All 105 is a Nittany Sports Now series profiling each Penn State football player. This edition will look at redshirt sophomore running back Caziah Holmes.
Height: 5-foot-11
Weight: 217 pounds
Hometown: Titusville, Florida
Before Penn State: Holmes— who also lettered in track & field at Cocoa High School and could run 100 meters in less than 11 seconds—played football all four years and rose to team captain his senior season.
As a freshman, Holmes helped Cocoa win a state championship. He became an all-state running back and eclipsed 1,000 rushing as both a junior and senior.
Over Holmes’s last two seasons in high school, he rushed for a total of 34 touchdowns and scored five more receiving touchdowns his junior year.
247Sports, ESPN and Rivals all rated Holmes as a four-star prospect. 247 and Rivals each had him in the top 10 for all-purpose backs in Florida from his class, and 247 had him at No. 4.
Holmes committed to Penn State in August of 2019.
2020: In a pandemic-shortened season, Holmes played in all nine games as a true freshman, getting an opportunity to contribute in a backfield ravaged by Journey Brown’s medical retirement and Noah Cain’s season-ending injury in the season’s first game.
Holmes ended the year with 227 rushing yards and two touchdowns on 51 carries, averaging 4.45 yards per carry.
2021: Holmes redshirted the 2021 season, appearing in three games.
With Cain back and Baylor transfer John Lovett added to the mix, Penn State had more options at running back, and Holmes got lost in the shuffle.
He only played against Ball State, Auburn and Rutgers and ended the year with 27 yards on just five carries.
Where he stands: Many are expecting to have more success running the football.
Many also expect Keyvone Lee and five-star 2022 signee Nick Singleton to get most of the carries, with four-star newcomer Kaytron Allen mixed in.
If Lee, Singleton and Allen play their roles well, it will be great for Penn State, but not as much for Holmes.
If all goes according to plan, Holmes could well get lost in the shuffle for the second straight season.
As we saw in 2020, however, things don’t always go according to plan, and if Penn State faces injuries or any other unforeseen circumstances, Holmes could take advantage like he did two seasons ago.
A quote about Holmes:
Early in his Holmes’s Penn State career, his position coach, JaJuan Seider, praised him for his speed and said that he was pushing older running back Journey Brown to up his game.
“Journey had to look over sometime and said “man, this kid can run,” Seider said before the 2020 season. “(Holmes) pushed him, so now he understands, you know what, I can play on this level.”
Holmes is still fast, and that speed can still be helpful to Penn State.
