There are two givens when it comes to projecting Devon Achane from a stellar college career to the big time in the NFL; first, it’s a given that this dude is very fast. He reportedly once ran a wind-aided 10.02-second 100-meter dash, and he boasts an official personal best of 10.14 in the same event, a time that would’ve been good enough to qualify for the Olympics as recently as the 2016 Games (the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body, changed the qualifying time to 10.05 in 2020). His 20.20-second personal record in the 200-meter dash is faster than the current Olympic qualifying mark of 20.24:

There’s a good chance that Achane is the fastest player in the NFL as soon as he’s drafted in April, and while I know we hear this every year, he has an excellent shot to break John Ross’ 40-yard dash record of 4.22 seconds at the Combine next month. Given his timed speed on the track and his tracked speed on the field (he reached 22.2 miles per hour on this kick return against Alabama last season, which would’ve been the fastest in-game speed by an NFL ball carrier in the last two years), he’s the rare player for whom a time in the 4.3s would be a legitimate disappointment.

Second, it’s a given that Achane is going to be exceptionally small for an NFL running back. The average weight among backs drafted since 2007 is 213.6 pounds, and in the same time frame, just six total runners have weighed as little during their respective pre-Draft cycles (whether at the Combine or a Pro Day) as the 185 pounds that Achane was listed at during his three seasons at Texas A&M (a group that does not include Darren Sproles, who was drafted in 2005, or Philip Lindsay, who had multiple 1000-yard rushing seasons after going undrafted in 2018).

It’s demonstrably true that, in general, bigger NFL backs receive larger roles and more touch volume than do smaller ones, and in the context of dynasty fantasy football (the angle from which I assume most of my audience is interested in this analysis), it behooves us to place our bets on the players with the highest chances of contributing fantasy points to our lineups. Given overwhelming historical precedent, that means fading small running backs.

That’s all well and good, but I am personally not content with resigning myself to missing on “outliers.” Small running backs don’t see as much volume as big backs in general, but that doesn’t mean that all small running backs are doomed to fail. Chris Johnson didn’t, Jamaal Charles didn’t, Steve Slaton didn’t, and CJ Spiller didn’t (among others). There’s more than one way to eat a Reese’s and there’s more than one way to be a successful NFL running back, and I believe Achane could be the next in that lineage of sub-200-pound burners who carves out a productive role in an NFL backfield.

The first step in that direction is (perhaps ironically, given the tone of the last couple paragraphs) putting on a little bit of weight. Sub-200 pounds is one thing, but by my count, there have only been two sub-190-pound running backs to experience fantasy relevance in the last decade: Lindsay and Cohen. To vault himself into the Johnson, Charles, Slaton, and Spiller range of outcomes, Achane will likely need to get closer to 195 (each of those guys weighed between 196 and 199). I think he can do it.

Given Achane’s seasonal listed heights and weights while at Texas A&M and informed by data from all running backs drafted from 2013 to 2021, I project (using a method that was pretty good in its first run-through last year) that he’ll measure in at the Combine at 5’8 ⅝” and 194 pounds. Such a weigh-in would make him 15 pounds heavier than Cohen, 10 pounds heavier than Lindsay, two pounds heavier than Chris Thompson, and within one pound of guys like Matt Breida and Dion Lewis. Additionally, he would be within five pounds of all members of our fearsome foursome while boasting a higher BMI than three of them: Johnson, Charles, and Spiller.

Aside from the data suggesting that Achane could approach the 195-pound threshold in February, I believe his track background should serve as an encouraging plot point in the same narrative. Splitting his time between the Aggie football and track teams for the last three years meant splitting the difference on ideal strength and conditioning in the two sports. If Achane leaves track in the rear view (or at least puts it off; the average age of a male sprinter at the 2012 Olympics was 25.3, with a standard deviation of 3.8, so a post-football track career wouldn’t be out of the question), it seems reasonable that he would then bulk up as he focuses on a career in the NFL.

My approach to the Devon Achane film has been the same as with the other 2023 backs I’ve studied so far: watch each play, classify his decision-making in various categories as either positive, neutral, or negative given his schematic responsibilities and the external factors imposed by the interaction between offensive line, defensive front, and situational context, and chart the success of his evasive maneuvers and physical interactions with would-be tacklers.

As of the time of this writing, I’ve watched and charted 110 of Achane’s carries (approximately 30% of his career total), including 91 from 2022 (approximately 46% of his final season total). Relative to what I’ve charted on 100+ carries from seven other prominent 2023 runners, Achane’s highest scores come in the categories of vision, patience, discipline, and elusiveness, and he earned particularly high grades on zone concepts.

In my review of this charting, I’ve paid close attention to Achane’s skills and performance with a few key questions in mind, all centered around his potential to serve in a role as something resembling a traditional running back in the NFL, rather than as the return specialist and gadget weapon that I’ve seen many (whether they be bona fide analysts, dubiously-credentialed Twitter prognosticators, or casual commenters) assume he will be. The questions that we’ll look to answer here are as follows:

While affirmative answers to these questions are not necessities for all successful NFL backs, they represent to me a sort of framework for answering the overarching question that should guide our analysis of Achane in particular: while we know that he’s an incredibly dynamic player, particularly with the ball out in space, might Achane’s comprehensive skill-set allow him to overcome the limitations represented by his size and ultimately carve out a role as a traditional running back capable of providing high-end fantasy utility in the NFL? Let’s see.

According to Sports Info Solutions, by far the most common run concepts in the NFL are outside zone (including variations of it, outside zone accounts for 32.8% of all rushing attempts by running backs between 2020 and 2022) and inside zone (22.7%), with those zone concepts combined making up more than half of all running back attempts. Of the gap concepts, power, duo, iso, and counter are the most common, making up a combined 31.7% of runs.

In total, those six bread-and-butter concepts represent 86.2% of all rushing attempts by professional running backs in the last three seasons. While the distribution within Achane’s sample is not identical to what we’ve seen recently in the NFL (he’s run a bit more inside zone and duo and a bit less outside zone than pro backs do), those concepts also represent 103 of the 110 carries (93.6%) that I’ve watched and graded from Achane so far. In general, he’s familiar with the run concepts most commonly used at the next level, and I believe that he’s demonstrated an ability to properly identify and hit schematically appropriate holes on those concepts during his time at A&M. Let’s take a look at some examples (particularly of those concepts that require a true read of the running back):

In the above clip, the Aggies call an inside zone run on a 1st-and-10 at the edge of the red zone against LSU. With double-teams working against the Tiger front, Achane’s job is simply to read the leverage of first-level defenders and identify a viable crease, either on the interior, through a bounce lane to the playside, or out the backside edge.

In this instance, the playside edge (#46) fights inside, running right into a guard-tackle double-team. Meanwhile, #3 gets cleared out by the tight end, opening up a really nice lane. Ideally, we’d like to track closely to the heels of the playside tackle (#76) and get moving downfield as quickly as possible, but with #30 and #23 for LSU in position to make that play, Achane makes the right decision to flatten out and get to the edge. There, he’s able to use his speed and change-of-direction skills to turn the corner and make multiple defenders miss along the sideline.

This next play does not involve such an obvious read:

Here, A&M runs Achane on another inside zone play, and based on the leverage of the four defenders on the line of scrimmage, there is no clear lane available at the time of the handoff. Achane shows good patience in sifting to the playside (toward the bottom of the screen), which aligns him with a more viable north/south track while providing his interior lineman time to develop their blocks. The left guard is able to clear out #92 to the outside, the right guard is able to fight back into position after initially giving up ground against #99, and the center is able to climb to the second level and seal off #30. Achane is able to hit the tight crease between center and backside guard and fight for extra yardage.

Here is an outside zone run against Arkansas, including a convenient diagram from the broadcast:

In outside zone, the running back’s job is to press to the outside and turn the corner if he can, but more likely he’ll end up identifying a north/south crease somewhere along the way and get downhill. Achane does exactly that on this play, properly reading that #15 and #56 have closed off the edge, turning upfield while staying tight to the heels of his offensive linemen to avoid veering off into no-man’s land on the backside, and then cutting away from #16 as he dives through that secondary crease into the end-zone. Along with his vision (and, to be fair, the read on this play was not a particularly difficult one), Achane’s ability to efficiently transition from a horizontal to a vertical track and his discipline while navigating the second level speak well to his potential for running outside zone in the NFL despite it not being a major part of his role at Texas A&M.

This next play is a duo concept run against Mississippi State that involves a second-level read. If the inside linebacker (there are two kind of stacked on top of each other in this instance) dives inside, Achane should bounce to the outside. If that linebacker cheats to the outside, Achane should punch it up the middle:

With both linebackers following the flow of blocks toward the inside, Achane correctly reads that he should turn against the grain and bounce. He stays in control through that transition, pressing to the line of scrimmage to continue sucking those linebackers forward before cutting to the outside, and then aligning himself north/south on the edge by properly reading the outside leverage that Mississippi State’s #22 has against #42, A&M’s tight end.

Here’s another duo run, this one from the 2021 game against Alabama:

On this play, the linebacker that Achane needs to read (#8) dives inside, which should trigger Achane to bounce outside. However, Will Anderson (#31 for Alabama) gets a lot of push on A&M’s tight end (#85), making Achane’s angle to bounce more difficult. Luckily, #8 ends up one gap over from where the north/south crease in front of Achane opens up, so punching this inside is still a viable option. Achane commits that way, but that gap is still filled by #10, creating a 1-on-1 situation where Achane will need to run through a linebacker, evade him in a very tight space, or quickly find some alternate path.

Setting up a backside crease by cutting outside and drawing #10 into an offensive lineman who is in the process of getting up off the ground, Achane frees himself into the open field before getting taken down by a shoestring tackle. His ability to solve problems quickly and creatively allows Achane to make the most of plays on which nothing is really available.

Overall, Achane consistently demonstrates an ability to identify viable and schematically appropriate lanes at the line of scrimmage, and both his average grades and his rates of negatively graded plays, particularly on inside zone and duo concepts, are among the best I’ve charted in the 2023 class so far.

If I told you that a 185-pound dude that runs 10.2 in the 100-meter dash was one of the most efficient runners in his rookie class, you’d probably assume that he was a serial run-bouncer who did the vast majority of his damage on the edge and in the open field. With most players in Achane’s archetype (as if there are many), I think you’d be right.

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