We’re less than a week away from the draft and reaching the end of rookie evaluation season, and with most of the big names out of the way, all that’s left for us to do is figure out how good some of the less-heralded players in this class are going to be in the NFL. It is harder to be confident in your conclusions given the fewer and muddier resources – less all-22 film, more obscure and limited data for non-FBS players, the uncertainty introduced by lower levels of competition and late-career position changes, etc. – available to us to make these fringier evaluations, but we’re going to do our best anyway. In this article, I want to talk about three players who present hypothetical upside as versatile playmakers with exciting receiving chops, and determine to what degree Dylan Laube, Tyrone Tracy Jr., and Blake Watson deserve to be taken seriously both as NFL contributors and as fantasy football assets.

Let’s start with Laube. For my money, his appeal is almost exclusively as a queen chess piece (and if that’s too speculative, we’ll say he’s a rook or something) in the passing game, because I don’t really see it from him as a runner. His numbers on the ground are not bad, as he averaged 0.80 yards per carry greater and produced ten-yard gains at a 4.7% higher clip than his New Hampshire teammates, but those team-relative marks also aren’t awesome relative to the output of other recent prospects from outside the FBS ranks. James Robinson, David Johnson, Danny Woodhead, Tarik Cohen, and Chase Edmonds all averaged at least a full yard per carry greater than their backfield mates over the course of their college careers, and grading on a level-of-competition curve means that Laube’s career average of 0.27 missed tackles forced per attempt – a mark that, in a vacuum, lands in the 52nd percentile among all backs in the 2024 class – simply isn’t as impressive as the same rate having been posted by recent FBS prospects like Breece Hall and Zach Charbonnet. In his final collegiate season, Laube’s averages of 0.14 MTF and 2.57 yards after contact per attempt ranked 99th and 91st, respectively, out of 111 FCS runners with triple-digit carries. He was much better at forcing missed tackles in 2021 and 2022, but still failed to reach even the 3.0 YAC per attempt threshold in any single season in which he carried the ball more than 63 times (and 3.0 YAC is not a high bar: in 2023, an FCS runner with such a mark would have ranked 71st out of the 111 players we referenced earlier).

This lack of through-contact ability also showed up in my charting of Laube’s film (consisting of 41 total attempts from the 2023 matchup versus Albany and the 2022 game versus Western Michigan). He didn’t qualify against defensive linemen and defensive backs, but his power versus linebackers (albeit on a small sample) graded out as the second-worst among 39 backs I’ve studied in the last two offseasons. That’s not good on its own, but Laube is also just one of two players in that population (along with Isaiah Davis) to have been charted exclusively against non-Power Five opponents. Exhibiting such little play strength against such light competition is not encouraging for his potential to contribute as a between-the-tackles runner in the NFL.

From a decision-making standpoint, Laube was a bit of a mixed bag in the two games I watched. He was generally inoffensive in this regard, but particularly on zone plays, apprehensiveness and some bizarre decisions (like when he seemingly magnetized into a mess of backfield traffic instead of finding open space on this run against Western Michigan) point to a lack of clear understanding of what he should be doing at the line of scrimmage. That makes some sense for an NFL-level athlete playing behind porous offensive lines (the New Hampshire big boys ranked 97th and 100th, respectively, out of nearly 130 FCS units in Pro Football Focus’ run-blocking grade in the last two seasons) insofar as Laube might have needed to simply out-athlete his way to successful rushing outcomes, but it still presents somewhat of a problem for his FCS-to-NFL projection.

As a final (and minor) criticism, I’ll point out that Laube also has a tendency to leave yards on the field by running out of bounds before he needs to:

Now I’ll say some nice things, which is very easy to do when we’re talking about Laube’s skill as a downfield receiving threat. His usage and deployment metrics all pop in this area: he was split out wide or lined up in the slot at a high rate, he was targeted an average of nearly two yards beyond the line of scrimmage, and he was doing enough from those alignments and at those advanced route depths to be absolutely fed in the passing game. Laube’s peak target share was the 21.6% mark he posted in 2023 (which is the same share of pass attempts that were directed at Terry McLaurin in the Washington offense last season), while his career-low of 11.0% would still be the sixth-highest career-best mark among 2024 running back prospects (it’s equivalent to Ray Davis’ top single-season figure). In all, Laube averaged 3.7 receptions per game over his career, more than double the per-game rates for guys like D’Andre Swift, Darren Sproles, James Cook, and Tyjae Spears, and trailing only Brian Westbrook – who was drafted in 2002! – among non-FBS prospects in my database.

As the deployment numbers indicate, this wasn’t just empty volume either. We don’t have Route Diversity or RATE data for Laube, but the film makes clear that he is capable of running a varied route tree and making plays at the catch point. A quick Twitter search is very fruitful on the first front, while this play is my favorite example of the latter:

There aren’t many running backs at any level of competition who can be lined up on an island and asked to haul in a deep ball down the sideline (among those who can are David Johnson, who you’ll be fascinated to learn won me a fantasy championship on this great downfield adjustment versus Kam Chancellor that looks quite a bit like the catch Laube pulled off in the above clip), and that positional versatility is what will differentiate Laube at the next level (in addition to his utility as a kick and punt returner: by my count, his 124 career returns would be the fourth-most for any post-2006 running back draftee, and he took four back for touchdowns during his time at New Hampshire).

Let’s move on to Tyrone Tracy Jr., the six-year man who spent five (four of them at Iowa) playing wide receiver before converting to running back in his final season at Purdue. His resumé therefore is not very long (even as a receiver he had just one season with even 200 receiving yards), but his efficiency marks from 2023 crack a window into his hypothetical upside as a full(ish)-time runner:

Sample size caveats very much apply here (Tracy ran the ball just 114 times last year after having done so a combined 33 times in his previous five seasons), but these are great numbers. They indicate that not only was Tracy – a fantastic athlete – doing the things we’d expect of a fantastic athlete – evading tackles, ripping off chunk gains, extending runs deep into the secondary, etc. – but he was also succeeding on his attempts at a high rate, powering through contact for extra yardage, and producing significantly more efficiently on his carries than were a) his backfield teammates, and b) most other high-volume runners in the Power Five conferences (only nine of 83 such backs averaged more yards per carry than Tracy did last season). All that was done not on a steady diet of jet sweeps and end-arounds against Mickey Mouse defensive fronts – like you might expect of a converted wide receiver – but on legitimate rushing plays into normal box counts (the 6.46 defenders in the box that Tracy faced on his average attempt was a 46th-percentile mark among collegiate runners), as well as behind a weak offensive line (they ranked 94th in the country in PFF’s run-blocking grade) and against solid defensive competition (more than half of Tracy’s 2023 workload came against opponents ranked in the top-forty of PFF’s rushing defense grades).

Those truths also revealed themselves through Tracy’s film, of which I watched two all-22 games: last season’s matchups against Illinois and Michigan (the team that won the National Championship, finished first in the above rushing grades, allowed a miniscule 35.7% Success Rate, and gave up just 3.95 yards per carry to running backs all season) in which he went a combined 32-173-1 on the ground. I was shocked to find in the process of charting those contests that Tracy looks pretty natural as an outside zone runner:

On a small sample of such plays, Tracy graded out with good marks in vision, discipline, and tracking, showing a lot of promise for a guy who has spent basically just one year playing the position. On inside runs, however, he was a complete mess, earning more than twice as many negative grades as he did positive (though again on a small sample), and particularly showing little understanding of how to read and react to the varied options presented to him on the interior. Here are some quick examples:

On the first play, Tracy misses a clear gap between #53 and #75 to chase a fool’s gold opportunity and ultimately charge into traffic on the backside edge, and on the second play he misses a wide open bounce opportunity toward the middle of the field to cut hard toward a free lineman and with the grain of leverage for basically the entire defensive front.

These kinds of things are to be expected from a recent positional convert, and they are mostly outweighed in my mind by Tracy’s athletic traits, very running back-ish movement skills, and the surprising level of comfort he displayed on outside zone runs (and his performance on gap plays was not notably good or bad). Add those positives to the receiving skill-set that Tracy brings from his time as a wide receiver and we have a very interesting prospect. I’m fascinated to see where he goes in the NFL Draft and – pending landing spot and draft capital – am pretty on board with taking shots on the Purdue product in rookie drafts as soon as the big names in this class (maybe even just the top five or six guys) are off the board.

Finally we have Blake Watson, who also played at multiple college programs over a six-year career. I couldn’t find any all-22 film of this guy, but I watched three games from the broadcast angle – the 2023 matchups versus Navy and UAB and the 2022 game against Coastal Carolina, across which Watson went a combined 49-550-5 on the ground (and added nine catches for 83 receiving yards) – and given that he spent his entire career playing running back at the FBS level, his analytical profile is a bit more straightforward than those of either Laube or Tracy.

We’ll start with the data. Watson trails only Dillon Johnson, Laube, and Michael Wiley among 2024 runners in career receptions, while his target share and catch rate numbers – both of which are above the historical 75th percentiles – also speak to his dependability in the passing game. Unlike Laube and Tracy, however, Watson strikes me as more of a traditional satellite back than as a downfield receiver. He lined up out wide or in the slot at a very normal rate over his career, his average target came half a yard behind the line of scrimmage, checkdown-type routes accounted for a (slightly) disproportionate amount of his total routes run, and his per-reception and per-target efficiency numbers are nothing to write home about. To be clear, these things aren’t weaknesses in his game or red flags in his prospect profile, they just indicate a different flavor (maybe it’s vanilla) of receiving utility than is offered by the downfield threats we covered earlier in this article.

Perhaps surprisingly, Watson’s rushing profile is more exciting than his receiving profile. He has good athleticism – he ran 4.40 in the forty and jumped out of the gym at his pro day – and backs it up with nice output on the field, with above-average career marks in BAE Rating, CR+, BCR, and missed tackles forced per attempt. I didn’t chart his decision-making on film (because the broadcast angle makes reading the line of scrimmage difficult enough that I don’t trust my process to produce useful results), but my subjective notes contained tidbits like “navigates the interior well” and “has good second-level vision”. He looked to me like a natural inside runner, not antsy or bounce-happy or many of the other things you’d expect from a guy who stands less than 5’10 and weighs 200 pounds.

Watson’s athleticism clearly showed up in his interactions with defenders. He doesn’t rely heavily on evasive maneuvers (his avoidance rate of 20.6% is in the same range as no-nonsense backs like Jase McClellan and Tiyon Evans), but he minimizes contact well, has a deep bag of jukes, swim moves, jump cuts, dead legs, and spins, and is right there with guys like Will Shipley and Jonathon Brooks in terms of the rate at which his attempted evasive maneuvers result in successfully eluding tackle attempts. Especially shocking to me was how powerfully Watson managed to run: he didn’t experience a ton of through-contact success versus defensive linemen or defensive backs, but his power versus linebackers charted out as the ninth-best among the nearly 40 qualifying runners I’ve studied in the last two offseasons (it’s in the same range as guys like Audric Estime, Kendre Miller, and Israel Abanikanda). He pairs slipperiness with high effort to make himself very tough to bring down, a reality reflected in his career average of 3.79 yards after contact per attempt: such a mark would have ranked 29th out of the 157 collegiate runners with 100+ carries last season, and ahead of guys like Braelon Allen, Ollie Gordon, and Trey Benson.

So, to recap: Laube has rare versatility as a downfield route runner and go-getter at the catch point but seems ill-prepared to handle regular rushing duties in the NFL, Tracy has very little experience as a traditional ball-carrier but pairs explosive athleticism with flashes of surprisingly natural feel for the position, and Watson is small and probably more limited as a route-runner but appears to know what he’s doing as a rusher and is tough to bring down. All of these guys have my stamp of approval as late-round upside picks in rookie drafts, with Tracy as my clear preference over the other two.