I recently combed through all-star game invites and the recesses of David Willsey’s Twitter timeline to put together an aspirationally comprehensive list of all the running backs who are eligible for the 2024 draft. The resulting inventory contains 78 total players (it was correctly pointed out that my list was missing Miyan Williams, but it also erroneously included a wide receiver in Tulane’s Jha’Quan Jackson), 29 of whom ended their college careers at schools outside the FBS ranks. As is always the case with these types of players, little is known about their skillsets and resumes at this point in the process, but as we’ve seen Austin Ekeler, James Robinson, David Johnson, Jerick McKinnon, and others provide fantasy utility from these ranks in recent NFL history, I wanted to kick-off prospecting season with a primer on the most interesting and most NFL-qualified runners among them.

Isaiah Davis is the first in that group, as well as the only one of these guys who I was familiar with prior to the start of the 2023 season. Back in August, I concluded based on tape study that Davis would likely be a “sixth or seventh round pick with rotational two-down upside in the NFL”, and I still think that’s a decent projection (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he was gone by the fourth round!). He just finished up a four-year career at South Dakota State in which he a) averaged 7.95 yards on 191 carries in a breather-back role behind Pierre Strong (who averaged 6.61 yards per carry in the same span) as an underclassman, b) ran for over 3000 yards and scored 33 rushing touchdowns in his final two seasons, c) caught 44 passes for 372 receiving yards in those last years, d) won two FCS National Championships, e) was listed at an NFL workhorse-like 6’1 and 220 pounds in all four years, and f) did enough to earn an invitation to next month’s Senior Bowl (as far as I can tell, as one of just two non-FBS runners on this year’s roster). He has the best mix of NFL size, legitimate production, efficient on-field play, and not-taking-six-years-to-finish-his-college-career of any small school back in this year’s draft class.

The other one of these non-FBS backs to receive a Senior Bowl invitation is Dylan Laube from New Hampshire, a sixth-year declare who also received an invitation to this year’s Scouting Combine. Laube seems to have a staunch fanbase already, and perhaps for good reason, as the rareness of his receiving skill-set should be a major differentiator between him and the more traditional running backs sprinkled throughout this class. After redshirting in 2018, Laube went 28-412-4 as a sophomore pass-catcher, and following a 68-699-7 receiving line in 2023 (all first among Division I runners at the FCS and FBS levels), his career numbers landed at 171 receptions, 1791 yards, and 14 touchdowns. Laube had double-digit receptions in a single game three different times last season, including a 12-295-2 performance against an FBS opponent in Central Michigan. It also seems that he’s not just catching dump-offs out in the flat:

In addition to his skills in the passing game, Laube is an accomplished kick and punt returner. I’m not 100% confident in the comprehensiveness of my database in this particular area, but Laube’s 124 career returns look to be the most for any running back draftee since at least 2015 (and the fourth-most since at least 2007), and he took two each of kickoffs and punts back for touchdowns during his final two seasons at New Hampshire.

Perhaps ironically, the area in which I’m least convinced of Laube’s NFL potential is as a runner. He averaged fewer than five yards per carry for his career and in each of his final two seasons in the Coastal Athletic Association, and – according to Pro Football Focus – gained just 2.80 yards after contact per attempt over his career (for reference, Marcus Carroll had the same YAC average at Georgia State this season, ranking 128th out of the 157 FBS backs with at least 100 attempts). I’m currently operating under the assumption that the 208-pound Laube is a similar prospect to Evan Hull, who left Northwestern a year ago as a 209-pounder with versatile receiving skills and dubious pure rushing ability.

Let’s move on to the more obscure (i.e., not invited to the Senior Bowl) small school backs in this class, starting with a guy who ran for over 1000 yards in three straight seasons to end his college career:

Geno Hess was listed at a CJ Anderson-like 5’8 and 225 pounds at Southeast Missouri State last season, where he averaged 0.99 yards per carry more than the collective other runners produced from 2021 to 2023, the same timeframe in which he ran for a total of 3814 yards. The bummer aspect of Hess’ profile is that he spent six years in college, redshirted as a freshman back in 2018, and didn’t catch more than nine passes in a single season until he went 28-220 through the air in 2023. His accomplishments peaked with first-team All-America honors after he ran for nearly 1700 yards in 2022.

One of the four-year declares in this group is Jaden Shirden out of Monmouth (where we got Pete Guerriero a couple years ago), a 195-pounder who ran 4.45 in the forty-yard dash as a high school kid and then gained 3200 rushing yards in his final two college seasons. He’s a classic big play runner: he had 87 runs of 10+ yards, 52 runs of 15+ yards, and gained 42.3% of his total yardage in the open field (10+ yards downfield) during his three-year career at Monmouth:

I say “three-year career” because Shirden actually spent his first post-high school year at Cheshire Academy, a college prep and boarding school in Connecticut, before joining the Hawks in 2021. He played only three seasons of college ball as a result, but his first year on campus saw him run for nearly 500 yards at 6.5 per carry (while the team’s starting tailback averaged just 4.6). Shirden caught a modest 25 passes in his career and has very little special teams experience, so it seems like he’ll have to either make an impression solely based on his ability to run the ball or pull some versatility out of his hat if he’s going to latch on with an NFL team. He’ll have his first opportunity to do those things at the East-West Shrine Bowl, where he’ll be the only non-FBS player in a running back group that includes Jonathon Brooks, Carson Steele, and Frank Gore Jr.

Thus concludes the portion of this article covering guys who I think we have semi-strong reason to believe might be able to play in the league. For various reasons, these last four players are a tier down from that level.

Let’s start this crop of long-shot-but-at-least-still-interesting runners with Jarveon Howard of Alcorn State, a 200-pound back who is somewhat unique among players covered here in that he started his college career at a Power Five program in Syracuse. He contributed well there for much of his first two seasons at school, with a combined 144-652-10 rushing line in 2018 and 2019, and then ran for nearly 1300 yards in his first year with the Braves in 2022. Howard finished out his career by nearly posting 1000 yards from scrimmage in back to back years (he fell 43 yards short in 2023). He doesn’t have a smash profile, but Howard at least performed well against FBS competition as a young player and then proved productive in a larger role at the FCS level.

Thurlow Wilkins is also vaguely interesting. He started his career at Tusculum College (a DII school), where he redshirted in 2018 but then ran for 486 yards and went 19-620-1 as a kick returner in 2019 (earning him all-conference honors). It seems like he was at ASA Miami in 2020 and 2021, through the private for-profit institution has since closed and does not have easily tracked down football stats regardless. After that, Wilkins ended up at Concord University, where he ran for nearly 1200 yards at more than six per carry in 2022. Basically, his intrigue comes from a combination of good size – he was listed at 205 pounds last year and projects to weigh 210 during this pre-draft process – and legitimate production as both a runner and kick returner.

Another player who deserves mention is Juwon Farri, who finished up his college career at Eastern Illinois after spending five seasons at Monmouth (where he ran ahead of Shirden). He ran for over 1000 yards as a true freshman back in 2018, giving him some of the earliest production of any draft-eligible 2024 back. His candidacy as an NFL hopeful pretty much ends with his precociousness, however, as the 205-pound Farri failed to eclipse 705 yards in any following season.

The last player I want to talk about here is Marcus Knight of Tennessee Tech, who was listed at 6’1 and 227 pounds last season and who was productive as a member of the Montana Grizzlies in the FCS’s best conference for several seasons. His career started out with a 912-yard season at Citrus Community College back in 2018, which Knight followed up with an incredible sophomore season with the Grizz: he turned 227 carries into 1030 yards and 23 touchdowns while adding 34-277-2 as a receiver. COVID and injuries cost Knight his 2020 and 2021 seasons and affected his play in both 2022 and 2023, but a strong start to his career adds to his workhorse frame and receiving chops to make him one of the most interesting FCS runners in this class.