AFCA Release

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. – Saint John's University junior quarterback Jackson Erdmann (Rosemount, Minn.) is a nominee for the 2018 Allstate American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) Good Works Team, which was released on Tuesday, July 17.

Erdmann is one of 169 nominees from Divisions I, II, III and NAIA schools for the 2018 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team. This year marks the 27th anniversary of the award, which was established in 1992 to recognize a select group of college football players who have made a commitment to service and enriching the lives of others.

The nominees were submitted by sports information directors across the nation on behalf of their schools. Comprised of 11 players from the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision and 11 players from the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision, Divisions II, III and the NAIA, the final roster of 22 award recipients will be unveiled in September. A special voting panel consisting of former Allstate AFCA Good Works Team members and prominent college football media members will select the 2018 Good Works Team. 

Senior wide receiver Will Gillach (Lindstrom, Minn./Chisago Lakes) became the second Johnnie to be named to the AFCA Good Works Team last year and was honored during halftime of the Allstate Sugar Bowl Jan. 1 in New Orleans. All-American defensive lineman Kevin McNamara '07 was SJU's first Good Works Team honoree in 2006.

A global business leadership major with a 3.33 GPA, Erdmann volunteered with SJU's Kids Fighting Hunger meal-packing event each of the last three years and helped the SJU football team raise money for Tackle Cancer and the "Up Till Dawn" campaign, collecting donations for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the last two seasons.

This past winter, Erdmann participated in an 18-day (Jan. 25-Feb. 11) service trip to northern Thailand, where he worked with various organizations that fight child sex trafficking. He spent a week with Courageous Love, which is an organization that rescues victims of sex trafficking or children that are a high risk of being trafficked. During the week, Erdmann and others cleared and worked on new land to build new safe houses for the children. The group also built a playground (left) and interacted with the children, "which was a day I will never forget," Erdmann said. 
    
Erdmann spent a day with Project Justice in an impoverished, mountain village. The village's children are frequently trafficked and/or use drugs. "We spent the day playing games, brought lunch for everyone, made balloon animals, gave the kids haircuts, and sang and danced with the kids." Project Justice visits the village weekly and acts as positive role models for the kids, showing them that there is more out there than doing drugs and being trafficked. 

The group ended the service trip by spending five days with The Little Farm Thailand. Tasks included building fences and a goat house, gardening and chopping wood.

Erdmann spent 2017's spring break working at the Breaking Free House in the Twin Cities, which is a safe place for victims of sex trafficking and prostitution to recover from their experiences.

Closer to home, Erdmann ran a church youth group last summer and served as a residential assistant in a freshman dormitory during the 2017-18 academic year. 

He volunteered weekly at the Dream Center in St. Cloud during 2016's spring semester, serving meals and interacting with the men in the house. The Dream Center provides services for men, ages 18 and older, that need care, are struggling with mental health issues, chemical dependency issues, traumatic brain injury, learning disabilities and/or physical disabilities.

Erdmann tied for first in the MIAC with 19 passing touchdowns in conference play, while finishing second in completion percentage (.618, 105-for-170), pass-efficiency rating (169.1) and yards per pass attempt (9.0) en route to All-MIAC first-team honors last fall. He ended the season with 1,859 passing yards, 25 passing touchdowns and a .617 completion percentage (129-for-209) overall. His 172.1 pass-efficiency rating was the third-best in school history, and good for ninth among all Division III quarterbacks, and the touchdown-to-interception ratio (25 to 4) of 6.25 was fourth. 

He enters his junior season seventh in school history with 45 career passing touchdowns and 13th in career passing yards (3,149), and has a career .611 completion percentage and 171.8 pass-efficiency rating (45 touchdowns to 10 interceptions in 355 pass attempts).

The Johnnies report to Collegeville on Friday, Aug. 10, with the first practice scheduled for that evening. SJU opens the 2018 season with a 1 p.m. kickoff Sept. 1 against the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Clemens Stadium.