There is nothing actionable about the information in this article. Unless you play in a weird league, guys from FCS schools are not even part of the devy player pool, so the first time you’ll have a chance to invest in Isaiah Davis as a fantasy asset is during rookie drafts next spring, or perhaps in 2025 if he opts to return to South Dakota State for a COVID-gifted fifth year of eligibility and a shot at another National Championship (he already has one, and his Jackrabbits enter 2023 with a whopping 24 of 25 first-place votes in the FCS coaches’ preseason poll). Still, I think Davis is an interesting professional prospect and worth early consideration as a potential late round pick in those future rookie drafts.

To start, you have to be intrigued with Davis even if based solely on the Inter-referential Law of Evaluating Players Based on Who Their College Teammates Were. Pierre Strong might not have shown enough in this preseason to keep the Patriots from bringing in the sallow husk of Ezekiel Elliott to serve in their RB2 spot, but he was a fourth-round pick who averaged ten yards per carry on light work as an NFL rookie: his collegiate resume was enough for New England to invest solid draft capital in him despite the lower level of competition at which he played, and then he showed he belonged on the field with professionals in limited opportunity. Strong’s main draw as a prospect was his explosiveness and the on-field efficiency that resulted from it, but even during his time as an upperclassman lead back on some nationally-contending South Dakota State squads, the younger Davis was more effective as a runner on a per-carry basis.

When Strong was averaging 5.4 yards per carry on just under 15 carries per game as a junior, the freshman version of Davis was averaging 8.5 (!!) yards per carry and ripping off explosive gains at an 8.6% greater clip than were the other backs on the team (a 96th-percentile Chunk Rate+) on a 9.6-carry per-game workload. When Strong was averaging 7.0 yards per carry on 16 carries per game as a junior, a second-year Davis was averaging 7.4 yards per carry and producing a CR+ mark of 8.0% (a 95th-percentile figure) on nearly 14 carries per game despite -- according to his bio on the team website -- “being slowed by injury during the regular season”. Now, after a junior season in which he ran for over 1400 yards and scored 15 touchdowns, Davis enters his fourth year in college with the following career marks in the key rushing metrics available for FCS players:

Strong left school with marks of 1.07, 3.0%, and 0.26, respectively, in these statistical categories. If you liked him as a prospect, there aren’t many excuses for not also being in on Davis, who has been a better college runner than Strong was.

Davis also has a more robust three-down profile than Strong did. The latter entered the league as a Tevin Coleman-spectrum tweener at 5’11 and 207 pounds and with a dubious pass-catching skill-set that produced just 6.4 yards per target (a 45th-percentile mark) at the FCS level and led running back whisperer Lance Zierlein to note “stiff hands as a receiver” as one of Strong’s key weaknesses as a prospect. Davis has been listed as an NFL workhorse-like 6’1 and 220 pounds since he was a true freshman, and while he probably isn’t a plus contributor in the receiving game either, his to-date mark in yards per target is at least an above-average 6.9 (57th percentile), and his size means he hypothetically won’t be as reliant on passing-down utility for opportunity as a sub-210-pound back like Strong generally is.

Pierre Strong was an explosive producer at South Dakota State who was outshone on a per-carry basis by Isaiah Davis.

I also think Davis looks pretty solid on film. I recently watched and charted three games from his 2022 campaign: against South Dakota, at rival and National Championship runner-up North Dakota State, and on the road versus Iowa, a Big Ten team that went 8-5 and finished the season allowing just 2.8 yards per carry, the fewest for any defense in any Power Five conference (as with all college rushing numbers, that mark annoyingly includes the effect of sacks, but further proof of the Hawkeye defense’s stinginess comes via Pro Football Focus’ grading them as the fourth-best against the run among all FBS teams last season). Across those games, Davis ran for a total of 272 yards and 4 touchdowns on 47 carries.

Davis’ usage on gap and zone concepts in those contests was split close to 50/50, and -- as has been the case in my charting results for other players on dominant offenses -- while I don’t believe his performance on gap runs lends itself to making conclusive proclamations about his ability given the passive approach to decision-making allowed by the Jackrabbits’ quality offensive line (they ranked 18th out of 130 FCS teams in PFF’s run-blocking grade last season), he was actively good on zone plays. Other than this play on which I thought Davis missed a crease through the B gap, I didn’t give him a single negative vision grade on any zone run. Level of competition caveats apply, but his resulting composite score on zone runs was 0.88, trailing only DeWayne McBride’s 0.91 among backs I’ve studied thus far.

On those plays, Davis earned above-average grades in the areas of vision and patience (ranking sixth and fifth, respectively, among 27 studied runners), but he was particularly impressive in the area of tracking, where his 0.29 total score barely edges out Deuce Vaughn’s 0.28 for the top spot among backs I’ve watched. Here’s a short compilation of all the plays on which I gave Davis a positive tracking grade, showing his ability to navigate through tight creases, ride the wave of his blocks to reach backside openings, and generally position himself in relation to blockers and defenders in intelligent and efficient ways in the backfield and through the first level:

On that fifth run (the touchdown against North Dakota State), you’ll also notice Davis’ ability to gain extra yards through contact at the second level of the defense. His highlight tape shows similar things, but my charting found him to not be an especially successful through-contact runner in the aggregate. His performance against defensive linemen in that regard produced a power-versus score of 0.09 that falls slightly short of the average among runners i’ve studied, with a quartet of undersized runners in Zach Evans, Tyjae Spears, Eric Gray, and Sean Tucker landing right above him on the population leaderboard. Against linebackers, Davis’ -0.13 is well below the population average of 0.11. A relatively low number of interactions with defensive backs means his performance there doesn’t quite qualify for comparison with guys for whom I’ve been able to chart more carries, but if we fudge the numbers and throw him into consideration anyway, Davis’ through-contact ability against secondary defenders matches Tank Bigsby’s 0.48 score and lands in the top half of studied runners.

Basically, Davis is a hard runner who’s able to string multiple broken tackles together while careening bull-in-a-china-shop style through hapless FCS corners and safeties, but the power that I observed him bringing to most tackle attempts -- which generally take place right around the line of scrimmage -- is not proportional to his workhorse size. He’s able to supplement that lack of zero- or little-inertia brawn with decent elusiveness, however, with a success rate on evasive maneuvers above the 75% mark (the population average is 68.5%) and a Contact Solidity number lower than those for all but three runners I’ve charted (Braelon Allen, Gray, and Carson Steele).

Overall, I came away a bit underwhelmed by the physical and athletic advantages that I assumed Davis would have over his FCS competition, but he’s a quality decision-maker -- especially on zone runs -- and has the sort of efficiency and production numbers that have been good enough for non-FBS backs to receive draft day consideration in the past. We’ll revisit things after the season, but right now I’d bet on Davis as a sixth or seventh round pick with rotational two-down upside in the NFL.