I’m not sure how we got to mid (late??) March without my having published a Jonathon Brooks article, especially given the fact that by the time I’d checked my notes on him in preparation for appearing on this episode of the Dynasty Points podcast, I’d already watched and charted seven games’ and nearly 140 carries’ worth of his film. I watched yet another of his games (the one against TCU) as a refresher prior to speaking on that pod and sitting down to write this article, and I’m excited to share my thoughts on a guy who many consider the best running back in the 2024 class.

We’ll start with his numbers-based rushing efficiency profile, which was consistently solid throughout his three seasons at Texas:

The above table is color-coded based on Brooks’ percentile ranks in these various metrics relative to eventual NFL draftees, and among that population, his marks – especially in Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating but also to some degree in Relative Success Rate – don’t immediately jump out as impressive. I included the average star-rating of his collective teammates in each of his seasons, though, because I believe that team-relative efficiency necessarily entails grading on a curve: if we want to adjust output based on the output of others operating within the same offensive environment, we also need to calibrate our takeaways based on how good those other players are.

In Brooks’ case, his situational baseline was defined by the output of players who are among the most talented at their position in all of college football. In 2021, he was the fourth option in a backfield that boasted Bijan Robinson, Roschon Johnson, and Keilan Robinson (himself a dynamic athlete and interesting role player in the current class). In 2022, he was the third option in the same foursome, but with the added presence of four-star freshman Jaydon Blue at the end of the depth chart. In 2023, Brooks operated as the bellcow in a running back pecking order otherwise occupied by Keilan Robinson, Blue, three-star sophomore and wide receiver convert Savion Red, and five-star freshman and consensus number-one recruit CJ Baxter.

Over his career, Brooks’ teammates averaged 4.36 stars as high school recruits, making them the most talented group of backfield mates belonging to any runner in the 2024 class, as well as the 26th-most talented such group belonging to any eventual draftee from the last 18 draft offseasons. While his BAE Ratings are more mediocre than awe-inspiring when taken at face value, it certainly means something that Brooks was adding value to the contributions of an elite set of teammates. Indeed, both Bijan Robinson and Roschon Johnson left school with career BAE Ratings below the 33rd percentile, illustrating the cannibalistic nature that team-relative efficiency marks can have among talented backs being compared to each other.

Further encouraging elements can be found elsewhere in Brooks’ efficiency profile:

If it’s appropriate to attribute Brooks’ less-than-great Chunk Rate+ marks to the same dynamic that we used to explain his less-than-great BAE Ratings – though I will also point out that CR+ is not box count-adjusted, so the fact that he ran into heavier defensive fronts than did his Longhorn running mates is not accounted for in that metric – then Brooks’ overall efficiency profile can be reasonably interpreted as impressive across the board, save for the fact that he didn’t create explosive plays more often than a group of backfield teammates that included several elite recruits and the most highly-touted running back prospect of the last decade. If that’s the worst thing we can say about a guy, we’re doing pretty good.

As I just alluded to, the other elements of this efficiency profile are largely nice. Despite playing with the top-tier talent we’ve been talking about, Brooks exceeded the level to which they generated positive outcomes on a carry-to-carry basis in every year of his career. You don’t do that without doing things right at the line of scrimmage. And while we don’t have athletic testing numbers from Brooks, his marks in both missed tackles forced per attempt and Breakaway Conversion Rate indicate that he has enough dynamic juice to succeed in the open field and in interactions with defenders. Steve Sarkisian also says Brooks reached 22 miles per hour on this touchdown run against Baylor, so – assuming he didn’t just pull that number out of his ass – long speed is unlikely to be an issue either:

For whatever it’s worth, the complete list of backs in the last ten years who a) were drafted prior to day three, and b) left school with 80th-percentile-or-better marks in both MTF per attempt and BCR, consists of Travis Etienne, Kendre Miller, Tyjae Spears, and Kenneth Walker. Among the dozen-ish backs who ended their college careers with such numbers but weren’t selected prior to day three are names like Michael Carter, Keaton Mitchell, Rhamondre Stevenson, and Jaylen Warren. That particular mix of on-field traits – high-end elusiveness combined with field-flipping ability at the second and third levels – is often enough on its own for guys to find niches in the league.

Brooks’ film jives pretty cleanly with his efficiency numbers. Among the 35+ backs for whom I’ve charted a significant amount of carries in the last two offseasons, he grades out as the second-best decision-maker on zone concepts. On those plays, his average marks in vision, patience, discipline, decisiveness, and tracking all come out higher than the respective population means.

Brooks is especially good on outside zone runs, where his vision grade comes out above the population average and where his overall grade – posted on nearly the largest sample of such runs that I’ve encountered for any single back in my film-charting to date – is easily the highest of any runner I’ve studied. Here’s how he stacks up in those categories next to all the other players for whom I’ve charted at least ten outside zone runs:

With the acknowledgement that my memory of the 2023 backs in this particular area is not as clear as my current estimation of Brooks’ ability, I’d go so far as to say that Brooks strikes me as a notably good outside zone runner who is probably the best at executing runs of that type of any player I’ve studied. While his vision grade on these plays is “just” above average, his seemingly natural feel for navigating all the necessary components of an outside zone run – pacing himself well to the outside, smoothly transitioning into an upfield orientation, riding the wave of his blocks, etc. – makes him a pleasure to watch on them. I think the best way to communicate how impressed I’ve been by his ability in this area is to simply show you this compilation of positively-graded outside zone runs from his film (I’ve also included some plays that I categorized as “wide zone”; the distinction between the two is not completely clear to me and – depending on what source you decide to use – sometimes seems to not actually exist; revoke my ball-knowers card if you must, but I typically distinguish between these two concepts by noting “wide” zone when a play looks too horizontal to be true inside zone and too vertical to be true outside zone):

While I believe the decision-making process displayed by Brooks on each of those runs was sound, you’ll notice that they weren’t all explosive plays. That’s just the nature of playing football against other people who are good at football, but I also think it’s symptomatic of perhaps the biggest weakness in Brooks’ overall game: the frequency with which he goes down on first contact.

That reality is not reflected in either his missed tackles forced or yards after contact per attempt averages, which both ranked near the top of nation-wide runners in all three of his collegiate seasons. Where it does show up in an obvious way is on film, something which manifests in the through-contact numbers produced in my charting process. There – and out of 33 qualifying runners – Brooks’ marks rank 27th against defensive linemen, 17th against linebackers, and 29th against defensive backs. I discussed a similar dynamic a bit in my recent article on Ray Davis, in which I posited that we “shouldn’t view Davis’ lack of through-contact success versus defensive linemen and defensive backs as an indictment of his literal power against those position groups, but rather as a symptom of his individual running style.” I think that’s also true to some extent of Brooks, but it does feel a bit more fundamental in his case. For one, Brooks was notably less successful in his physical interactions with linebackers than Davis was (at least in the games I’ve charted of each), and secondly, Brooks is a significantly taller and thinner runner than Davis. He showed up to the Combine at 6’ ⅜” and 216 pounds, giving him Kenny McIntosh- or Rachaad White-like proportions if we take those measurements at face value (and McIntosh and White are both relatively skinny backs), and given that Brooks a) didn’t participate in athletic testing (obviously through no fault of his own), and b) was a 185-pound recruit who was listed at 207 pounds during his final college season, I think it’s fair to assume that he plays at a substantially lighter weight than what the scale reflected in Indianapolis. Combine that with his propensity to run fairly tall – the evidence for this can be found in the outside zone compilation I linked above (or in pretty much any other video of Brooks running you might come across) – and I don’t think it’s surprising that he doesn’t run with as much direct power as you might expect from a guy with impressive YAC and MTF numbers.

I theorize that those through-contact numbers from Pro Football Focus look as good as they do because Brooks has a subtle and self-contained elusivity that allows him to minimize contact and make defenders miss, especially when he has a decent runway. In other words: if we’re judging running backs on their ability to run through X tackle attempt in a way that is stylistically neutral and uniform across players, Brooks is not going to grade out well, but if we allow them the freedom to set up and modify X tackle attempt based on their own stylistic strengths and strategic bent, Brooks is going to grade out rather nicely. It’s true that – all things being equal – Brooks’ height, thin frame, and high-carrying style make him liable to get cut down by tackle attempts that many other backs would power through more easily, but it’s also true that – because all things are not equal – he often is able to sidestep or completely avoid the tackle attempts that many other backs would be forced to power through. There’s a give and take there, but Brooks seems (at least in college) to have found an approach that makes the most of what he does well.

My last complaint with Brooks’ game is what I would call antsiness or uncertainty on gap plays, particularly on duo concepts. Despite accounting for just 13% of the 158 runs of his that I’ve charted, duo plays saw Brooks earn 36% of all negatively-graded examples of vision, discipline, and decisiveness that I noted in his film. Here are a few examples (note that in duo, the running back’s job is to read the playside middle linebacker and either bang inside or bounce outside):

On some of those plays, he simply makes the wrong read. On others, he kind of fails to make any read at all and instead waffles between choices before getting swallowed up near the line of scrimmage. On some others, he makes a fine read but fails to press to a block in order to manipulate a defender out of position, or he drifts into no-man’s land on the edge instead of riding the back of a tackle or tight end to get upfield. Brooks’ sloppiness on those plays is interesting compared to the control and discipline he displays on zone runs, and it also tends to show up when he’s following pullers to the outside on power or counter plays. I don’t have a good theory as to why, but he is simply a more mistake-prone runner on gap concepts: his rate of negatively-graded such plays is the fourth-highest for any back I’ve studied, contributing to an overall score on gap runs that ranks 24th of 33 qualifying runners.

I don’t think these are fatal flaws, however, and I remain very impressed by Brooks overall. He’s one of the smoothest athletes in this running back class, and while the way his power manifests in direct contact situations leaves something to be desired, he is subtly elusive, has a fantastic feel for zone runs, and displays good vision and slaloming ability that allows him to extend chunk gains deeper into the secondary. His receiving profile is also one of the best in this class, especially among guys who profile as quality early-down runners. I’ve seen Aaron Jones presented as a Brooks comp pretty frequently, and I think it’s a good one – Jakob Sanderson connected their games on the common thread of “gliding” up the field, a trait that inspired the subtitle for this article and that I also see Brooks sharing with Jahmyr Gibbs and Zach Evans. Another guy who does that is Tony Pollard, who is probably my go-to comp for Brooks given the similarity in their body types and in their combination of smoothness paired with less-than-stellar power. In any case, Brooks is a worthy candidate for 2024 RB1 honors and a guy I expect to be a productive player in the NFL.