There were sixteen 200+ yard single-game receiving performances across all of FBS college football last season, of which fourteen came from wide receivers. Included among those wideouts are a couple of likely first-round picks in the upcoming draft in Jalin Hyatt and Quentin Johnston, as well as other highly-touted 2023 prospects like Jonathan Mingo and Trey Palmer. Of the two of those performances that came from non-wide receivers, one was produced by Dalton Kincaid -- a player many have as a first-round quality tight end prospect in this year’s draft -- and the other was produced by a running back from Northwestern named Evan Hull, who put up 213 yards and a touchdown on 14 receptions against Duke on September 10th.

Biletnikoff Award winner Jalin Hyatt's career-high in single-game receiving yards is six yards shy of Evan Hull's

This running back class is filled with dual-purpose talents capable of putting up big-time numbers in the receiving game: Jahmyr Gibbs’ pass-catching abilities have been compared to those of Alvin Kamara, Deuce Vaughn’s have been compared to those of Darren Sproles, Kenny McIntosh is Georgia’s all-time leading receiver (by career receptions or career receiving yards) among pure running backs, and Bijan Robinson is a legitimate downfield threat in the same mold as David Johnson or Saquon Barkley. Yet, despite averaging more receptions per game for his career than any non-Gibbs or Vaughn back in this class, and despite having posted the highest single-season Target Share mark among all non-Vaughn runners in this class (and the highest mark among all running backs in the country last season), and despite having posted the highest single-season receptions total of any back in this class (and one that is higher than the career totals for at least nine 2023 runners), and despite a career-best single-game receiving yards line that is 88 yards higher than the next best line among backs in this class (the 125 that Gibbs put up on Pitt in 2021), Hull almost never gets mentioned among those other high-level receiving talents. Given his analytical profile -- and even if you ignore those impressive volume stats -- such an oversight is a travesty:

Those first two numbers represent the shape of Hull’s route tree; while running backs across the college football landscape have “basic” route types (screens, swing passes, flat routes, etc.) make up nearly 65% of their total route inventory, Hull’s tree was never made up of more than 57.1% of those types of routes. In each season of his career, the Northwestern product was running more advanced routes than the majority of college running backs do.

Partially because of that, Hull’s route tree was also far more diverse than those of most other college runners. Along with a much smaller portion of basic routes than most guys have, Hull ran outs, digs, drags, and slants all more than twice as often (and as much as 4.3 times as often) as the average college back does. Two of those routes -- the drag and the slant -- are routes that a back would have to be lined up either in the slot or out wide to run, something that Hull also did on 17.2% of Northwestern’s passing snaps for his career, an 84th-percentile mark among eventual NFL draftees. Indeed, a relatively small portion of Hull’s career targets came with him lined up in the backfield -- just 77.4% of them, a percentage lower than those for eight tenths of college backs.

Those other two routes that Hull ran often -- outs and digs -- are beyond-the-line of scrimmage routes most frequently run in the NFL by top-level pass-catchers. Pro backs collectively have out routes make up 6.3% of their total route inventory, but the average Target Share among those who run outs at least 10% of the time is 11.3%, a 78th-percentile mark that matches the Target Share posted by Josh Jacobs during his 53-reception campaign in 2022. Digs are only run 2.8% of the time in the NFL, but among backs for whom the route represents at least 5% of their tree, the average Target Share is 9.7%, a 70th-percentile portion of an NFL passing game.

Not only are runnings backs who run a large portion of outs and digs (like Hull does) more likely to be high-target players in the NFL than those who do not, high-target NFL running backs in general are disproportionately more likely to run advanced and diverse route trees (like Hull does) than not:

Further, the importance of an advanced and diverse route tree is not just present in on-field contributions, but also in fantasy football outcomes:

That said, while the ability to run a wide array of routes is valuable, it means little (for fantasy football purposes in particular) if you’re not actually earning targets on those routes. Luckily for Hull, those other two numbers on the above table indicate that he did not have any problem in this area as a collegian.

Route-Adjusted Target Earnings (or RATE) is a metric that describes how often a player gets targeted on a per-route basis, given the specific makeup of his route tree and relative to how often all backs get targeted on those routes. A mark of 100% indicates that a player was targeted exactly as often as we would expect the average college running back to be targeted on that route tree, while anything below 100% indicates that a player was targeted less often than expected to whatever degree, and vice versa for marks above 100%.

During no season in Hull’s career did he ever post a RATE mark below 125.4%, which means that he was consistently being targeted a full 25% more often on a per-route basis than backs across the country are. For every four targets that Gibbs, Tyjae Spears, or Devon Achane earned last season (when the three of them posted RATE marks between 97.0% and 104.2%), Hull earned five.

For some players, a high RATE just means that they were being fed a steady diet of screens and checkdowns, something that was true of Hull throughout his career: on basic routes alone, he never posted a single-season RATE below 107.6%, and his career mark on basic routes is 111.9%. However, unlike many dump-off funnels (such as Zach Charbonnet, whose receiving profile I examined here), Hull also earned targets on advanced, downfield route types at a high clip. His single-season RATE on advanced routes (outs, digs, slants, wheel routes, etc.) never dipped below 114.4%, meaning that for every seven targets that Vaughn, McIntosh, or Gibbs earned on non-basic route types last season (when the four of them posted Advanced RATE marks between 96.3% and 99.4%), Hull earned eight.

Evan Hull earned targets on advanced routes at a higher clip in 2022 than Deuce Vaughn and the other top receiving backs in this year's class did.

The importance of commanding targets at a high per-route clip should be self-evident, but for the sake of illustration: since 2016, the average RATE among NFL running backs with a single-season Target Share of at least 10% (a threshold I chose because it’s a round number, it’s right at the 70th-percentile, and it’s just below the average Target Share mark for 65+ target runners, which is the average for RB1-level producers) is 117.8%, with just 36 of 158 such backs (22.8%) below the 100% mark. There have been zero pro runners in the last seven years who posted Target Shares of at least 16% (an elite mark that produces an average of 89 targets in a single season) while earning targets at a sub-100% RATE.

In addition to his deep bag as a route runner, Hull also boasts solid marks in some of the traditional, big-picture receiving efficiency metrics:

While Hull’s per-reception metrics are not great, I don’t think those subpar numbers are actually reflective of subpar ability. Rather, they are largely a function of Hull’s usage: his aDOT of 0.9 is a 62nd-percentile mark, and it follows logically that running backs who are frequently targeted beyond the line of scrimmage more often have defenders in their immediate proximity upon securing the catch, and therefore are at a disadvantage in the yards after the catch department compared to backs who most often catch the ball behind the line of scrimmage and with no defenders within yards of them. That’s also borne out in the numbers: historical prospects with career YAC per reception marks above the 50th-percentile (0.4) average fewer YAC per reception (on average, 9.1 to 10.1, or the difference between the 45th and 66th percentiles) than those with career aDOTs below the 50th-percentile. In just the 2023 class, running backs with aDOTs within a half yard of Hull’s collectively average 8.9 YAC per reception, and only three of those eleven runners (Gibbs, McIntosh, and Sean Tucker) have career aDOTs above the 50th percentile.

In short, Hull’s below-average mark in YAC per reception (and, largely by extension, the same goes for his yards per reception mark) is very much a result of the areas on the field in which he was typically catching the ball, and not strong evidence of a lack of ability out in space (if you’re unconvinced, here are some examples of him not being a slug with the ball in his hands: 1, 2, and 3 below).

That relatively high aDOT also probably has something to do with Hull’s career Catch Rate mark coming in barely above the 50th-percentile, as it’s more difficult to catch passes beyond the line of scrimmage and with defenders actually covering you than it is to do so while unbothered in the backfield. In any case, I don’t think it’s fair to conclude that he has mediocre hands: Hull’s career True Catch Rate mark of 89.4% is higher than the same for Gibbs or Vaughn.

Ultimately, Evan Hull deserves much more buzz as a sleeper in this class than he’s currently getting. He’s a versatile route-runner, he commands targets at a high rate, he has just as much pass-catching production as the big name receiving backs in this class do, and he impressed next to the best four-year prospects in this year’s Draft at the Senior Bowl. On top of all that, he’s got quality marks in my go-to rushing efficiency metrics (something I’ll expand on in a later piece), he has the legitimate NFL size (he was listed at 5’11 and 210 pounds last season, and based on historical measurement patterns for eventual NFL backs, I project he’ll be 5’10 ½” and 212 pounds at the Combine) that several of the satellite back-types in this class are lacking, and he’s probably pretty fast (his 10.71-second personal best time in the 100-meter dash is faster than the PRs for noted burners Sean Tucker and Israel Abanikanda).

If those last two points come to fruition, the spreadsheet virgins will have no choice but to get on board (a 4.47-second 40-yard dash time at 212 pounds would give Hull a virtually equivalent Speed Score to what Rachaad White posted at last year’s Combine). I advise that you don’t wait for them.