Evaluating prospects is not easy. Even the best models trained to predict NFL production generally don’t boast r-squared values above the .500 mark, and NFL teams themselves spend substantial amounts of money, time, and man-power all to miss on 70% of their selections in the yearly Draft. Just go down the historical list of number-one overall picks -- even with months of prep time, access to medical records, in-person interviews, extensive background information, athletic testing numbers, footage from every snap for every player, and more, NFL teams strike out just as often as they hit home runs when they get first choice out of a nearly endless pool of eligible amateurs at selecting a single guy to help their team.
That difficulty in correctly assessing player ability is made worse when the film -- the best representation we have of a player’s tangible, on-field skills -- does not match the numerical results of that on-field play. We know this story well: Isaiah Spiller was the RB1 or RB2 of last year’s class based on the merits of what he put on film for three years as an all-conference performer in the SEC, but when the data says he can’t play, what do you do? And what of the opposite scenario, where the film says no and the data says yes? Spreadsheet jockeys will tell you they’re just playing the odds with their predictive metrics, but claiming “outlier” whenever a box-checking analytical darling fails to hit in the league (or when an analytics dud does hit) is a pretty convenient way of excusing yourself for misevaluating players like N’Keal Harry that many of the tape-grinding ilk would’ve told you was overrated.
But this article is not a rehashing of the endless (and mindless) film versus analytics debate -- instead, it is a celebration of one player for whom those two things exist in perfect harmony: TCU’s Kendre Miller. I theorized in an article last month that, given what the shape of his rushing efficiency profile suggests about his skillset in a stylistic sense, “it’s likely important that Miller proves to be a high-level athlete during his testing this spring.” He opted out of Combine drills due to ongoing recovery from an MCL sprain he suffered in the CFP semis against Michigan (and we may not even see him test at a Pro Day), but the importance of Miller’s athletic ability in the context of his running style has only increased for me since studying what he put on tape as a junior. Let’s explore that dynamic, as well other key takeaways from that film study and the seamless marriage it forms with Miller’s analytical profile:
THE GOOD
It’s probably helpful for clarity purposes to first explain how my film study process works (full disclosure: I got carried away writing this section. It’s all helpful for understanding how I came to my conclusions about Miller, but not absolutely necessary for understanding the conclusions themselves. Jump to the picture of Miller if you’d rather just get to the analysis). Basically, I watch 100 carries (or as many as I can find) of each running back, classify each rushing attempt based on the blocking concept used (gap or zone), and then grade performance on every play positively, neutrally, or negatively in six areas: vision, patience, discipline, decisiveness, tracking, and baiting. Those categories are graded in the context of a player’s individual body type and skillset, as well as of the game state (time remaining, field position, down-and-distance situation, etc.) and the structural design of the particular play in question. They are categorized as follows:
Vision is the ability to read defensive positioning, leverage, and/or momentum in order to identify and commit to a path conducive to maximizing yardage available.
Patience is the ability to exhibit active restraint and composure in allowing external circumstances to develop and ultimately create a path conducive to maximizing yardage available.
Discipline is the ability to exhibit active restraint and composure in declining suboptimal, premature, and/or structurally inappropriate avenues in favor of later-developing, structurally appropriate, and/or more viable paths.
Decisiveness is the ability to quickly identify and physically commit to a circumstantially appropriate path.
Tracking is the ability to position one’s self and orient one’s path in relation to the positioning, leverage, and/or momentum of blockers and defenders in ways conducive to maximizing yardage available.
Baiting is the ability to manipulate the positioning, leverage, and/or momentum of defenders via one’s own positioning, orientation, and/or gesticulations in ways conducive to maximizing yardage available.
I also grade performance in the open field more generally and based on a runner’s reading defensive positioning, leverage, and/or momentum in order to identify and physically commit to paths conducive to maximizing yardage available, though such a grade is not necessary on every play.
From there, I’m able to compare how often each running back earns positive, neutral, or negative grades on a per-carry level and specific to the blocking concept executed on each run type. Overall grades in each category are generated using play-level averages and expressed on a -1-to-1 scale (between negative and positive, with 0 representing a net neutral grade).
In addition to grading these decision making-based categories, I also chart performance in the context of evasive maneuvers and physical interactions with defenders. Each attempted evasive maneuver (defined as an effort to evade one or more immediately viable tackle attempts through means other than speed, power, or gesticulation) is noted and categorized as either a success or failure and as belonging to one of ten different categories (dead leg, spin, jump cut, etc.). Physical interactions with defenders are categorized based on two factors: type of defender and type of contact. Defenders are classified as defensive linemen, linebackers, and defensive backs, and contact is classified as head-on, from the side, or from a reach. Those types of contact are more specifically defined as follows:
Head-on: runner and defender make solid bodily contact while oriented along the same approximate north-south path, relative to the runner’s positioning, orientation, and momentum and in the 90-degree window centered due north from his chest (excluding body-to-below-knee contact).
Side: runner and defender make solid bodily contact while oriented along perpendicular or chasing paths in the 270-degree window spanning the runner’s sides and back, from 45° to 315°. (additionally, includes body-to-below-knee contact from any direction).
Reach: runner is contacted by defender using no less than one forearm or two hands, and no more than two forearms.
Once the nature and source of contact are categorized, I make note of its result. Disqualifying situations that involve slips, non-grab trips, or obvious surrenderous intent (sliding, running out of bounds, etc.), the results of contact are categorized and defined as follows:
Broken: runner does not go down as a result of tackle attempt.
Extra Yards: runner is successfully tackled, but uses steps, hands to ground, or other extra-momentous effort to gain extra yards through contact.
Stalemate: runner and defender bring equivalent force that results in dual stoppage of momentum not resulting in successful tackle or extra yardage gained sans assistance from teammates.
Taken Down: runner is successfully tackled in the normal course of his own forward momentum and without extra-momentous effort adding extra yards through contact, as defined above.
Pushed Back: runner is overpowered by defender, resulting in successful tackle with stoppage of forward momentum and lost ground relative to location of collision (by north-south or east-west orientation).
From there, I generate numerical scores indicating how solidly a runner is contacted on average (expressed on a 0-2 scale from “reach” to “head-on”), how frequently he attempts evasive maneuvers, how varied his repertoire of evasive maneuvers is, and how successful he is at powering through contact from each and all kinds of contact (expressed on a five-level scale from -2, or “pushed back”, to 2, or “broken”).
Allow me to translate: despite attempting to evade defenders relatively infrequently and succeeding relatively infrequently on those attempts, Miller took slightly less-direct contact from would-be tacklers than most backs in this class did in college (to be clear, this is something largely within a back’s control via micro-movements, varied pacing, body contortions, etc.). Perhaps aided by those relatively-glancing blows, Miller was excellent at powering through contact from defensive linemen, linebackers, and defenders in general. His success in physical encounters with defensive linemen is ridiculous, as his average outcome is nearly three times better than the average and behind only DeWayne McBride in the 2023 class, a guy who had carries versus Group of 5 defenders make up 87% of his charted sample (Miller’s sample is made up exclusively of carries versus Power 5 opponents).
Miller is just so good at squeezing every possible yard out of each rushing attempt (at least from the point of contact) -- he squirms and lunges and crawls for whatever he can get before going down, posting better numbers on from-the-side tackle attempts from linebackers than five of his 2023 classmates posted on the same types of attempts from defensive backs. His rate of powering through contact on from-the-side attempts from defensive linemen is higher than the from-the-side rates against linebackers for eight runners in this class (including those of big, physical runners like McBride and Bijan Robinson). It’s hard not to think of guys like Javonte Williams, Dameon Pierce, and Chris Carson when you watch this dude run.
THE BAD
Another point I made in that original piece on Miller was that his high-end aptitude on the margins (breaking tackles, extending runs into the secondary, etc.) “looks like an unreliable buoy for overall efficiency numbers that are nothing to write home about,” and I fear that may also be true of the relationship between his physical traits and his cerebral or technical skills at the line of scrimmage.
From a cerebral standpoint, Miller’s best traits are his patience and his ability to manipulate defenders. His net 0.04 patience grade on zone runs is tied for third-highest among 2023 runners, and his 0.12 grade in the same category on gap runs is second-highest. His 0.08 baiting grade is third-best in the class on gap runs. Frustratingly, Miller’s net grades in the other decision-making categories are not nearly as impressive:
For pretty much every back I’ve watched, vision receives either a positive or negative grade (meaning not neutral) far more often on a per-attempt basis than any of the other categories do, and in many cases more often than all of the other categories do combined. In other words, a runner’s ability to identify and commit to a viable path manifests itself in an active way far more frequently than do his other cerebral traits. Because of that, Miller’s poor vision (and I would categorize it as poor) would be enough to contend with as he attempts to carve out an NFL role, but the impact of that weakness is compounded by a lack of discipline in adhering to structure, meal-ticket patience that can manifest counterproductively as indecisiveness, and often careless tracking. Indeed, Miller received negative vision grades at the highest and fourth-highest rates, respectively, on gap and zone runs on a per-attempt basis among backs in this class, but he also received negative grades on all other categories combined at the second-highest rate on zone runs and at the fourth-highest rate overall.
All of that combines to paint the picture of a player who, just as the analytical profile suggested, is effective largely due to the physical abilities (and, to be fair, the heart, grit, determination, etc.) that enable him to break a lot of tackles but lacks the nuance necessary to consistently produce positive outcomes at the line of scrimmage. Miller’s negative career mark in Relative Success Rate says that, his prominent position on the Volatility Index says that, and the film grades agree.
The key to projecting such a player to the next level is assessing the level of physical dominance that he required to be as successful as he was as a collegian and determining whether he’ll enjoy a similar advantage in the NFL. Based on the natural filtering process that results in the average NFL player (let alone the average starter) being bigger and more athletic than the average college player (even in the Power 5 conferences), our baseline for nearly every prospect should be an anticipation that technical ability and mental aptitude will be of greater importance in the professional ranks. Impressive athletic testing can alleviate some of that pressure, but Miller’s MCL injury may have ruined his chance to meet the high thresholds made necessary by his mistake-ridden film. Without that confirmation, an enthusiastic recommendation is hard to justify.
I don’t think I’d be able to get on board with Miller as one of the top few backs in this class even if he were healthy and tested well. He was a good college player and I genuinely loved watching his film, but the holes present in his game are a lot to overcome even for the best athletes: Antonio Gibson is 6’1 and nearly 230 pounds, runs sub-4.4, and broke the most tackles on a per-attempt basis of any runner in my entire database as a part-time running back at Memphis, and he’s had trouble keeping a solid grip on the Washington backfield due to a lack of technical skill and inconsistency in many of the small-but-important aspects of playing his position. With nothing close to the dynamic receiving chops and no proof of the high-end athleticism that help keep a guy like Gibson on the field, how can we be confident in Miller commanding heavy work?
I do believe the tackle-breaking will continue to cover up some sins, and Miller’s ceiling is probably a short-term, Alex Collins-type lead back chair or an early-career Marion Barber-style 1B-role as the battering ram in a two-man backfield. If he doesn’t reach those heights, he could stick around as an energetic and explosive change-of-pace runner (I’d say this is the most likely outcome), but the shortcomings are pervasive enough that I believe irrelevance is Miller’s floor.