The hardest player in this running back class for me to get a read on is Braelon Allen. From some angles, he looks like a guy who should be locked in as the RB1 in a deep but relatively flat group, and from others, he is maddeningly mediocre, enough to make you wonder if he will ever add up to the sum of his exciting constituent parts. Let’s dwell on the first of those perspectives before moving on to the second.

To start, Allen’s production profile is very good. We all know that he broke out with over 1300 yards from scrimmage and 12 touchdowns produced on nearly seven yards per carry as a 17-year old freshman back in 2021, and while his productivity and efficiency plateaued over the next two seasons, that standard of play was enough to generate Dominator Ratings right around the 30% mark on Power Five teams that deployed vastly different offenses from the beginning of Allen’s career to the end. He’s a young guy who is still learning the position (he was recruited as a hybrid defensive player who 247Sports’ Allen Trieu comped to Patriots linebacker Ja’Whaun Bentley), but he picked up two disparate schemes and proved dependable enough in both to produce a three-year career that – according to market share numbers and S&P+ ratings – compares closely to those of successful NFL backs like AJ Dillon, Saquon Barkley, and Devin Singletary. That’s not quite elite, but it’s as close to it as you’ll find in this year’s class.

Allen is also a beast from a physical standpoint. Other than a 26-rep showing on the bench press and an underwhelming performance in the jumping drills at the Combine, Allen hasn’t actually participated in any athletic testing this offseason, but he’s over 6’1, weighs 235 pounds, and earned consecutive placements on Bruce Feldman’s yearly Freak List of the best athletes in college football (see 2022 and 2023). The Twitter timers have clocked him at nearly 21 miles per hour on runs from both high school and college (see: 1 and 2), and he’s capable of squatting 610 pounds and power cleaning 405. We’ll talk about his quickness and lateral agility later, but the 1.49-second 10-yard split that Feldman reported speaks to a high level of explosiveness (it’s the same time guys like Kenneth Walker, De’Von Achane, and Edgerrin James posted during their own 40-yard dashes), and he’d have to be a 4.6 guy to miss Scott Barrett’s Speed Score threshold for future RB1 producers.

Allen’s rushing efficiency profile is also one of the best in this class, as he and Audric Estime are the only guys in it who are leaving school with above-average career marks in both Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate after having operated as Power Five workhorses for multiple seasons:

There are two main points that I want to make before we move on to Allen’s film, the first being a defense of his plateauing efficiency after a smash freshman season. In 2021, he handled a gap-heavy workload behind – according to Pro Football Focus – the nation’s third-best run-blocking offensive line, a situation he squeezed 6.8 yards per carry and a 52.4% raw Success Rate out of (marks that ranked second and tenth, respectively, among more than 80 Power Five runners with at least 100 attempts). The next year, the Badgers’ big boys dropped to 27th in PFF’s run-blocking rating at the same time that defenses took their box-stacking to an entirely new level against Allen: he faced an average of 7.37 men in the box that season, easily the most in the nation that year and the third-highest mark for any 200+ carry runner since 2018 (behind only AJ Dillon in 2019 and Blake Corum in 2023). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Allen’s per-carry average dropped to 5.4 while his Success Rate dropped to 46.3% (though both of those numbers were still above-median among high-volume runners in the Power Five conferences). I’ll also point out that Allen was averaging 5.8 yards and 3.3 yards after contact per attempt prior to incurring a shoulder injury in a mid-October matchup versus Purdue, after which those numbers fell to 4.6 and 2.2, respectively.

Allen produced nearly identical numbers in 2023 despite everything changing around him. His workload skewed very zone-heavy for the first time, and he went from playing with big personnel in traditional, under-center formations to almost exclusive deployment in shotgun sets with three wide receivers on the field. The defensive fronts got significantly lighter as teams were forced to respect the pass (Wisconsin’s pass rate went from 37% in 2021-22 to 51% in 2023), but another slight decline from the offensive line (they ranked 33rd in run-blocking rating last year) combined with significant schematic changes provide substantial reason for Allen’s play to have fallen off regardless. A young positional convert (especially one with the kind of size-imposed limitations on quickness and lateral maneuverability that Allen has) just isn’t the kind of guy you’d want in a shotgun-heavy rushing attack that keeps him from generating a head of steam and asks him to make a bunch of reads at the line of scrimmage.

Still, as I mentioned above, Allen’s 2023 numbers were as respectable as they had been in 2022. He again averaged 5.4 yards per carry and succeeded on 47.0% of his attempts, marks that both ranked 32nd among 83 Power Five runners with 100+ carries. He wasn’t dominant, but continuing to be a quality runner against major competition is an impressive feat when you consider the context around Allen’s development and shifting schematic responsibilities. In an offense completely different to what he’d previously operated in (and at a position he’s still learning), Allen succeeded on a higher percentage of his attempts in 2023 than did Trey Benson, Blake Corum, Ray Davis, Trevor Etienne, Ollie Gordon, Phil Mafah, Quinshon Judkins, Will Shipley, or TreVeyon Henderson (and for what it’s worth, PFF rated Benson, Corum, Etienne, and Henderson’s offensive lines as being better run-blocking units than Allen’s).

We’ll set aside the apologia for now. The second point I wanted to make in reference to Allen’s efficiency profile is about his underwhelming rate of missed tackles forced per attempt. His seasonal marks – all between 0.22 and 0.27 – were closer to good than great among collegiate backs, while his career number lands near the 20th percentile within the 2024 class (likely a more useful comparison group than the entire post-2006 database referred to in the earlier table, given the clear shift in PFF’s charting methodology that took place around 2018). This mediocrity tracks with one of the most common criticisms I see levied against Allen: that he doesn’t run with nearly as much power as you’d expect from a guy as big and strong as he is.

I don’t disagree with that criticism, but I also think we should keep things in perspective. In my charting process – we’ve reached the film segment of the article – Allen’s level of success through contact versus linebackers ranks a ho-hum 22nd out of 36 qualifying runners, while his success through contact versus defensive backs ranks a better-but-still-probably-disappointing 13th. Several big and tough backs fall closely alongside Allen in both of those measures, though: Bijan Robinson, Leonard Fournette, and Derrick Henry (the latter two are guys – in addition to AJ Dillon – I charted through-contact ability for specifically to create reference points for Allen and Audric Estime) all score similarly versus linebackers, while Allen easily beats out Estime, Dillon, and Henry against defensive backs. I don’t think the “Allen goes down too easily” thing is unique to him among runners in his archetype: they’ve all created their fair share of highlight runs, but we’ve also seen plenty of instances of Henry and Dillon (not to mention other tall backs who fall somewhere on the spectrum between lumbering and long-striding like Latavius Murray, Najee Harris, and LeGarrette Blount) taking tumbles that look a bit too easy when they haven’t had the opportunity to get their momentum going.

This apparent lack of power also hasn’t really shown up in Allen’s ability to gain yards through contact. While it didn’t quite measure up in the injury-affected 2022 campaign that saw him run into some of the heaviest defensive fronts of any collegiate workhorse in recent history (something that makes a pretty big difference in this area), his rate of yards after contact per attempt in both 2023 and 2021 ranked in the top-20 among high-volume Power Five runners: his 3.77 average from last season beat out the marks posted by Benson, Gordon, and Henderson, while the 4.48 yards he averaged post-contact as a freshman led all major conference backs (in a college football landscape that boasted Walker, Robinson, Dameon Pierce, Zach Charbonnet, and Breece Hall all operating at the peak of their powers, in addition to more finesse-oriented backs like Henderson, Achane, Kyren Williams, and Jahmyr Gibbs). While I’d generally concur that Allen often runs with less power than it feels like he should, I’d disagree that such a bug in his game a) is particular to him, b) has manifested in a significant way in his statistical output, or c) represents any kind of fatal flaw for his potential at the next level. If anything, this criticism underscores the disadvantage Allen has in being evaluated through an atypical lens that involves heightened preconceptions and a greater degree of “for his size” contextualizing than most other backs are met with. It often feels like underperformance, but I think his power is somewhere between completely adequate and actively good when we throw out our size-based expectations for what he should be doing.

I think Allen’s MTF numbers more directly speak to his elusiveness than his power, the former being another area in which he’s a bit of an enigma. His physicality restricts his lateral agility substantially, something that shows up in my charting process: his 64.0% success rate on evasive maneuvers ranks outside the top 30 among backs I’ve studied, and his bag of such moves is pretty limited. He leans mostly on dead legs and jump cuts, the latter of which sees him succeed less often than every other player for whom I’ve charted at least ten attempted maneuvers:

Still, his marks in these general areas are not dissimilar to those posted by other big-bodied runners:

Allen isn’t a big-time make-you-miss guy, but neither is Estime and neither were Dillon and Henry back in college. It kinda just comes with the territory of being a muscle-bound mountain at running back.

These lowish marks speak to the lumbering awkwardness that many perceive in Allen’s game, and while I certainly see that at times too, I also see the complete opposite sprinkled throughout his tape: slick footwork, clean and quick upfield transitions, deft maneuvering through tight and shifting creases at the line of scrimmage. Whether “for his size” or just straightforwardly so, Allen often looks much more agile than his reputation would have you believe (though I also recognize that there are many who are high on him precisely because he moves so well for a big back):

That slickness produced tracking grades that rank near the top of the studied population on both gap and zone concepts. The rest of Allen’s cerebral toolkit is pretty understated, but I do think he’s less of a project in terms of behind-the-line-of-scrimmage decision-making than other evaluators seem to. I’ll refer again to the fact that he was both productive and consistently able to generate positive outcomes in two vastly different schemes during his three years in Madison, but Allen’s rate of negatively-graded plays came out remarkably low on zone and gap runs in my charting process: he ranks fourth among qualifiers in this area on the latter, and is tied for first on the former.

That’s not to say that I think he’s some sort of backfield savant. Allen’s rate of neutrally-graded plays is above-average in both categories, and he’s generally just along for the ride of whatever his offensive line is able to produce on a given carry (plus whatever his athletic and physical traits are able to add on top of it). He’s not notably patient or decisive or disciplined, and higher-level skills like manipulating defenders out of position or identifying viable extra-structural paths are mostly absent from his game. Still, I don’t see him doing much harm behind the line of scrimmage, at least not more than the average prospect from the last couple of years has.

To the same point, I actually think Allen displays decent vision on zone concepts. He’s not creative, but he tends to hit the right holes, and he’s nimble enough to transition upfield cleanly on outside zone runs and to slide between shifting creases on inside zone plays. He does feel – in that he’s big, strong, and relatively inexperienced – like more of a gap runner, however, and his by-the-books approach might be better suited to a steady diet of counter, power, and pin & pull concepts at the next level, especially given that we probably can’t count on him enjoying in the NFL the same combination of light(ish) box counts and quality offensive line play that he benefited from in his transition to a zone-heavy scheme in 2023. Either way, I don’t view Allen as being especially scheme-dependent at the next level: there are lots of guys who don’t have much experience with one or the other concept, with facing heavy defensive fronts, or with operating in a pro-style rushing attack, and while he hasn’t been solely focused on honing his running back skills for as long as most prospects, none of those other things can really be said about the former Badger.

I suspect that I’ve come across as either contrarian or wishy-washy at various points in this article, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree. Much of the difficulty in evaluating Allen is in his inconsistency. There are times when he gets stuck in the mud and becomes a sitting duck in the backfield, and there are others when he steps away from penetration and slides into an open crease with the fluidity of a 210-pound runner. There are times when a defensive back cuts him down at the second level like a skateboard taking out a trash can, and there are others when he puts his head down, aligns his feet and shoulders, and drags multiple linebackers for five or six yards.

The contrarian aspect of all this is probably the most difficult, and it has resulted in my feeling less confident in my Allen evaluation than I am for most other players. I see the same things in his play that induce frustration in other analysts, and to a certain extent I’m willing to defer to the wisdom of the crowds (I’m far from the most experienced or technically skilled film evaluator in the world). But I also think consensus has gone a bit too far in painting Allen’s game as if it is overwhelmingly skewed toward its negative aspects, and especially in bringing preconceived notions of what a big and strong back “should” run like to his evaluation. He’s not Superman, but he is good through contact, nimble in navigating backfield traffic, and inoffensive in his general decision-making patterns. Pass-protection will have to be his ticket to anything more than a two-down role (because he’s not a good receiver), but I don’t view him as a riskier proposition as a pure rushing option than many other guys in his general archetype. It’s cool to not like Braelon Allen, but he can have limitations while still being a fine running back prospect with a decent combination of floor and ceiling.