College — 247Sports carries him as a JUCO back and Texas Wesleyan's roster lists Bakersfield College as his previous school. He is listed now at 6-0, 210, number 0, junior. That is a two-inch, fifteen-pound difference from the freshman who showed up in San José. Backs who add that much and keep 5.7 a carry did not just get bigger. They got rebuilt.

Texas Wesleyan's staff saw it coming. The Sooner Athletic preview in early August flagged him by name: "Look for transfer running back Ian Jernagin to be in the mix." Five days into the season, he was not in the mix. He was the offense.

Nobody is telling you the actual headline

Every evaluation of Jernagin frames his ceiling as "produce at NAIA, transfer up to Division II." That framing is already out of date.

Texas Wesleyan is leaving NAIA. The school is transitioning to NCAA Division II and targeting the Lone Star Conference for 2028. The Rams have five straight winning seasons and are building for it — Moritz Fieldhouse is finished and Karen Cramer Stadium is expected by winter 2027.

Jernagin does not have to transfer to reach Division II. Division II is coming to him.

And the offense he landed in is the right one. Head coach Fran Johnson was promoted this February after five years as the Rams' offensive coordinator, and his 2024 unit led all of college football in scoring at 57.5 points a game. One 59-7 opener against a Division II opponent does not undo that.

My call

He clears 1,000 yards this season and he does it without leaving Fort Worth.

Write it down. Sixteen carries is a rotation number, and Johnson's offense has never been shy about volume once it trusts a back. Jernagin got the trust in Week 0 and put a touchdown on a night the Rams did almost nothing else right. If he takes 18 to 22 carries a game in conference play, the math is not hard.

The thing I want to see is pass protection and route work on tape, because that is the difference between a Division II starter and a guy who gets a look from the WAC. Nobody has published that film. Until somebody does, the evaluation stops at the run game — and the run game is good.

Saturday

The Rams travel to McNeese State on September 5, an FCS program, before conference play opens against Texas College on the 12th. Two weeks, two chances to prove the opener was a floor.

Kern County has sent backs down this exact road before. Most of them needed somebody to notice at the right moment.

Watch the McNeese box score Saturday night. If Jernagin touches it 18-plus times and holds five yards a carry against FCS, the conversation about him changes that week — not in November.

Track Central Section prospects and their college production in the RepMax recruiting database. Think we are underrating him? Say so in the comments — this one is going to age fast either way.