This is the last article that will be published on noahmoreparties.com for the foreseeable future. I want to sincerely thank everyone who has supported me and this project over the last year+, and I hope I was able to provide some value – informational, entertainment, whatever – to you during that time. I’d like to send especially big shoutouts to Chris Bartolomei, Ryan McDowell, Ryan Lopes, Nate Liss, Matt Kelley, Felix Sharpe, and Nick Ercolano, who each played a big part in my journey from posting-bad-takes-on-Reddit to doing-football-analysis-full-time. It’s been a fun ride and a huge learning experience.

That said, I’ll be stepping back from writing (and maybe even thinking!) about football after this piece, in order to prepare to move across the country to begin law school at Washington University in St. Louis later this summer.

Nobody will continue to be charged, but existing subscriptions will retain access to the relevant paywalled content (rankings, articles, or both) through the end of August (and those who are not currently subscribed can gain access to paywalled content through the summer via a one-time payment over on the new Access page), at which point all paywalls will be lifted and the site’s entire archive will be made publicly available. I’m not sure where (or if at all) running back analysis fits into this next chapter of my life, but my guess is I won’t stay permanently retired from evaluating prospects. I’d like to put out a yearly guide outlining my thoughts on the rookie class each spring, but we’ll have to see what my schedule and motivation look like when the time comes.

For now, I leave you with this piece of post-draft analysis on the current class, as well as with some forward-looking takes on what appears to be a stacked group of 2025 runners. Enjoy, and thanks again for all the support.

Scheme Fit and Situational Upside

The surrounding talent in Carolina is not great. The team just went 2-15 and finished the 2023 season with the fewest points and yards of any offense in the NFL, and boasted a bottom-five run-blocking unit according to Pro Football Focus grades. They did address some of their blocking woes in free agency via the additions of tackle Yosh Nijman and guards Robert Hunt and Damien Lewis (all three of them multi-year starters, Hunt boasting really solid PFF grades), and Bryce Young will have more weapons at his disposal with Diontae Johnson, Xavier Legette, and Ja’Tavion Sanders (as well as Brooks himself) now in the mix. New head coach Dave Canales coaxed Pro Bowl-level seasons out of both Geno Smith and Baker Mayfield in the last two years (as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator, respectively), so it seems reasonable to be tentatively optimistic about seeing a functioning – though likely still low-calorie – offense in Carolina in 2024.

Brooks does seem like a good schematic fit for the system Canales will likely run. The rushing attacks in Seattle (where Canales was an offensive assistant from 2010 to 2022) have been zone-heavy since the Marshawn Lynch days, while the Tampa Bay offense that Canales led in 2023 had zone runs make up more than 68% of total running back attempts. The new coach has said that he plans to run “whatever we can block and coach the best” in Carolina, and while his current team saw most of their success running power concepts last year, Brooks profiles as a zone runner, and all three of the newly acquired offensive linemen come from zone-heavy systems. Rachaad White’s heavy and varied passing-game usage from last season perhaps also portends exciting things for the use of Brooks’ receiving skill-set.

Opportunity and Speculative Role

Recent history tells us that backs drafted in the range Brooks was selected in will get every opportunity to become their team’s workhorse runners. Last season saw the Panthers deploy their RB1 (first Miles Sanders but by week six it was clearly Chuba Hubbard) on a weekly average of 64% of offensive snaps, though Canales (as well as new offensive coordinator Brad Idzik) most recently led the 2023 Tampa Bay offense that trotted out White – one of the least efficient lead runners in the league – on nearly 80% of the weekly snaps. Prior to that one-year stint with the Buccaneers, Canales (and Idzik) was a key assistant in Seattle, where throughout his tenure the team deployed Lynch and then Chris Carson as high-volume workhorses. Brooks’ ACL recovery and the presence of a dependable veteran in Hubbard on the roster combine to make the kind of 300-touch workload that Canales’ past runners have enjoyed an unlikely event for the rookie, but I’d anticipate Brooks ascending to the top of the depth chart and earning a significant snap share (probably via a legitimate all-situations role) as soon as he’s truly healthy (which could be week two or week twelve, who knows).

Future Considerations

Hubbard is in the final year of his deal and Sanders has a potential out in his contract following 2024 as well, so the runway is open for a healthy Brooks to set up shop in a cleared-out backfield after his rookie season. The bigger issue to consider here is the development of Young and the resulting life-span of Canales’ tenure: if the quarterback starts making strides in year two, then we could be looking at an ascendent offense creating a cushy situation for a young and versatile running back, but if Young just can’t play, then Canales probably won’t last long in this job and Brooks may be mired in situational purgatory for the duration of his rookie contract.

Scheme Fit and Situational Upside

Arizona feels like a good spot for Benson. They ran one of the gap-heaviest rushing schemes in the league last season, and offensive coordinator Drew Petzing was part of staffs in Cleveland that deployed Nick Chubb on mostly gap runs in both 2021 and 2022. Benson bears some superficial similarities to Chubb in that he’s big, fast, and breaks a bunch of tackles, and his reckless tendencies were curtailed a bit at Florida State on gap concepts that didn’t require him to make a ton of decisions at the line of scrimmage.

The infrastructure of this offense is also solid. They have a quality quarterback in Kyler Murray, a decent trio of pass-catchers in tight end Trey McBride, receiver Michael Wilson, and rookie wideout Marvin Harrison Jr., and a revamped offensive line that – after James Conner gained five yards per carry a season ago – now boasts veteran tackle Jonah Williams in addition to fourth-round guard Isaiah Adams (and they added 6’5 and 271-pound tight end Tip Reiman – a blocking specialist – in the third round). It’s not a sexy group, but Pro Football Network notes that last year’s unit already cleared a league-high 3.1 yards before contact per attempt for its running backs.

Opportunity and Speculative Role

Conner’s 2023 performance suggests he still has something left in the tank, so Benson should slot in as Arizona’s day-one RB2. The team mostly unsuccessfully cycled through Emari Demercado, Keaontay Ingram, and Michael Carter as Conner’s primary backup (and injury fill-in) last year, and Benson is obviously better than all of those guys. The non-Conner runners averaged just 6.4 touches combined in games in which Conner played at least 50% of the snaps in 2023, and I expect Benson to approach that number on his own as a rookie. I don’t have a good read on which particular niches the rookie will be used to supplement Conner in early on (reviews are mixed on his pass-protection abilities, he’s not a reliable decision-maker behind the line of scrimmage, and Conner is a do-it-all back who doesn’t need to be pulled off the field in any specific situation), but his explosiveness will demand playing time and touches regardless of the specific circumstances he ends up being deployed in. He has enough juice to make a statistical impact on light opportunities, and Benson will have RB1 upside in the few weeks that Conner will inevitably miss during the course of the season.

Future Considerations

Conner is entering the last year of his contract, so the opportunity is there for Benson to step into a three-down role as soon as next season. Whether that happens or not is going to depend on the relationship between his explosive play-making ability, his rough-around-the-edges rawness, and his growth over the course of his rookie year. Dynamic talents can pull off a bunch of exciting plays and nonetheless remain capped below their hypothetical ceilings due to frustrating inconsistencies (as we’ve seen in recent years with attempts to supplement players like D’Andre Swift and Kenneth Walker with steadier running mates), and Benson is certainly not immune from that kind of teasing career arc. There’s also a chance that he cleans up his rough edges and becomes a do-no-harm ball-carrier and reliable pass-protector under the mentorship of Conner, in which case he has the physical talent to produce like one of the best running backs in the league. I would bet more on the former outcome, but cresting even a 50% opportunity share should be enough for Benson – in his volatile, peaks-and-valleys fashion – to contribute RB2-level numbers in fantasy.

Scheme Fit and Situational Upside

The Rams had about a 45-55 gap/zone split in their running game last season, and as PFF rated their run-blocking unit as the league’s fifth-best, Kyren Williams enjoyed light defensive fronts and a lot of yards before contact on his way to one of the highest Success Rates and one of the highest per-carry averages for any running back in the NFL in 2023. Basically, this is a good offensive line and a schematic attack that is well-suited to Corum’s strengths: the Rams ran the most inside zone and duo of any team in the league, and on those plays posted the second-highest Success Rate and gained the sixth-most yards before contact per attempt. If we limit our sample to runs into just the A and B gaps, Williams gained 4.95 yards per carry and had an average of 1.50 of those come before contact, marks both better than what Raheem Mostert averaged on a largely off-tackle running game in Miami.

Corum is the most technically-sound inside runner in the class and made a living off similar concepts during his time at Michigan. He should feel very comfortable in an offense that asks him to do many of the same things in Los Angeles.

Opportunity and Speculative Role

Corum boasts better collegiate production, a far more robust amateur efficiency profile, and vastly superior athletic testing results than the prospect version of Williams did, and while I can’t speak personally to the latter’s college tape (I hadn’t yet incorporated it into my process back in 2022), the fact that Corum was selected 81 picks before the fifth round slot at which Williams was taken suggests that at least one NFL team (and the one who selected them both) thought the Michigan man’s film was a bit (and perhaps substantially) better than the Notre Dame product’s. Basically, if Williams hadn’t run like one of the best backs in the NFL last season, there wouldn’t be much question in my mind of who the more capable of these two running backs is.

However, Williams did run like one of the best backs in the NFL last season, and he also was capable enough in the other areas of running back play that Sean McVay saw fit to deploy him on upwards of 90% of the team’s offensive snaps on any given week. In most of the marginal ways in which a modern halfback can reasonably provide value to an NFL team, Williams did for the Rams in 2023, proving emphatically that he is a capable three-down contributor at the professional level. Because of that, it’s going to take a lot for the hypothetically-better Corum to prove to be actually better than the established Williams, and I would not bet on it happening; it would be a surprise for any player to live up to the ridiculous standard that this team’s incumbent starter set last year, and on top of that to wrest control of the backfield from the guy who set that high standard (even if Williams himself doesn’t completely duplicate his insane numbers from 2023, which would be a tall task). In short, I don’t think Williams is going away.

Much has been made in the days since the draft of the powers-that-be in Los Angeles likening Corum’s game to Williams’, and there certainly are similarities. Both are compact, mistake-free runners who add value less through raw physical talent than through technical skill and schematic fidelity, both are capable enough on passing downs to warrant leaving on the field to either block or leak out for checkdown opportunities, and both seem to be high-character, high-effort presences in the locker room. As I alluded to above, Corum strikes me as being an objectively better prospect than Williams was, but I’m not willing to go so far as to say he’s the kind of 1-for-1 copy that will allow the Rams to simply tag-team these backs out for each other and have the playbook equally open with either on the field. I anticipate Corum turning out to be a capable pass-protector and dump-off receiver, but at least the first of those propositions frequently comes with a steep learning curve for young players and is something that Williams is already actively good at, and I’d be surprised if he doesn’t continue being LA’s go-to option in situations that call for those skills.

At least in the short term, I view Corum as the running back McVay probably wished he had behind his lead runner last year, a guy who can do the same things on the ground and approximate the value Williams adds on passing snaps, thereby allowing the team’s workhorse to take on something closer to a 70% snap share than the unsustainably heavy burden it was necessary for him to actually shoulder a season ago.

Future Considerations

This is a difficult situation to evaluate because the moving parts are somewhat unprecedented. As a fifth-round pick, Williams belongs to a cohort of players that you generally don’t expect to have much staying power in the league, and that you would similarly expect to be easily supplanted by a day-two selection with a stellar amateur resumé. But Williams was so good in 2023 that dismissing him as a true Mackinaw Peach seems, well, overly dismissive: guys can outperform their long-term prospects for short spurts, but generally not to the degree that Williams did and generally not for as long as Williams did. That said, Corum is good enough to seize greater opportunity if the guy in front of him does fall back down to earth (or gets hurt, which Williams has been known to do through two seasons in the league). The several paragraphs above make clear that I’m not projecting such things to happen immediately (and perhaps not at all!), but it’s certainly possible that the rookie outplays the vet and a changing of the guard takes place in Los Angeles, or that a true 50/50 split develops between guys offering comparable skill-sets.

If the status quo of Williams-as-lead-back sustains itself, then we’re looking at two years (until Williams’ rookie deal expires) of Corum-as-breather-back-and-handcuff, something that would make him valuable as a situational starter in fantasy football but ultimately disappointing given his talent profile and draft stock. If it seems like I’m being noncommittal in this section of the article, it’s because choosing one of these various outcomes as My Official Blake Corum Prediction would just be arbitrary. I don’t know if Williams is going to continue playing like a Pro Bowler, and neither does anyone else. But given my evaluation of Corum and my impression of Williams as an overachiever who has undeniably earned the trust of this coaching staff, the nebulous answer I’ve given here reflects how I view the contingent outcomes for this backfield over the next few seasons. Sorry if you were expecting a flag planted on “Corum is gonna put that bum on the bench”, but such a development just doesn’t strike me as uniquely likely among the possibilities (though I’d love to see it).

Scheme Fit and Situational Upside

As Scott Barrett points out, the Green Bay running game is a bit more zone-heavy than we’d prefer for a Lloyd landing spot. He’s a mistake-prone runner who, like Benson, would ideally be constrained within a gap-centric scheme that doesn’t ask him to make a ton of decisions. This is a befuddling team/player fit in that sense, but on the other hand the Packers have a creative head coach who has a history of using downfield pass-catching backs in effective ways. Running backs in Green Bay have enjoyed the seventh-highest Route Diversity of runners on any team in the league during Matt LaFleur’s tenure, and Lloyd has experience running a wide array of routes and making plays both up the seam and down the sideline. He’s not currently as complete a player as Aaron Jones was at his peak with the Packers, but the rookie offers similar dynamism in the passing game.

Opportunity and Speculative Role

Lloyd’s inconsistencies as a runner should keep him from making a huge dent in Josh Jacobs’ ground-based workload, but he’s explosive and versatile enough that getting him on the field in some capacity will likely be a priority for this offense. I envision a growing suite of packages in which Lloyd can be deployed, starting around 3-5 touches per game and with the upside of a 40% opportunity share by the time December rolls around. Jacobs’ slog of a 2023 season infuses some uncertainty into his short-term projection, and if he’s lost a step in the wake of huge workloads and some injury issues, there’s a chance this backfield looks a bit like the D’Andre Swift-Jamaal Williams pairing from a few years ago in Detroit before long. If the veteran is healthy and in good form, then Lloyd will probably be relegated to the kind of spot duty I speculated on above, with Jacobs carrying the ball 10-15 times per game while also flexing the receiving skills that earned him Alvin Kamara comps back at Alabama at a level he never got the opportunity to do in Las Vegas.

Future Considerations

Jacobs’ four-year contract has a built-in escape hatch that would allow the Packers to move on following the 2024 season if it turns out he’s washed or not healthy enough to count on long term. In that world, I would anticipate Green Bay reloading with another complementary piece to continue deploying a two-man backfield like they have for nearly the last decade, so the chances of Lloyd stepping into sole ownership of some three-down role – even if he’s great and even if Jacobs stinks – strikes me as slim. Jones and Williams were simultaneously useful at various times in LaFleur’s system, however, and the Jacobs-Lloyd duo are at least speculatively on a similar level of collective ability as those guys were. I believe they can and will coexist as useful fantasy assets.

Scheme Fit and Situational Upside

I was a little worried about Wright’s transition to the NFL because of the easy-mode offense he was part of at Tennessee, but Miami might be the place where his schematic understanding and comfort level with backfield decision-making would matter the least for him. The Dolphins had one of the zone-heaviest running games in a league full of zone-heavy running games last season, and while Wright graded out just okay on zone concepts in my film-charting process, and while most of his carries came on gap runs in college, he’s set up to benefit from the same kinds of situational advantages in the Miami offense that he did with the Volunteers. Among Power Five backs with 100+ attempts in 2023, only MarShawn Lloyd gained more yards before contact per attempt than Wright’s 3.08, and nobody in that group ran into lighter defensive fronts on their average carry than Wright did. Last year with the Dolphins, Raheem Mostert and De’Von Achane finished 14th and 1st, respectively, among 100+ carry NFL backs in yards before contact per attempt, and they finished 33rd and 48th, respectively, in average box count among that same group of 50 players. A whopping 56.2% of their combined carries were – according to PFF – directed outside the tackles. Wright’s learning curve should be flattened considerably in the unique setting of this point-and-shoot, space-based Miami running game, and he has his own brand of the kind of open field dynamism that launched Achane into another stratosphere of per-carry efficiency as a rookie.

Opportunity and Speculative Role

It’s unclear how much immediate opportunity there will be for Wright in Miami. In games in which both Mostert and Achane played at least 30% of the snaps last season, whoever the team’s third option in the backfield was (a role filled at various times by Salvon Ahmed, Jeff Wilson, and Christopher Brooks) received an average snap share of 12.5%, and a maximum of 23%. In games in which the third back played at least 15% of the snaps, they averaged five touches for 32 yards (with their most productive game coming via Brooks’ 9-for-66 performance in the fourth quarter of the team’s 70-20 win over Denver).

Wright profiles as a much more dynamic NFL rusher than any of those tertiary options were for the Dolphins last season, however, and while I wouldn’t rule out one of those other three players starting the season as the team’s RB3, the rookie should quickly ascend to that spot. Considering Mostert and Achane missed a combined ten games in 2023, it seems reasonable to expect Mike McDaniel to deploy a slightly more inclusive rotation in order to keep his guys healthy (Wright’s selection itself is probably evidence of this). Once Wright gets acclimated, I’d anticipate him playing about a quarter of the snaps each game, with upside to get that number closer to 40% contingent on one of the top guys getting hurt or the 32-year old Mostert being suddenly washed.

Future Considerations

There’s a potential out in Mostert’s contract following this season, and his deal expires after 2025 regardless. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an Achane/Wright backfield as soon as the latter’s sophomore campaign, a development that would produce an interesting battle between Achane’s superior technical skill and Wright’s greater size to determine inheritance of the lucrative short-yardage role that Mostert enjoyed in 2023.

The words-per-player pace I’ve been on so far in this article is completely unsustainable, so I’m going to give much more bite-sized analysis for the rest of the guys in this rookie class. I think there’s a clear enough top five that this delineation makes some sense, especially since scheme fit and the immediate task of overtaking a veteran starter are not as important for guys who got taken later and just need to prove they deserve any playing time at all.

Bucky Irving, Tampa Bay Buccaneers (4.125)

This was a bizarre selection given the Buccaneers’ existing running back situation and the other backs on the board at the time they made the pick. Supplementing Rachaad White – clearly an unqualified workhorse – with a talented specialist in this draft makes sense, but Tampa Bay went out and got one whose speciality – pass-catching – is redundant with the best part of White’s skill-set and who doesn’t profile as a guy who can actually fill in the gaps of where White struggles (as a rusher). I like Irving as a player but this fit doesn’t make sense to me and – beyond the obvious possibility of injuries and the inexplicable hypothetical in which the Tampa Bay coaching staff lets Bucky loose on passing downs and turns White into a two-down runner – I don’t see how he’s supposed to coexist with this team’s starter in a way that leads to fantasy relevance. The best thing I can say about this landing spot is they’ve done a good job of using a dynamic receiving back in the passing game over the last few seasons, but it remains to be seen how that might change under a new offensive coordinator in 2024.

Will Shipley, Philadelphia Eagles (4.127)

There’s probably not a ton of room for meaningful statistical contributions behind the do-everything Saquon Barkley in Philadelphia, but Shipley should beat out the low-ceiling Kenneth Gainwell for RB2 duties (at least eventually, as veteran experience – or deference – may pose a temporary obstacle) and therefore stand as one of the more valuable handcuffs in fantasy. I also like that Shipley landed in a spot where his weaknesses as a runner – a lack of power, most notably – will be minimized by an excellent offensive line that enabled D’Andre Swift to average the third-most yards before contact per attempt of any high-volume rusher in the NFL last season.

I also like Kendall Milton, who ended up here as a UDFA. It’s a longshot (and it kinda feels like we’ve already been through this same excited-about-a-two-down-depth-piece-in-Philly thing with Rashaad Penny, Trey Sermon, etc.), but you could do worse with a taxi squad stash than a quality thumper on a good rushing offense.

Ray Davis, Buffalo Bills (4.128)

James Cook performed admirably in his first season as an under-qualified bellcow, but Davis fills in many of the gaps in Cook’s three-down skill-set and does not have obvious, get-this-guy-off-the-field-type holes in his own game. Because of those things, he’s a good candidate to fill the same supplementary rushing role that Latavius Murray occupied last season, while also offering the Bills a much greater degree of interchangeability with their top two backs. I might just get spicy (is this even spicy?) and predict a 50% snap share for Davis by the time October ends.

Isaac Guerendo, San Francisco 49ers (4.129)

Both Elijah Mitchell and Jordan Mason are entering the final years of their rookie contracts, so 2024 is a clear opportunity for Guerendo to audition for the role of 2025 backup to Christian McCaffrey. His relative rawness as a runner means he’ll likely need the year to fully acclimate to an outside zone scheme at the NFL level, but there’s good infrastructure in San Francisco and they’ve made a habit of turning anonymous depth pieces into five-yards-per-carry spot starters over the last half-decade. Guerendo also presents more three-down ability than most 49er runners have had in the last few years, so the situational versatility with which he can give McCaffrey a breather should provide a boost to his odds of ending up as this team’s RB2 come year two. There’s projection involved here (both developmental and prognosticational), but Guerendo landed in a nearly ideal spot to become a valuable handcuff.

Braelon Allen, New York Jets (4.134)

The go-to assumption I’ve seen in regard to this situation is that, given that the Jets took two running backs in this draft (Allen here and then Isaiah Davis in the fifth round), they clearly weren’t impressed with Israel Abanikanda and weren’t going to be satisfied going into the 2024 season with him as Breece Hall’s primary backup. Perhaps these selections were an indictment on the trust this coaching staff has in Abanikanda, but I think it’s equally likely that it reflects an effort to spray-and-pray a solution to a hole at RB2 that does not yet have a clear answer. The first words out of general manager Joe Douglas’ mouth when asked about the additions of Allen and Davis in this interview were “it just brings legit competition to that room.” Maybe the Jets’ coaching staff suspects Abanikanda isn’t the answer, but we can’t possibly know that based simply on the team selecting a couple of other players at a position they were shallow at regardless (even if they like Abanikanda, you want them to go into the season with Jacques Patrick or Xazavian Valladay at RB3?).

Taking Douglas’ words at face value means treating this situation like a “legit competition”, which means Allen will need to be the best non-Hall running back on the team in order to earn significant playing time. The folks on Twitter believe that to be the case, though I view this as pretty close to a toss-up between Abanikanda and Allen (none of these margins are large, but I’d give Izzy the edge as both a runner and receiver, with Allen probably edging him out as a pass-protector). This is one of those tell-me-which-of-these-homogenous-depth-running-backs-is-actually-going-to-be-the-handcuff conundrums that you ostensibly pay me to get right, but I don’t have a ton of conviction in my preferences between this particular group of players (all three of them fell into the same tier in my combined 2022-24 prospect rankings from earlier this offseason). Gun to my head, I probably would have ranked Abanikanda ahead of Allen if they had been part of the same class, but I’m on board with taking shots on any of these three guys and hoping for the best.

Audric Estime, Denver Broncos (5.147)

Javonte Williams stans are sure that 2022 2023 2024 is finally going to be the year that their prince proves to be one of the best running backs in the league, which very well could happen if we get the first truly healthy and not-playing-next-to-Melvin-Gordon season out of him. Still, it’s hard to be sure that he’s a legitimately formidable presence atop a depth chart when we just haven’t seen that level of play from him in the NFL. That doesn’t mean I’m predicting an Estime takeover, but Sean Payton strikes me as both a meritocratic and equal-opportunity distributor of playing time at running back. He has a long history of playing talented rookies early – Reggie Bush, Mark Ingram, Alvin Kamara – and he has had no qualms with giving opportunities to low-investment players: the undrafted quartet of Pierre Thomas, Chris Ivory, Khiry Robinson, and Jaleel McLaughlin received an average of 80 carries as rookies! Basically, the guys who are playing the best are going to play the most for Payton, and pretty much everyone is going to get a shot:

That should be encouraging to the Estime hive, even more so because Estime possesses the kind of skill-set that Payton seems to appreciate in running backs. For over a decade the coach has deployed two- or three-back systems made up largely of players with enough versatility to switch-hit as rugged inside runners and reliable receiving options (Deuce McAllister, Tim Hightower, Ingram, Kamara, Williams, Samaje Perine, even Taysom Hill), and Estime is exactly that kind of back. I’m more confident he’ll get legitimate playing time than I would be for nearly any other fifth-round pick, and I’m also not convinced that he’s definitely worse than Williams.

It’s more of a longshot given the lesser investment made, but the opportunity-centric elements of the above argument also apply in Denver to the undrafted Blake Watson.

Rasheen Ali, Baltimore Ravens (5.165)

My personal prerequisites for continuing to be interested in Ali post-draft were that he a) get drafted, and b) end up on an outside zone team. He more than fulfilled that first criterion to me, as on top of simply avoiding UDFA status, he kinda was the first running back off the board after the main names in this class were no longer available. The Ravens clearly thought he was the best of a deep third tier, and while Baltimore has been in the top five of gap-heaviness in every season of Lamar Jackson’s career, they have a good offensive line and a pretty horizontal running game (more than half of Gus Edwards’ carries were directed outside the tackle last season, as were nearly two-thirds of JK Dobbins’ in 2022!) that should take advantage of many of the same strengths that make Ali a good outside zone runner.

Derrick Henry is entrenched as this team’s starter and Keaton Mitchell looks like a formidable obstacle at RB2 based on his play from last season, but Henry is old and Mitchell isn’t much bigger than Henry’s left leg. It certainly wouldn’t be unheard of for a slew of injuries to result in the third and even fourth back in Baltimore ending up with a few starts under his belt.

Tyrone Tracy Jr., New York Giants (5.166)

The Giants landing spot is a little weird in that Devin Singletary is JAGy enough to be supplantable, but he’s also the kind of JAG who sticks around and gets a lot of playing time because he’s reliable and can do a little bit of everything. As a raw and inexperienced running back whose biggest draw is natural athleticism, Tracy finds himself behind a starter who – while boring and possessing little upside – doesn’t really have a particular situation in which he absolutely needs to be taken off the field (perhaps especially on this team, since head coach Brian Daboll fed Singletary at a 227-touches-per-17-games pace during their three seasons together in Buffalo). Even guys who’ve successfully made the college-wideout-to-pro-running-back transition have frequently had trouble earning touches behind starters with far lower hypothetical ceilings: Ty Montgomery couldn’t wrestle a backfield away from a 30-year old James Starks and the bad version of Eddie Lacy, and Antonio Gibson got relegated to backup duties behind a boring Brian Robinson, and that after he’d already had a 1000-yard rushing season in the league. It strikes me as important to coaches that they be able to trust their running backs to not screw up in the modern NFL, and Tracy will probably need to get to that point before we entertain ideas of him overtaking Singletary for the RB1 spot (or even earning high-calorie touches). Tracy also isn’t definitely better than Eric Gray.

That said, I think Tracy is probably better than Gray, as well as good enough to make a positive impression with whatever early playing time he does receive. If he can supplement his natural out-in-space abilities with non-harmful decision-making, the Tony Pollard dream is very attainable on this depth chart (Tracy’s fit in the inside zone-heavy scheme isn’t ideal, but c’est la vie).

Keilan Robinson, Jacksonville (5.167)

This is actually an interesting spot for a guy I didn’t expect to be very consequential prior to the draft, because the Jacksonville coaching staff clearly doesn’t think Tank Bigsby is any good (his late-season streak of five games of playing under 5% of the offensive snaps was only broken by ten carries’ worth of playing time in the Jaguars’ 26-0 blowout over Carolina, and he only turned those attempts into 32 yards), and they’re probably right (he averaged 2.7 yards per touch last year!). The guy here who ended up playing ahead of Bigsby much of the time (outside of Travis Etienne obviously) is D’Ernest Johnson, who – with much of his rosterability coming via utility player versatility and contributions on special teams – is kind of just the older and less athletic version of what I think Keilan Robinson can be in the league. I don’t think Robinson will be fantasy relevant (even if he becomes RB2, he’s not really handcuff material), but I like his odds to carve out a real life role.

Isaiah Davis, New York Jets (5.173)

Pretty much the same analysis applies here as in the Braelon Allen blurb, with the caveat that I think Davis is worse than both Abanikanda and Allen. Again, the margins are slim, but Davis is simply my least favorite of these recent prospects (he’s also the one who is set to experience the biggest jump in level of competition from college to the NFL, for whatever that’s worth).

Kimani Vidal, Los Angeles Chargers (6.181)

With no incumbent starter and a completely new coaching regime, this appears to be one of the more up-for-grabs backfields in the NFL. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that Gus Edwards was still a 198-touch player with solid efficiency numbers last season, and that JK Dobbins has decided to not get hurt anymore. Basically, it’s not a total shoe-in that Vidal is the RB1 or even RB2 in this offense.

Still, I’m inclined to not believe Dobbins (it’s hard to trust that he’ll stay healthy, or that a “healthy” Dobbins is even a quality NFL back after all the injuries he’s sustained over the years), and Edwards is a one-dimensional player going into his age-29 season, and Vidal will get a fair shot at legitimate playing time under Jim Harbaugh. The decision-makers in Los Angeles have spoken effusively about the Troy product since drafting him, it seems likely that Vidal will end up being a good scheme fit (though we don’t know exactly how the marriage between a sans-Lamar Jackson Greg Roman running game and whatever Harbaugh brings from the duo-heavy Michigan ground attack, Roman’s schemes had a gap-heavy bent in Baltimore and Vidal has some Blake Corum to his game), and the rookie is good enough to play ahead of the diminished versions of Edwards and Dobbins that could easily show up this season.

Jase McClellan, Atlanta Falcons (6.186)

McClellan is just a worse version of the kind of breather back the Falcons already have in Tyler Allgeier, so I guess best-case scenario is that he inherits the RB2 role when Allgeier’s rookie contract expires after the 2025 season. It strikes me as more likely that someone else (a free agent, a future draftee, whatever) finds their way into that spot when the time comes.

Jawhar Jordan, Houston Texans (6.205)

I didn’t think much of Jordan’s analytical profile before the draft, but there isn’t much existing competition for the RB2 spot in Houston, at least considering that this coaching staff gave Dameon Pierce the you-can’t-play-with-us treatment last season. The next-best option behind Joe Mixon for the Texans is Dare Ogunbowale, who touched the ball ten times in twelve games in 2023. I’m not expecting much, but being in on Jordan as a “what the hell” stash who could trip his way into a 20% snap share is defensible.

Dylan Laube, Las Vegas Raiders (6.208)

That’s a cheeky tweet, but it’s also kind of how I actually view this playing out. There’s room for a decent role in this offense given the Raiders have one of the weakest running back rooms in the league, but Laube is not an NFL-level runner. He’ll fill whatever passing downs role exists for the Raiders and otherwise make most of his impact on special teams.

Some early thoughts on the 2025 running back class

Next year’s group looks stacked, and I wanted to fire off some way-too-early (and perhaps hot) takes about how I see things shaking out a year from now. Proceed with caution: