LSU RB John Emery Jr. announce return to college football for seventh season

LSU Tigers running back John Emery Jr. announced on Instagram through Young PlayMakers Sports Agency he will return for the 2025 season. He did not, though, specify he was returning to LSU. It will be his seventh season of college football.

“One last ride! @johne4_ is returning to college football for his final season. Can’t wait to see him leave it all on the field. Let’s get it,” the post read. “Contact @ypmsports for all NIL inquiries”

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Injuries have become a major challenge in Emery’s career. That has included multiple torn ACLs, leading to multiple truncated seasons. In 2024, he played in one game before suffering his injury in a non-contact drill during practice. The year before, he suffered his season-ending injury in November. Emery also did not play in the entirety of the 2021 season.

Those injury concerns for Emery actually date back to his high school career. A standout, his junior season of high school was also caught short due to an injury.

Still, expectations were massive for Emery Jr. when he first got to LSU. A five-star recruit in the Class of 2019, according to the On3 Industry Ranking, Emery was the 12th-ranked player and the second-ranked running back overall in his recruiting cycle. That’s after he played his high school football at Destrehan in Louisiana.

Emery would flash his talent early in his time at LSU, playing in 10 games without making a start in the 2019 national championship season. He followed that up with nine games played, including three starts, in the shortened pandemic-impacted season. That season, he was second on LSU in rushing.

However, since missing the entire 2021 season, Emery has struggled to consistently get back on the field. In the three years since 2021, he’s played in a total of 19 games with two starts. Along the way, the LSU program also underwent a change at head coach, switching from Ed Orgeron to Brian Kelly.

For his career, Emery has 1,123 yards and 14 touchdowns on the ground. He also has 37 receptions for 330 yards and another two touchdowns through the air. In terms of single-game production, Emery’s best performance came in 2020 against Vanderbilt, when he rushed for 103 yards and a touchdown. It’s his only career game with 100 rushing yards.

The LSU Tigers are coming off a season where they went 9-4, winning the Texas Bowl in the process. That was the third season for Kelly leading the Tigers, and the expectation is that LSU is going to take a step forward in his fourth season with the program. Hopefully, Emery can be a piece of that.