Iowa State’s new offensive line coach, Jake Thornton, has spent his entire life on the line of scrimmage. With a decade of experience coaching offensive lines, the former Division I center brings as much expertise to the program as one could.
Physicality is the word preached by offensive coordinator Tyler Roehl, and Thornton is on the same page.
“That’s the brand of football we want to play,” Thornton said. “We want to be the most physical unit on the field every Saturday because if you do that, you give yourself a shot to win.”
Thornton lives and breathes the offensive line game. As an athlete, the Georgia native was a two-time All-Southern Conference center at Western Carolina.
After his graduation in 2015, he joined the coaching staff at Western Carolina for a season before he made the jump to Alabama to work with the offensive line as a graduate assistant in 2017 under coach Nick Saban.
He continued working with the men up front as an offensive line coach and run game coordinator for Tennessee Tech in 2018 and 2019.
In 2020, Thornton took up the same position at Gardner-Webb en route to the biggest opportunity of his career.
For the 2021 season, Thornton got the call to serve as the offensive line coach at Ole Miss. He stepped up and led a solid offensive line over his two seasons with the Rebels.
The team went 10-3 while averaging 218 rushing yards behind Thornton’s line in his first season with the team. In 2022, the team ran for 256.6 yards per game in an 8-5 campaign.
Both seasons, the Rebels were in the top 10 in the country for total offense.
He comes to Ames after three years with the Auburn Tigers.
With an entirely new unit in 2026 after the mass exodus through the transfer portal after the departure of head coach Matt Campbell, Thornton aims to make sure not to miss the basics.
“As far as things we’ve got to improve on, I think, just the basic fundamentals,” Thornton said. “Getting the second step on the ground, playing low and finishing high, playing with tight elbows, understanding what I’m looking at pre-snap.”
Despite the changes and the new setting, Thornton believes his players are on the same page, a crucial aspect for a unit as connected to success or failure as the offensive line.
“Bringing in guys that have had success at all levels of college football and putting them into one room, they push each other,” Thornton said. “They genuinely care about each other, which is pretty unique in terms of when you bring so many different guys in. Sometimes egos get in the way, but we haven’t had that issue in our room so far.”
The offensive linemen will have a lot to prove in the 2026 campaign. Many players, like redshirt senior Cade Myer, a transfer from the Colorado School of Mines, will have their first opportunity with a power conference team.
Thornton’s experience at all levels of college football could be ideal during this period of change for the unit.
