We know the deal with Bijan Robinson. He’s big, he’s athletic, he’s good. He’s been called a generational talent, he’s been comped to everybody from Saquon Barkley to Marshall Faulk, and he is routinely billed as the best “pure runner” in this stacked 2023 running back class. I have Bijan as my RB1, but the degree to which I agree with those other superlatives varies, particularly the last one.

Part of that tentative disagreement doubtless comes from a disjointedness and lack of collective clarity when we talk about running backs as “pure runners”:

I’m not sure what I expected, but the results of the above poll highlighted to me just how little we understand each other when we make proclamations about players -- how could we when we haven’t even agreed upon standard definitions for common terms? A good chunk of us mean literally the opposite when we describe a back’s ability “as a pure runner” as does another group!

My aim in this article is not to remedy that confusion or establish that standard (I have neither the interest nor the cachet to make those things possible), but to effectively communicate my interpretation of what Bijan Robinson’s on-field results in advanced efficiency metrics say about his ability as a runner of the football. To that end, I’ll spend some time discussing what I mean by “pure runner” -- but more on that later.

On a basic level, it is undeniable that Robinson was a good and productive ball-carrier during his career at Texas. He finished ninth in voting for the Heisman Trophy last season, leaves Texas as the 20th-leading rusher in the history of the Big 12 Conference (and averaged more yards per season than half the players ahead of him on that list), and gained an average of 6.33 yards per carry during his career (an 87th-percentile mark among college runners).

Robinson is also constructed very much like a prototype workhorse back: he was listed at 6-feet tall and 222 pounds in 2022, he demonstrated the ability to handle a large workload by carrying the ball 258 times last season (fifth-most in the country and second-most in the Big 12) and 539 times during his career (giving him a per-game carry load in the 82rd percentile relative to eventual NFL backs since 2007), and while we don’t yet have athletic testing numbers for Bijan, he clearly has the speed, explosiveness, and lateral agility (as well as the balance, flexibility, etc.) required of a high-end back.

I wouldn’t dispute any of the above, and yet Robinson’s marks in various rushing efficiency metrics don’t exactly match either his tools or his reputation as an elite “pure runner”:

If I told you that a player existed who produced positive outcomes on his carries at a lower rate than his teammates did, exceeded their per-carry output to a degree that was not impressive relative to other quality backs, did both of those things while seeing significantly lighter defensive fronts than what his teammates ran against, but broke a ton of tackles and produced 10- and 20-yard gains at a high clip, you’d probably conclude that such a player was good and effective in general but also assume that he was a great athlete that was lacking in some of the cerebral or technically nuanced aspects of running the ball necessary to produce more consistently and without relying on big plays.

In that regard, the Barkley comps that Robinson is getting make some sense. Saquon finished his college career prior to the cutoff date for the box count-adjusted metrics I use, but the following were his final marks in those other metrics:

Barkley had weaker numbers relative to the other backs at Penn State than Robinson did to the others at Texas (it’s worth pointing out that the main “other” guy at Penn State during Barkley’s career was Miles Sanders, a Pro Bowl-level NFL back), but both of them posted quality raw efficiency while excelling primarily in the open field and as tackle-breakers (and I suspect that Saquon is at a bit of a disadvantage in this area). Even so, if we assume that Bijan will run 4.45 and have a 40-inch vertical at the Combine, the historical prospects with the most similar analytical profiles as “pure runners” (given size, athleticism, and efficiency metrics) are the following:

I think Breece Hall and D’Andre Swift are fantastic stylistic comps for Robinson. Both of them are athletic, elusive backs whose college production (and efficiency) was buoyed by big runs in spite of sub-par down-to-down consistency. If we had known last offseason that Hall had the sort of downfield pass-catching ability that he showed as a rookie in the NFL, I don’t see why he wouldn’t have been considered to be a similar level of prospect as Bijan currently is (even at the time, I toyed with the idea of Hall as the hypothetical RB1 in 2023 if this had been his class). And given Swift’s skillset as a pass-catcher and his volatile-but-dynamic running style, he’s kind of just a smaller (and, to be clear, lesser) version of Robinson.

All that brings us back to what we mean when we talk about players as “pure runners.” According to the earlier poll, that often simply means that we’re ignoring a player’s abilities as anything but a runner. In that case, I don’t think Bijan Robinson is the best pure runner in this class. If the NFL implemented a new rule that disallowed running backs from catching passes or throwing blocks, rendering Bijan’s dual-threat abilities obsolete, he’d still be a flawed (though effective) runner of the football.

Others among us are referring solely to a player’s physical or athletic traits when we talk about them as pure runners. In that case (and pending the Combine, though I do think we can draw reasonable conclusions in this area based on film study and data), Bijan has a legitimate claim to being the best in this class, with guys like Zach Evans and Zach Charbonnet the only other real contenders.

Further, there are those whose discussions of pure running refer to a player’s more cerebral or mental attributes, the things that allow them to make the right decisions on the field regardless of their physical makeup. In that case, I would argue that Robinson is not remotely close to being the best pure runner in this class, as that distinction (in my opinion) would belong to Devon Achane.

When I speak about a running back’s ability as a pure runner, I think I refer mostly to the first option, though with some implied emphasis on his cerebral traits. Through that lens, I would not describe Bijan as an elite pure runner. The on-field results simply don’t offer that as a reasonable categorization of his skills, and that’s okay. Saquon Barkley isn’t that guy, Travis Etienne isn’t that guy, and David Johnson wasn’t that guy, but all of them -- especially Barkley and Johnson -- have comprehensive skill-sets that have allowed them to produce at a high level in the NFL without being the purest of runners. I expect Bijan to do the same.