LJ Martin has made up his mind.<\/p>\n
BYU\u2019s star running back will play his senior year with the Cougars in 2026 rather than declare early for the NFL draft, he announced Thursday via social media.<\/p>\n
The 2025 Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year, Martin ran for a Big 12-best 1,305 yards this past season along with 12 touchdowns at an average of 5.5 yards per carry.<\/p>\n
Martin tallied six total 100-yard outings in 2025, including a 222-yard outburst at Cincinnati, 122 yards against rival Utah and 162 yards in BYU\u2019s double overtime win at Arizona.<\/p>\n
Seven of Martin\u2019s 12 touchdowns came in his final four contests, thanks in part to a hat trick of three scores in the regular season finale against UCF.<\/p>\n
Most impressively, Martin\u2019s late season surge came as he played through a shoulder injury sustained in late October. Aside from the Pop-Tarts Bowl, he didn\u2019t miss a single game, with his health only leading to one early exit. <\/p>\n
In 33 career games since arriving in Provo in 2023, Martin has racked up 2,939 yards of total offense with 26 touchdowns.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The bruising Texas native ranks ninth on BYU\u2019s program rushing leaderboard with 2,541 yards, needing 1,361 yards as a senior to unseat Jamaal Williams as the school\u2019s all-time leading rusher.<\/p>\n
In addition to Martin, a number of other key Cougar players such as quarterback Bear Bachmeier, wide receiver Parker Kingston and safety Faletau Satuala have already announced their intentions to return to BYU in 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LJ Martin has made up his mind. BYU\u2019s star running back will play his senior year with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,3309,6,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-664954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nfl-draft","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-news-feed-local","10":"tag-nfl","11":"tag-nfl-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115862034699173534","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}