The most surprising move of the NFL Draft may have been the Detroit Lions’ selection of Jahmyr Gibbs with the 12th pick in the first round. According to grindingthemocks.com, Gibbs’ expected draft position entering Thursday evening was 28.1, a mark that made him the 31st-ranked player in the website’s database, so his being selected in the early teens made him the biggest reach in the first round relative to those pre-Draft expectations:

Arguments about positional value and claims of offensive weaponhood aside, I’m excited about what the surprisingly substantial capital spent on Gibbs means for his potential as a fantasy producer. As I noted in Sunday’s article exploring Bijan Robinson’s fit with the Falcons, running backs drafted in the top half of the first round in this century have averaged 14.7 carries per game as rookies, enough for 250 over the course of a 17-game season. Subjectively, Gibbs’ situation is a little unique in that he’s an undersized back going to a team with a proven, newly-acquired two-down pounder (David Montgomery) following a season with a similarly-constructed backfield in which the guy filling the two-down pounder role (Jamaal Williams) handled 262 rushing attempts, so tempering our expectations about his year-one role is probably wise. Gibbs’ fellow small runners in our post-2000 early first-round selection group -- Christian McCaffrey, CJ Spiller, and Reggie Bush -- averaged 7.5 carries per game as rookies while sharing backfields with proven two-down pounders in Jonathan Stewart, Fred Jackson, and Deuce McAllister, respectively. Those per-game rates would be good for a 17-game total just under 130 totes, and I’d anticipate a number between that and McCaffrey’s first-year sum of 184 for Gibbs in 2023. In some version of the same role that Gibbs is likely to play in the Detroit offense, the since-traded D’Andre Swift handled 151 carries two years ago.

It didn’t work out for him in Detroit, but D’Andre Swift provides much of the blueprint for how Jahmyr Gibbs fits in this Lions offense.

With some caveats that I’ll dive into in a bit, I think the usage that Swift saw the last few years with the Lions is a decent guide for how we should expect Gibbs to be used, first of all because the two backs are similar players archetypically. Swift came into the league at 13 pounds heavier than Gibbs does, but both of them were timeshare space backs who had relatively low rushing workloads (12.35 carries per game for Gibbs compared to 10.23 for Swift) and situationally advantageous ground opportunity (their Box Count+ marks were -0.16 and -0.13, respectively) while exhibiting deployment versatility (Gibbs lined up out wide or in the slot on 14.2% of his pass routes while Swift did so on 10.7% of his, marks both above the 65th percentile) and subpar consistency as rushers (their career marks in RSR come in at -3.6% for Gibbs and -1.5% for Swift) at the collegiate level. While the combination of his unreliable availability and the frustrating decisions he makes as a runner resulted in his falling out of favor in Detroit, the type of role that Swift has filled on the field in the NFL has largely lined up with what we should’ve expected for him coming out of Georgia as well as what we should probably expect for Gibbs coming out of Alabama.

In that sense, the Gibbs pick is a do-over for a team that clearly wants the sort of dynamic versatility that this archetype of back ideally brings to an offense. Fortunately for Detroit, I believe Gibbs has some key advantages over Swift that should allow him to flourish in areas where the new Philadelphia Eagle floundered.

To contribute in valuable ways in the mold that Swift and Gibbs both generally fall into, a back needs to be excellent as a receiver, great out in space, and -- at the very least -- provide do-no-harm levels of competence as a ball-carrier. Reasons to believe Gibbs can perform better than Swift exist in each of those areas.

To start, while Swift has been a good pass-catcher thus far in his NFL career, it’s simply true that Gibbs is on a different level in that area than Swift was when he was drafted. Their respective marks in key receiving categories as collegians were as follows:

Respectively, these metrics are indicative of the size and variety of a player’s route-running repertoire, his ability to get open and command targets on advanced, downfield pass patterns against coverage defenders, the softness of his hands when the ball is thrown his way, and his overall efficiency as a pass-catcher, and Gibbs smashes Swift in each of them. As I noted above, Swift has been a productive and effective receiver as a pro, but there’s good reason to expect Gibbs to be one of the few elites in that category on day one of his NFL career.

The last category on that table is largely influenced by after-the-catch ability, another key area in which Gibbs is just better than Swift. While the former Georgia Bulldog posted an above-average (56th-percentile) 7.6 YAC per reception mark in his college career, Gibbs’ 11.7 lands in the 86th percentile. The 0.29 missed tackles he forced per (rushing) attempt is also an 86th-percentile number, indicative of the unique ability he has to duck his shoulders, swing his hips, vary his pacing, and make subtle cuts to both shed and evade tacklers out in space. Gibbs is legitimately special in this area (he’s the only sub-200-pound runner in my database of NFL draftees to post such a number against Power 5 competition), while Swift’s mark in the same metric was a 0.21 that lands in the 48th percentile among pro prospects.

Though Gibbs is better than him in the pass-catching and make-you-miss aspects of running back play, it wasn’t due to deficiencies in these areas that Swift fell out of favor in Detroit. Instead, it was probably due to a combination of his inability to stay on the field (whether that’s a fair criticism or not, he missed at least three games in each of his three seasons in Detroit) and his tendency to bail on structure in favor of fool’s gold bounce opportunities as a runner. Truthfully, that boom/bust style didn’t actually result in boom/bust outcomes for him in either 2020 or 2022 (something I’ll likely address in a later Swift-in-Philly article), but he was both inefficient and brutally inconsistent on a down-to-down basis during what must have been an incredibly frustrating 2021 season for Lions fans and coaches:

Since 2016, only eight backs with 100 or more carries in a single season have posted a lower Relative Success Rate than the one Swift produced in his second year in the league, and (again, fair or not) such unreliable output is probably hard for a coaching staff to forget when it comes from a guy you’re counting on to be a big part of your offense. Though he followed it up with greater measurable consistency in 2022, the sour taste that Swift’s 2021 must have left in Dan Campbell’s mouth likely made a return any time the young back turned down a designed gap to chase a speculative big play opportunity last season, and he now finds himself in Philadelphia as a result.

Gibbs will enjoy the clean slate that comes from simply being Not Swift in the hearts and minds of the powers that be in Detroit going forward, but I also think he’ll create fewer of those frustrating moments on the field than his predecessor did. As I noted earlier, Gibbs’ collegiate RSR was even worse than Swift’s, but based on my film study of Gibbs, that inconsistent output was more a result of a lack of play strength than it was due to chicken-with-its-head-cut-off decision-making patterns.

Among sixteen runners in this rookie class for whom I watched and charted a significant amount of runs this offseason, Gibbs powered through contact at the fourth-lowest rate (ahead of only Eric Gray, Chase Brown, and Deuce Vaughn) but earned grades in vision and discipline on both gap and zone concepts that were largely very good:

Gibbs is simply a sound decision-maker behind the line of scrimmage, something that should endear him to Lions coaches after their traumatic experiences with Swift, not to mention that it will also serve him well on the field.

Still, I’m on the record all over the place this offseason noting that I don’t believe Gibbs is a great pure runner, and despite his cerebral strengths, I do believe that criticism of his game is fair. His lack of through-contact ability hurts him, particularly on inside runs, and perhaps because of that weakness, there’s some skittishness to his game -- he’ll sometimes overreact to perceived threats in his periphery and make unnecessary hesitations, cuts, or evasive maneuvers as a result. Even so, those are subtler issues that are less likely to earn him the ire of coaches than what Swift exhibited, so I’m not particularly worried about Gibbs playing his way out of volume despite not being an excellent between-the-tackles runner.

The other piece of this whole pie is Gibbs’ schematic fit in Ben Johnson’s offense. The staff in Detroit is obviously hyped to have Jahmyr on their team, and I’m sure they’re cooking up ways to maximize his talents as we speak. Based on how we saw Swift deployed in the passing game, simply slotting Gibbs into that role would be excellent for his upside as a fantasy producer. Even as he frustrated with the ball in his hands, Swift posted per-game fantasy numbers between 13.6 and 16.1 points while enjoying route participation rates in the 69th, 96th, and 79th percentiles, respectively, and garnering targets that made up 83rd, 94th, and 90th percentile shares, respectively, of the passing game in his three seasons as a Lion. The things he was asked to do as a route-runner also fit well with Gibbs’ skillset.

Route Diversity is an area in which the men can separate themselves from the boys in terms of PPR output, and Gibbs’ deep route-running bag should allow him to slot into Swift-vacated trees that never dipped below the 74th-percentile in that category. Specifically, the Swift role in this offense has been heavy on usage on angle and wheel routes that represent some of the most valuable (according to league-wide yards per route run numbers) patterns in the running back tree and that also happen to be right in Gibbs’ wheelhouse: he saw ridiculous usage (in terms of routes run and targets earned) on angle routes at both Georgia Tech and Alabama, and while he wasn’t allowed to run up the sideline much in Tuscaloosa, Gibbs ran wheel routes at more than double the CFB-wide average in both of his seasons at Tech (and earned targets at a significantly higher rate than the CFB mean on those routes in all three of his collegiate seasons). Gibbs is awesome at the rarest and most valuable running back routes, and he’s now on a team who we know will scheme up their most dynamic backs on those routes.

It’s less clear what the Lions plan to do schematically in the running game, as Johnson is entering just his second season as the architect of this offense and now has a completely revamped running back room. Detroit leaned slightly run-heavy (at least relative to league-wide rates) with a 50% early-down and neutral game script (when win probability for either team did not exceed 80%) run rate last season, and gap runs made up the sixth-highest portion of their total rushing attempts among all NFL teams. Gibbs is probably best suited to an outside zone scheme, and Montgomery comes from a Chicago squad that has had one of the zone-heaviest running games in the entire sport in recent years (particularly prior to last season, as a ridiculous 76% of carries by Bears running backs came on zone plays from 2019 to 2021, a rate in the 98th-percentile). This season will tell us a lot about Johnson’s willingness to adjust his scheme to fit the strengths of the players executing it (or, conversely, about Gibbs’ and Montgomery’s respective abilities to perform in a gap-heavy offense).

As a Detroit Lion, David Montgomery will be part of what could be a very different type of rushing attack than what he’s become accustomed to in Chicago.

I don’t know how that aspect of things will shake out, but I do think the presence of Montgomery and Gibbs in place of Williams and Swift in this backfield will allow the Lions to be less predictable on offense. As I mentioned earlier, Swift had high route participation rates in the past couple seasons, and that large passing-game role was joined by Box Count+ numbers of -0.10 and -0.58 (in the 39th and 5th percentiles), respectively, in 2021 and 2022, and a total of 27 short-yardage carries (with three or fewer yards to gain) across those two years. Williams, on the other hand, ran routes on just 18.5% of Detroit’s passing snaps in his two years with the team (a 14th-percentile rate) while having Box Count+ numbers of 0.13 and 0.58 (in the 71st and 97th percentiles), respectively, in 2021 and 2022 to go along with 92 combined short-yardage carries as a Lion. Basically, Swift was a pure passing-down back who almost exclusively ran against light boxes while Williams’ role was the opposite.

As a guy who ran routes on over 50% of Chicago’s dropbacks in each of the last two seasons (as well as on 49.7% of them in 2020) and has a 54-reception campaign on his resumé, Montgomery is much more of a three-down back than Williams is, and while Gibbs will probably never be a great inside or short-yardage runner, the vision and discipline we discussed earlier make him better suited for that sort of work than Swift was. Those more well-rounded skill-sets -- should Johnson opt to take advantage of them -- will give Detroit a greater degree of interchangeability in the deployment of their backs than they’ve had in recent years, which could mean more goalline opportunities for Gibbs than Swift ever got as a Lion.

Whether that particular possibility manifests itself or not, I’m fairly excited about this landing spot for Gibbs. I’ve taken a pretty positive tone throughout this article, mostly because I think D’Andre Swift already showed us that the bummer outcome for this archetype of player in this situation is mid-RB2-level production, so true bust status feels virtually off the table assuming Gibbs can stay healthy and things don’t implode around him. As it stands, he’s on a good offense with a ready-made receiving role that should accentuate his unique talents while paired with a quarterback in Jared Goff who, in the last two years, has thrown the ball to running backs on basic and advanced route types at per-route rates 20.9% and 42.1%, respectively, higher than do passers league-wide (marks in the 68th and 83rd percentiles). On top of that, he’s got sneaky avenues to high-leverage touches in the running game and draft capital-insulated opportunity that keeps the Reggie Bush outcomes I’ve been hoping for in play starting this season and throughout the duration of his rookie contract, even if he’s the 1B runner in Detroit. He’s an easy 1.02 for me in single-QB rookie drafts.