I recently made what will likely be the final pre-Draft adjustments to my rookie running back rankings, this time shuffling around much of the RB16-and-beyond territory and adding 23 previously-unranked players who had fallen through the cracks for me up until now. This article will deal with two small school studs making late entries into my ranks who I believe have enough in their profiles to make them interesting as lottery tickets you’ll be able to snag for free after your rookie drafts.

The first of these players is Youngstown State runner Jaleel McLaughlin, who posted the following numbers at his Pro Day earlier this offseason:

Outside of a solid 40-yard dash time and a mediocre short shuttle, it’s clear that McLaughlin is an undersized player who is not an impressive athlete by NFL standards, but a bet on McLaughlin is a bet on one of the most productive college football players of all time even if he’s not particularly athletic.

In the very first game of his true freshman season in 2018, McLaughlin -- then a member of the Division II Notre Dame College Falcons -- ran for 302 yards on 22 carries against the Shepherd University Rams (a D2 opponent), and he hardly slowed down at any point in the ensuing five years. In just that season, McLaughlin totaled 2421 rushing yards and 2699 all-purpose yards (both led all of D2 football and broke all-time records for D2 freshmen) on his way to a 37.7% Dominator Rating, and he followed it up with another 2300 rushing yards the next year.

He then transferred to Youngstown State, an FCS program in the strong Missouri Valley Conference that has produced NFL players like David Johnson, Christian Watson, Trey Lance, and Dallas Goedert. McLaughlin continued to dominate despite the step up in competition, averaging 122.3 rushing yards per game and being named to the FCS All-America team twice over the next three seasons.

David Johnson was a dominant player in the Missouri Valley Conference prior to producing as the RB1 in fantasy with the Arizona Cardinals.

At the end of it all, McLaughlin turned 1250 carries into an all-time NCAA record 8166 rushing yards for his career, and on top of the obvious durability required to stay healthy despite such a workload (only 11 backs drafted since 2007 averaged more carries per game over their college careers than McLaughlin did), dude was very efficient on the ground. The 1.88 YPC+ mark he posted relative to his teammates at Notre Dame and YSU is a 92nd-percentile number and easily bests the career marks of past non-FBS studs like Danny Woodhead, David Johnson, and James Robinson (1.50, 1.38, and 1.00, respectively).

McLaughlin is small and doesn’t have a ton of athleticism, but even at the D2 and FCS levels, All-America teams and all-time records don’t happen by accident, especially multiple times and at two different programs. In the post-rookie draft dregs of the offseason, you can take shots on Kene Nwangwu-type super athletes with no history of either production or effective per-touch play in hopes that they magically turn into good football players, or you can take shots on efficient uber-producers with less-than-ideal measurements. Phillip Lindsay is a good speculative comp.

Lindsay might be an even better comp for Shepherd’s Ronnie Brown (seemingly no relation to the former Dolphins running back), a D2 mega-producer with a legitimately robust athletic profile:

While he’s an even more svelte 192 pounds than McLaughlin is given the height disparity, Brown has an explosive first step, elite quickness (he ran the short shuttle faster than all but four backs drafted since 2007 -- Javon Ringer, Chris Rainey, Ameer Abdullah, and Michael Carter), and top-notch burst that make him a close physical comp to several solid NFL contributors:

Brown didn’t become a large part of the Shepherd offense until he was a junior (he had 223 yards from scrimmage as a true freshman before he got screwed out of a sophomore season in 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic), but he caught 79 passes for 1138 yards and 11 touchdowns as an upperclassmen, serving as Combine invitee-quarterback Tyson Bagent’s third-leading receiver in a 2022 campaign that also saw Brown run for 1863 yards and 19 touchdowns. Over the course of his career, Brown outdid the other backs at Shepherd by 1.66 yards per carry, a mark in the 89th percentile (and that bests the same marks by Woodhead, Johnson, and Robinson that McLaughlin also topped). He’s an efficient runner with top-tier athleticism and a ridiculous receiving resumé -- level of competition caveats apply (heavily) here, but that’s not a bad collection of positives to have on your prospect profile

Ronnie Brown dressed and produced like the Division II version of Todd Gurley for the Shepherd Rams last season.

I’ve been asked multiple times recently if there are any Julius Chestnut- or James Robinson-type non-FBS prospects in this year’s rookie running back class, and while I think there simply aren’t, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any small-school backs who could make some out-of-nowhere noise in the 2023 group. Aidan Borguet is a solid bet to be this year’s Jaylen Warren, and Brown and McLaughlin have as good of shots as anyone to be the next who-the-hell-is-that-guy NFL contributors in the same mold as guys like Danny Woodhead, Phillip Linday, or Raheem Mostert.