After being completely uninterested based on my initial pass through his data profile, I found myself singing a different tune about Kimani Vidal after he tested like Bijan Robinson at the Combine. Since then, I’ve taken a more focused look through his rushing efficiency profile and have watched and charted three games’ and nearly 70 carries’ worth of his 2023 film, and I want to share my thoughts on each of those things here.

We’ll start with his rushing efficiency numbers:

The general mediocrity of the above marks was the reason I didn’t think much of Vidal at first, and they still provide good reason to exercise some caution with his overall evaluation. After all, when you’re a four-year player at a small school (albeit one that went 23-5 and finished first and second, respectively, in the Sun Belt over the last two seasons), we’d like to see you smash the efficiency of your 2.65-star teammates (an average recruiting rating that lands in the 26th percentile among the teammates of post-2006 draftees). Unfortunately, while Vidal was undeniably a good and productive college runner during his time at Troy, his team-relative numbers simply don’t stack up well against those of most recent prospects. Especially concerning is his Relative Success Rate, which indicates he added zero value in terms of producing positive outcomes on a per-carry basis above the rate at which his collective teammates were doing so. His 2023 marks were a bit better in that area – he produced a 2.9% RSR – but that’s still just a 55th-percentile number among eventual draft picks and was his only positive mark in the metric since the 0.2% figure he managed on a 101-carry workload as a true freshman. Vidal wasn’t adding a ton of yardage to his situational baseline on a per-carry basis, and he wasn’t adding any chain-moving value.

At risk of being an intellectually inconsistent flip-flopper, though, I think it’s appropriate to focus on the positives in Vidal’s profile in light of his stellar Combine performance. I generally don’t like to shift my opinions much based on athletic testing data, but a) I hadn’t watched any of Vidal’s film prior to his smash showing at Indianapolis, so it’s not like I’m moving him up based on a forty-yard dash time that departs significantly from how fast I thought he’d be, and b) it seems like he’s not going to be expensive in rookie drafts, and letting the positives wag the dog of an evaluation is much easier to stomach (and might even be the optimal move) when you’re not forcing yourself into overlooking the negatives of a guy that represents a much harsher risk/reward proposition.

If that’s the case, then allow me to spin a narrative about how Kimani Vidal, owner of an underwhelming efficiency profile, might nonetheless be a quality NFL prospect. First of all, I think we can attribute some of his relatively unimpressive efficiency to his lack of open-field prowess, as well as to some adverse circumstances in general. The first of these is easy to understand: seeing as Vidal was producing chunk gains significantly more often than his teammates were but not turning those chunks into breakaway runs at a high rate, it makes sense that his Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and YPC+ and even raw per-carry averages might not look amazing. You can be a good ball-carrier without being a good open-field runner, and such a dynamic would result in deflated efficiency numbers that don’t actually reflect a lack of ability in most (read: first- and second-level) areas of the field.

The second point there is relevant especially for Vidal’s raw numbers. Particularly in 2023, the Trojan (work)horse faced arguably the toughest circumstances for any back in the country on his carries. For one, he had the highest workload of any collegiate runner, a burden compounded by the fact that he faced 6.84 defenders in the box on his average attempt, a 77th-percentile mark for all college backs and the second-heaviest defensive fronts seen by any of the highest-volume runners in the country (behind only those faced by Blake Corum). All that is made worse by the ineptitude of the Troy offensive line, which finished the year ranked 115th (out of 133 teams!) in Pro Football Focus’ run-blocking rating. Despite that confluence of factors, Vidal finished fifth, eleventh, eleventh, and twelfth, respectively, among the 27 FBS backs with 200+ attempts in missed tackles forced per attempt, raw yards per carry, raw ten-yard run rate, and yards after contact per attempt. Turning lemons into lemonade was the theme of his 2023 season.

Vidal’s skill at navigating the circumstantial trash of his carries last year is also reflected in his film. I spent some time this week watching and charting as much of that tape as I could find, which amounted to the games against Kansas State, Western Kentucky, and South Alabama that saw him gain a total of 363 yards on 68 carries. Because a lack of all-22 film resulted in my having to use broadcast angle footage for that charting, I’m less married to the grades generated than I normally would be, but I think some helpful insights can be gleaned regardless.

First, over 70% of the carries I charted came on interior concepts like inside zone and duo, and – as far as I could tell from the sideways angle available to me – Vidal executed these plays rather well. He reminded me a bit of Corum in the way that he consistently identified a viable gap, pressed to the line of scrimmage or to the outside of a block in order to manipulate a defender out of position, and then darted through the appropriate (and now vacated) crease. He wasn’t quite as diligent as Corum in tracking tightly in those instances, and his transition from lateral to upfield movement was sometimes clunky, but at the very least he showed a sound understanding of how to read a defensive front and leverage his blocks to make the most of each interior run.

The best trait Vidal showed on film is his power and contact balance, perhaps best exemplified by this run against Western Kentucky:

Nearly the entire repertoire is on display there, as Vidal bounces out of a head-on collision with a linebacker, uses a straight arm to fend off a defensive back, and shifts his weight to absorb a push and tip-toe down the sideline for a dive at the pylon.

Vidal is notable among backs I’ve studied for the success he achieved especially in physical interactions with defensive lineman, where he posted the fourth-best through-contact marks out of 34 qualifying runners (trailing only Roschon Johnson, DeWayne McBride, Zach Charbonnet, and Omarion Hampton). On from-the-side tackle attempts from that position group, Vidal was more likely to either gain extra yardage through contact or completely break free than he was to be taken down in the normal course of his forward momentum, something that can’t be said for any other running back for whom I’ve charted at least 20 such interactions. Much of that power comes from Vidal’s combination of a low center of gravity and a propensity to continually churn his legs until every drop has been wringed out of the rag of each play. The 213 pounds he carries on a 5’7 frame certainly helps in that regard, and he makes the most of that fire hydrant stature by consistently being the low man in his physical encounters with defenders:

If I’m being completely frank, I don’t believe Vidal’s film really lives up to the standard of his athletic testing numbers. His Breakaway Conversion Rate matches with my subjective take that he doesn’t beat angles or avoid getting chased down like you’d expect from a sub-4.5 runner in a Group of Five conference (though he did reach 21.3 miles per hour on this touchdown run against Arkansas State), and – as I alluded to earlier – his slow-footedness in navigating interior traffic and transitioning from a lateral to an upfield path belies the 78th-percentile Agility Score he posted at the Combine. On the other hand, his 78th-percentile Burst Score certainly shows up in the lower-body strength he displays in powering through contact for extra yardage.

Overall, I like Vidal as a late round option in this running back class, and he’s probably my favorite guy outside the dozen-or-so “big” names at the top. I don’t have a comp that I love, but I’ve seen names like Josh Jacobs, Frank Gore (senior), and CJ Anderson thrown out, and while I don’t expect Vidal to be as productive in the league as any of those guys were, I think we’re on the right track stylistically. In my mind, he’s perfect for the kind of role that the Jaguars seemed to envision Tank Bigsby filling before they resulted he sucks early on last season: short-yardage, pass-protection (PFF says Vidal is the second-best in this area among 2024 backs), and other various blue-collar duties.