As the man who ran Zach Evans, the highest-ranked recruit in the history of Texas Christian University, out of Fort Worth, Kendre Miller is an important figure in this year’s running back class. The ripple effects of that supplanting of the 5-star Evans have made Miller a sort of Helen of Troy; he’s the prospect that launched a thousand Twitter arguments about Evans, Quinshon Judkins, injury proneness, character concerns, high school state championship games, etc. -- I’m not very sympathetic to the “Zach Evans lost his job” interpretation of what happened at TCU (for reasons I delineate here), but I do think Miller’s being a baller was a large contributing factor to how things transpired, and ultimately has a causal relationship with the fact that there is so little consensus on who the best players in this crop are. Many people have Miller in their top-5s, and for many others, he’s a major reason for Evans not being near the top of their rankings. Clearly, understanding Miller is a key step to understanding the landscape of this year’s running backs.
To that end, here are Miller’s career marks in various rushing efficiency (and related) metrics:
In general, Miller’s composite numbers are not especially impressive except on the margins, where he broke a lot of tackles and ate up yardage in the open field. Indeed, while not to an extreme degree, Miller did gain a substantial amount of his total rushing yards in the secondary and beyond:
That’s not a necessarily a bad thing, but given that his sub-par Relative Success Rate indicates poor down-to-down consistency, Miller’s success in the open field looks like an unreliable (per Chunk Rate+, he’s not reaching the open field more often than most running back prospects did in college) buoy for overall efficiency numbers (namely, Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating) that are nothing to write home about. Miller’s status as an above-average college runner by NFL standards teeters on a sharp edge, with just 24 breakaway runs (Breakaway Conversion Rate is inherently a small-sample metric) serving as his lone finger clinging to the cliff of 50th-percentile performance.
Here are Miller’s yearly numbers in the same metrics:
That feature of Miller’s efficiency profile (the one where he doesn’t produce positive outcomes very often but has decent overall numbers via success in the open field) was present in each of his individual college seasons. According to a thing that I’ve just now decided to call the Volatility Index (which, using the disparity between a player’s percentile ranks in Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate, generates a score indicating how volatile the outcomes of his rushing attempts were relative to other players), Miller ranked in the top third of the entire country in boom/bust output during all three of his years at TCU. In two of those seasons (2020 and 2021), he ranked in the top tenth of more than 450 backs nationwide in per-carry volatility.
That’s also not necessarily a bad thing, but all things being equal, I’d rather my running backs produce efficiently due to consistent, reliable output rather than infrequent long runs (as if you can’t do both! There are many backs, including eight in this class alone, who leave college with above-average marks in both BAE Rating and RSR, so it’s not as if Miller is simply on one side of the stylistic coin here), and even quality historical prospects who find themselves high on the Volatility Index have often had a hard time converting their college rushing success into effective ball-carrying in the NFL (think Rachaad White, D’Andre Swift, Keaontay Ingram; and for what it’s worth, guys on the other extreme of that spectrum -- think Brian Robinson, Dameon Pierce, Josh Jacobs, Elijah Mitchell -- tend to translate a bit better).
If we assume that Miller measures in at the Combine at 5’11 ⅜” and 220 pounds (which is what I project based on historical measurement patterns for eventual NFL backs) and runs 4.5-flat in the forty-yard dash, the past prospects with the most similar profiles solely as runners (taking into account physical measurables as well as the relevant rushing efficiency metrics) are the following:
| Player |
Similarity |
Relative Athletic Score |
| Ke'Shawn Vaughn |
93.9% |
5.18 |
| DeeJay Dallas |
91.5% |
5.06 |
| Jaylen Warren |
91.1% |
4.78 |
| Breece Hall |
91.0% |
9.96 |
| Ryan Mathews |
90.4% |
9.27 |
| Jeremy McNichols |
90.4% |
8.39 |
| Travis Etienne |
90.1% |
9.12 |
| Keaontay Ingram |
90.0% |
8.67 |
| D'Andre Swift |
89.0% |
7.56 |
| Andre Williams |
89.0% |
9.25 |
Also listed is each player’s Relative Athletic Score (a position-normalized and composite rating using a player’s marks in athletic testing events as well height/weight measurements, presented on a 0-10 scale with 5 representing the all-time average performance of prospects at the player-in-question’s position; developed by Kent Lee Platte). There are several exciting names on this list, and I think it’s interesting that the most successful NFL runners here also happen to quite athletic: Ryan Mathews, Travis Etienne, Swift, and Andre Williams all have RB2-quality (or better) fantasy seasons and 75th-percentile (or better) RAS marks on their resumés, and Breece Hall flashed that kind of ability in an injury-shortened rookie season. The hit rate for athletic guys is obviously not 100%, but the names at the top of this list beg hypothesizing that mediocre athletes in this archetype have a hard time translating their skills to the NFL (a trend that continues beyond the top-10 of Miller’s closest comparables).
Because of that, I believe the Combine will be especially important for Miller’s prospects as a pro. If it turns out that he’s an average athlete by NFL standards, then I’m not sure what separates his analytical profile from the Ke’Shawn Vaughns, DeeJay Dallases, and Ryquell Armsteads (who makes an appearance a bit lower on Miller’s comps list, at 87.6%) of the world. It wouldn’t be passing game chops, as there’s not much in Miller’s 28 career receptions to indicate his supremacy there; it wouldn’t be size, as all three of Vaughn, Dallas, and Armstead weighed between 214 and 220 pounds during their respective pre-Draft processes; it could be production, as Miller is an early-declare whose best season came on a National Championship-contending team (an Edwards-Helairian combination that none of these other three guys can claim) and could thereby contribute to his securing quality Draft capital, but he can generally be bunched among Vaughn, Dallas, Armstead, and many other runners who had good but unspectacular college careers:
According to market share statistics, Kendre Miller had a similar college career arc to that of Clyde Edwards-Helaire. Metric plot table from
campus2canton.com
Given his lack of distinguishing traits otherwise, it’s likely important that Miller proves to be a high-level athlete during his testing this spring. One positive indicator in that direction is Miller’s on-field speed, which has been estimated (using what @ZWKfootball calls “a conservative frame-counting method”) at 21.5 miles per hour. Such a pace would make Miller one of the fastest backs in this class.
Ultimately, Kendre Miller is a quality running back prospect who I currently believe is most likely to join the ranks of many past quality running back prospects as a reserve or role player at the NFL level. Film study will help crystallize my thoughts and athletic testing results will greatly assist in theorizing his professional range of outcomes, but for now, there’s simply not enough in his profile to justify the sort of enthusiasm and confidence that I’ve seen many express.