Roschon Johnson just got picked in the fourth round of the NFL Draft after a four-year college career in which he backed up both Bijan Robinson and Keaontay Ingram and never gained more than 807 yards from scrimmage in a single season. Brian Robinson was selected in the third round a year ago after a five-year college career in which a COVID-gifted extra season of eligibility allowed him an opportunity to be Alabama’s lead back following four seasons of reserve work behind everyone from Najee Harris to Bo Scarbrough. In the same draft, Dameon Pierce was drafted in the fourth round after being notoriously underutilized during a four-year career at Florida that saw him receive ten or more touches in just a third of his games. Zamir White was selected half a round later in that same draft after an amateur career in which he lost an entire year to his second ACL tear in less than twelve months and didn’t lead the Georgia backfield in scrimmage yards during his most productive season. The year prior, Rhamondre Stevenson was also taken in the fourth after four college seasons that started at the Junior College level after a post-high school gap year and ended with a 119-touch senior season at Oklahoma. The year before that, the Raiders made Josh Jacobs a first-round pick after a three-year career in which his best season saw him touch the ball just 140 times and take a backseat in the Alabama pecking order to Damien Harris, who himself was selected in the third round after four seasons of sharing backfields in Tuscaloosa.

In recent history, NFL teams have shown a consistent willingness -- as long as the players are good enough -- to invest relatively early draft capital in lightly used and only semi-productive running backs from big-time college programs. While he’s currently being drafted as the RB82 according to the devy ADP over at campus2canton.com, I propose that Ohio State’s Miyan Williams is next in that lineage of non-workhorse backs from powerhouse schools getting legitimate opportunity at the pro level.

That caveat I mentioned -- the “as long as the players are good enough” one -- is obviously the most important piece of this puzzle for Williams. As we’ve seen from late day three or even UDFA guys like Mike Weber, Bo Scarbrough, and Elijah Holyfield, simply being a player who touches the ball sometimes on a nationally contending college football team does not guarantee one the sort of draft capital that would make them interesting in fantasy football, so it’s imperative that Williams be a legitimately good running back. Luckily, I think he is, and the major evidence I have in favor of that position are the rushing efficiency numbers he’s posted through three seasons as a Buckeye:

To a certain extent, the percentile ranks listed below those metrics speak for themselves in regards to how impressive Williams’ numbers are relative to historical prospects, but let’s hone in on a couple key points. To start, if these were Williams’ career numbers (and he’s far enough removed from his high school graduation that they could be), he would have the highest missed tackles forced per attempt mark of any running back drafted in the last eight years (as far back as Pro Football Focus has been keeping track of the stat), and it wouldn’t be close: unless you count Antonio Gibson (who played wide receiver and only carried the ball 33 times at Memphis), only four runners in that timeframe -- Bijan Robinson, Javonte Williams, DeWayne McBride, Roschon Johnson -- have posted even 0.35 MTF per attempt for their college careers, with zero of them cresting the 0.40 threshold that Williams smashes.

He’s also not one of these guys who breaks a million tackles but doesn’t actually go anywhere. Last season, Williams ranked 11th in the country in yards after contact per attempt (according to PFF), ahead of guys like Johnson, Robinson, Tank Bigsby, and Zach Charbonnet, and the above efficiency numbers speak to that yard-gaining ability as well. His mark in Relative Success Rate is ridiculous, indicating an elite propensity for creating positive outcomes and keeping his offense on schedule, but Williams also produces efficiently on aggregate. His Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating is above the 120% mark that seems to represent a decent threshold for NFL success (anecdotally, at least), and it also makes the shape of his efficiency profile very similar to those of some other quality, physical runners from recent classes:

Call me crazy, but as a stoutly built -- he’s 5’9 and 225 pounds -- tackle-breaking machine who is both efficient and stupidly reliable on the ground, Williams kinda feels like a Jacobs- or Pierce-type runner. Like both of them, Williams also doesn’t do much of his damage in the open field and has outproduced his teammates on a per-carry basis while running into significantly heavier defensive fronts:

Speaking of teammates, we’ve kind of buried the lede so far that these guys that Williams has been outdoing on the ground are pretty good in their own rights: the “other” backs during Williams’ Ohio State career have averaged a collective 3.86-star rating as high school recruits, a mark that would put them in the 79th percentile among teammates of backs drafted since 2007, and the primary runner alongside Williams has been TreVeyon Henderson, a five-star guy who ran for over 1200 yards as a true freshman in the Big Ten and who is the devy RB1 of many. Williams has posted better marks than that guy in each of yards per carry, BAE Rating, RSR, and Rushing Yards Over Expected per attempt (according to Jerrick Backous’ model over at campus2canton.com) in both of the seasons in which they’ve overlapped at Ohio State so far. I don’t think it’s a hot take to say that Williams has been a better runner of the football than Henderson through the two seasons they’ve played together.

At this point in his development, Williams is not a plus contributor in the passing game: he has just 14 receptions in 25 career games, has never flexed Route Diversity beyond the 20th percentile in a single season, and has never commanded targets at a high per-route rate (his high-water mark in RATE is the 34th-percentile mark he posted on just 65 total routes in 2021). I don’t think he has bad hands -- his 77.8% to-date Catch Rate would be in the 57th percentile among eventual NFL draftees -- but he probably won’t ever be a key component of any aerial attack. That caps his fantasy upside, of course, but I don’t think it precludes him from receiving draft capital or on-field opportunity in the NFL. As evidenced by players like Jordan Howard, CJ Anderson, Damien Harris, Jeremy Hill, Beanie Wells, D’Onta Foreman, Isaiah Crowell, Doug Martin, Alex Collins, Tyler Allgeier, Chris Carson, and more, it’s possible to be a starting-level professional back and a useful fantasy asset as a bowling ball runner who doesn’t catch many passes.

With runs like this, this, this, and this littered throughout his film, Williams certainly qualifies as a bowling ball runner, a high-effort archetype that Kendre Miller, Dameon Pierce, Javonte Williams, Zack Moss, and David Montgomery -- all taken by the fourth round -- have shown to hold value inside of NFL personnel departments. It’s just tough to watch guys like that carry the ball and think anything other than “that’s the kinda dude we need on our team.” Combined with the objectively good on-field results it has produced along with a strong recent history of even breather backs from blue-blood schools getting solid opportunity in the league, that hard-charging disposition should ensure that Williams outperforms the value he currently holds in devy leagues.