Here on the eve of the Combine for this year’s running back group, I wanted to do a miniature data dump while highlighting the best among these backs in many of the statistical categories that I use to evaluate. Here are the 2023 Pre-Combine Awards:

Bigsby was stupid good as a freshman, putting up 918 yards and five touchdowns from scrimmage in just 10 games, good for a 22.5% Dominator Rating (in the 94th percentile among all freshmen going back to 2006) on an Auburn squad that, while not particularly strong in the SEC, finished above .500 and earned 75th- and 70th-percentile marks in S&P+ rating for overall and offensive team strength, respectively. His market share numbers in the context of that environment produce a score of 86.9 (out of 100) in my composite production metric, the highest of any back in this class and the 34th-highest for any first-year runner since 2006.
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 86.8.

Vaughn followed up a strong freshman season (81.5) with a sophomore campaign that landed in the top-30 among all second-year runners since 2006. He scored 22 touchdowns to go with over 1400 rushing yards and nearly 500 receiving yards on a solid Kansas State team that finished 8-5 and with overall and offensive S&P+ ratings above the 70th percentile. Vaughn’s numbers produced a ridiculous 43.6% Dominator Rating that ties Leonard Fournette’s 2015 mark for the highest among all Power 5 sophomores in my database.
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 89.6

Robinson was good as an underclassman, posting composite production scores of 82.6 and 89.2, but the 95.6 mark that he reached as a third-year guy is the seventh-best junior season score among all post-2005 college runners. We know the deal: on a top-25 Texas team with fantastic underlying metrics (93rd-percentile in overall S&P+, 86th-percentile in offensive rating), Bijan and his 99th-percentile Dominator Rating was the offense, as his 20 touchdowns and nearly 1900 yards from scrimmage accounted for 38.6% of the Longhorns’ total output.
Runner-up: Deuce Vaughn, 91.0.

Charbonnet’s career ran the gamut, with multiple seasons in the 80-point range bookending a sophomore campaign that saw him fall behind both Hassan Haskins and Blake Corum in Michigan’s backfield pecking order. He surprised many by coming back to UCLA for his senior season, but the 94.0 score he put up in my production composite is the sixth-highest among fourth-year runners in my database, so maybe he was right to run it back. He managed that mark by posting nearly 1700 yards and 14 touchdowns from scrimmage in only 10 games, good for a 31.6% Dominator Rating (96th-percentile) on a top-25 Bruin squad with a 99th-percentile offensive S&P+ rating (to go with an 83rd-percentile overall mark).
Runner-up: Mohamed Ibrahim, 89.7.

In the last four years, the only non-service academy running back in all of college football to post a higher single-season Target Share than the one that Vaughn earned in 2021 is Raheem Blackshear, who hauled in 21.4% of Rutgers’ targets in 2018. Relative to NFL prospects, Vaughn’s mark is in the 99th percentile as the second-highest mark for pure running backs (so excluding guys like Lynn Bowden and Jaylen Samuels) drafted since 2007, behind only Jacquizz Rodgers’ 22.0% mark.
Runner-up: Evan Hull, 16.8%.

Vaughn caught more passes in his least prolific season (25) than five guys in this year’s running back group (DeWayne McBride, Camerun Peoples, Tiyon Evans, Chris Rodriguez, Mohamed Ibrahim) did in their entire careers. Vaughn’s career total is the 19th-highest among running backs drafted since 2007.
Runner-up: Jahmyr Gibbs, 103.

McIntosh’s raw Catch Rate of 80.9% isn’t anything special (it’s in the 69th percentile), but nobody in this class even comes close to him when we look only at catchable targets.
Runners-up: Tiyon Evans and Mohamed Ibrahim, 91.7%.

Robinson leveraged a high aDOT (3.0, in the 90th percentile) in combination with top-shelf ability after the catch (11.7 YAC per reception, 84th-percentile) into 91st-percentile per-catch output.
Runner-up: Jahmyr Gibbs, 11.8.

Robinson paired the above aDOT and YAC numbers with a 90.9% True Catch Rate to produce an 87th-percentile mark in yards per target.
Runner-up: Jahmyr Gibbs, 9.7.

Evans’ 88th-percentile YAC numbers mean he and Bijan Robinson are the only backs in this class with 75th-percentile-or-greater marks in both aDOT and YAC per reception.
Runner-up: Tyjae Spears, 11.8.

Not only is Vaughn’s nearly 4-yard aDOT easily the highest among backs in this class, it’s also the second-highest for any running back drafted since 2016, behind only Donnel Pumphrey’s mark of 4.5.
Runner-up: Bijan Robinson, 3.0.

McIntosh’s 88th-percentile alignment versatility means he was moved around the offensive formation at the exact same rate that Christian McCaffrey was at Stanford.
Runner-up: Deuce Vaughn, 20.9%.

Vaughn’s Route Diversity never dipped below the 97th percentile in any of his college seasons, but the 99th-percentile mark he posted in 2020 was the highest for any back in the country with at least 50 routes run on the year. Nobody else in this class really comes close in terms of route-running versatility, as the highest (meaning worst) mark of Vaughn’s career is still higher than the career-best for every other back in the 2023 crop.
Runner-up: Bijan Robinson, 6.42.

Gray is a bit of a forgotten man in this running back class, but hauling in 63.5% more targets than would be expected of an average college runner (an 89th-percentile mark) is especially impressive in the context of the talent-laden offense in which he accomplished the feat: along with Gray, the 2020 Tennessee Volunteers had NFL-quality skill position players all over, including Ty Chandler, Velus Jones, Josh Palmer, Jalin Hyatt, and Cedric Tillman.
Runner-up: Deuce Vaughn, 154.6%.

Mitchell did his damage in the American Athletic Conference, but since 2007, only three Group of 5 running backs have been drafted after posting YPC+ marks as high as Mitchell’s career figure (itself a 97th-percentile mark): Alex Green, Darrell Henderson, and Aaron Jones.
Runner-up: DeWayne McBride, 2.08.

McBride’s nonexistent receiving profile (he caught five passes in his college career) likely contributed to the packed defensive fronts that he saw relative to what his UAB teammates faced (a 78th-percentile discrepancy), but we see above that he managed to produce efficiently on the ground regardless.
Runner-up: Evan Hull, 0.14.

Mitchell is one of the best big-play threats to come out of college in some time, as his 98th-percentile Chunk Rate+ mark is the highest for any back drafted since 2019. He’s one of just three players in my database (along with Darrell Henderson and Rashaad Penny) whose career totals in Chunk Rate+ and Breakaway Conversion Rate are both above the 90th-percentile.
Runner-up: Zach Evans, 6.9%.

McBride’s success in the open field comes in at the 97th-percentile and produces the highest career mark for any Group of 5 runner in my entire database.
Runner-up: Tyjae Spears, 43.8%.

With a little boost from a likely-modified grading system, Robinson’s MTF per attempt mark ties Javonte Williams’ for the number-one spot among all backs drafted since 2015.
Runner-up: DeWayne McBride, 0.36.

Among players whose entire college careers took place since box-count adjusted stats have been available (going back to 2018), only Tyler Allgeier has entered the NFL with a higher career BAE Rating than the ridiculous mark that Mitchell leaves school with.
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 145.0%.

The above curiosity is also true of Chris Rodriguez, but with Chuba Hubbard having posted the only Relative Success Rate that exceeds Rodriguez’s mark among players whose entire college careers took place post-2017. The worst single-season RSR of Rodriguez’s career was the 7.0% he posted in 2022, a 82nd-percentile figure equal to Devon Achane’s career mark.
Runner-up: Mohamed Ibrahim, 8.8%.

All Georgia does is produce first-round defensive players and professional running backs, so it should come as no surprise that the backfields McIntosh played in were largely made up of highly-touted high school recruits. Their collective average star-rating is a 94th-percentile mark and in the top-25 among teammates of all backs drafted since 2007.
Runner-up: Roschon Johnson, 4.37.

Note: I have watched and charted a substantial amount of film (at least 50 carries) for just 12 runners in this close so far, so this final round of awards is eligible only to players from the following group: Israel Abanikanda, Devon Achane, Tank Bigsby, Zach Charbonnet, Tiyon Evans, Zach Evans, Jahmyr Gibbs, Eric Gray, DeWayne McBride, Bijan Robinson, Tyjae Spears, Sean Tucker.

Another note: vision, patience, and decisiveness scores are on a -1-to-1 scale, calculated based on play-level grades, and are not curved for cross-category comparisons (i.e. the scores do not indicate that DeWayne McBride has better vision than Tiyon Evans has patience).

A third note: elusivity is scored based on a player’s in-class ranks in avoidance (the rate at which they attempt evasive maneuvers), success rate (of those attempted evasive maneuvers), and bag depth (of evasive maneuvers). Power scores are on a -2-to-2 scale and represent the average result of a player’s physical encounters with defenders.

McBride’s strong scores on both zone and gap runs come from making virtually no mistakes -- I graded his vision negatively on zero of the nearly 100 rushing attempts that I’ve charted.
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 0.57 and 0.30.

Evans has been primarily deployed on gap concepts during his time at Louisville and Tennessee, but he paces well behind pullers and makes smart use of stutter steps to allow blocks to clear and creases to open, regardless of blocking scheme.
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 0.05 and 0.06.

Even given the level of competition, McBride never played behind elite offensive lines at UAB, but he’s a see-it-and-go runner who maximized what his blockers created by reacting quickly to opportunities up front.
Runner-up: Zach Evans, 0.14 and 0.19.

Gibbs is not easy to get a hand on: he owns the second-deepest bag of evasive maneuvers and has the second-highest success rate on those maneuvers among backs in this class (behind DeWayne McBride and Zach Evans, respectively, both backs who more often opt for power and aren’t really elusive runners in a stylistic sense).
Runner-up: Devon Achane, 8.46.

Nobody in this class has power and contact balance that manifest themselves at all three levels of the defense in the way that Charbonnet’s do: on his way to earning the highest composite score, the UCLA product’s rate of powering through contact ranks second against defensive linemen, first against linebackers, and third against defensive backs.
Runner-up: Zach Evans, 0.51.