To me, Audric Estime is one of the more interesting prospects in the 2024 running back class. He’s been a big boy since the beginning, as he weighed 215 pounds and drew Jordan Howard comparisons as a four-star high school recruit before being listed at a stout 227 during his final season at Notre Dame. In the years since his recruitment, Estime established himself as one of the best running backs at college football, totaling over 1000 yards from scrimmage in back-to-back seasons on top-20 Notre Dame squads. Production numbers (more specifically, his market share stats and the Irish’s S&P+ ratings) from his 2023 campaign comp closely to those posted by Ronald Jones, Derrius Guice, Kyren Williams, and Kerryon Johnson during their respective junior years, while names like Alexander Mattison and D’Onta Foreman also show up in the list of historical prospects whose career numbers are most similar to Estime’s.

Still, I sense some level of skepticism surrounding Estime’s NFL potential. He’s a workhorse-sized back who doesn’t catch a ton of passes and doesn’t seem to have elite athleticism, and players in that archetype have provided dynasty enthusiasts with more than their fair share of disappointment over the years (I’m still working through the Kevin Harris experience with my therapist). Indeed, it’s often difficult for such players – the two-down backs whose skill-sets aren’t quite on the level of a Jonathan Taylor or a Nick Chubb – to separate themselves on a professional depth chart because they almost necessarily have to do so by virtue of simply being the best ball-carrier on their team. The margins for that at the NFL level are razor thin, as pretty much all pro running backs can provide at least satisfactory results on the ground, and many of them can supplement mere competence in that category with value provided in the areas of running back play that more readily differentiate players at the position: pass protection and receiving work.

Basically, if Estime is going to be productive in the league and useful for your fantasy teams, he’s going to need to give NFL teams a reason to put him on the field. There’s still tape to watch and receiving data to crunch, but I want to start my evaluation by mining for such a reason in the advanced efficiency profile that Estime put together as a rusher, taking the first step toward determining whether he’s more Jordan Howard or Kevin Harris:

Things look pretty good for Estime by these measures, even more so considering that his team-relative efficiency numbers were produced alongside a collection of backfield teammates that collectively averaged a 3.58-star rating as high school recruits (a 66th-percentile mark among teammates of historical prospects). His top three backups in 2023 – Jeremiyah Love, Jadarian Price, and Gi’Bran Payne – were all four-star players (Love was the fifth-ranked running back in the 2023 class and turned down offers from Alabama and Michigan to attend Notre Dame), while three-star Logan Diggs proved to be a capable lead runner at LSU this season after having operated as the less efficient half of a one-two punch with Estime in 2022.

Outperforming such quality teammates is not something we see often, and De’Von Achane is the only other player in my database who left school with both a Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating above the 130% mark and a positive Relative Success Rate posted next to teammates who averaged at least 3.5 recruiting stars. Among backs with 200+ carries, only six such single seasons fulfilling those criteria have been produced since 2018: by Travis Etienne (2018), Clyde Edwards-Helaire (2019), Eric Gray (2022), Chase Brown (2022), Emani Bailey (2023), and Estime himself (2023). To maintain that level of play over an entire college career is basically unheard of.

Estime also avoids many of the pitfalls that other “grinder” backs are often subject to. In addition to grading out decently as a pass-blocker (according to Pro Football Focus) and hauling in 100% of his catchable targets, he broke a lot of tackles and created a lot of big plays during his two years as Notre Dame’s lead runner. Those things separate Estime pretty clearly from many other efficient and productive workhorses in recent draft classes: DeWayne McBride caught just five passes in his entire UAB career; Joshua Kelley, Kevin Harris, Ryquell Armstead, and Tyrion Davis-Price all forced fewer than 0.20 missed tackles per attempt while in college; guys like Trey Sermon, Hassan Haskins, Tyler Allgeier, and AJ Dillon all left school with Chunk Rate+ marks below the 42nd percentiles. Estime looks like a much more complete package – at least from a data standpoint – than any of those other backs did.

Further evidence of his relative well-roundedness can be found in the similarity of Estime’s final season efficiency numbers to those of successful pro backs who hardly resemble him in a stylistic sense:

Out of all seasons by all FBS running backs in the last six years, Harris’ and Swift’s 2019 campaigns stand as the two most comparable to Estime’s 2023, both coming in at at least 96.0% similar by my methodology. Also among the 25 seasons with at least 90% in common with Estime’s 2023 are names like De’Von Achane, Zach Charbonnet, Zack Moss, and Tyjae Spears (Moss in 2019, the others in 2022).

I’m not completely sure where else to go at this juncture of the Estime eval, but it’s clear that he doesn’t deserve to be simply written off as a plodder. The 2024 running back class is pretty well stocked with big players (I count eleven guys who already have or currently project to measure in at 215+ pounds this offseason), and it’s certainly arguable that Estime is the best pure runner among them (again, at least from a data standpoint). Pending film study, he’s as worthy of that consideration even as Braelon Allen is. Finally, while the Kevin Harris experience is a risk for any player in this two-down archetype, Estime’s numbers are good enough that I wouldn’t rule out the career paths of guys like Tyler Allgeier, Damien Harris, or – gasp! – Jordan Howard as possibilities for the Notre Dame workhorse.