There are 27 running backs who received invitations to this year’s Combine, among them the best and most productive runners from the college ranks. Collectively, these players averaged 476 carries during their collegiate careers, with Mohamed Ibrahim leading the way with a ridiculous 867 totes.

Tiyon Evans is the guy at the very bottom of that list, as his 225 rushing attempts are almost 50 fewer than the career total for the player at second-to-last: Hunter Luepke, a fullback who never carried the ball even 100 times in a single season at FCS North Dakota State, is headed to the Combine with 274 career attempts on his resumé. Indeed, only seven backs since 2007 have been selected in the NFL Draft after leaving college with fewer career attempts than Evans leaves with (excepting guys like Antonio Gibson or Lynn Bowden who were drafted as running backs despite not playing the position in college). The most successful NFL player on that list is Alfred Blue.

And yet, Evans is an intriguing prospect, in part because he received a Combine invitation even with so little production -- he didn’t put much on film in the four years since he graduated high school, but NFL teams saw enough to want to see him test and interview in person. Rather than being a major reason why I (and why you should) care about him, though, all of that really just serves to solidify my existing opinion of Evans’ abilities on the field, which is largely informed by his performance in various rushing efficiency metrics:

With 75th-percentile marks in both Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate, Evans is one of only three running backs in this class to produce top-level per-carry efficiency and per-carry consistency on teams in Power 5 conferences (with Devon Achane and Chris Rodriguez, Jr. joining him).

Those quality numbers also mean that Evans scores right down the middle of the Volatility Index. As expanded upon in this article on Kendre Miller, placing highly on that Index is an indication that your rushing success is reliant on infrequent long runs, and inconsistent as a result. Likewise, placing toward the bottom of the Index indicates that a player’s output is of the low-ceiling, high-floor variety, with more stay-ahead-of-the-chains type gains than breakaway runs. Evans scores about as neutrally on that Index as a player possibly can, indicating a stylistic straddling of the fence that, given his positive marks in the relevant metrics, says good things about his ability as a pure runner.

Even if we adjust Evans’ marks in those key metrics down a bit for the sake of his light workload and mediocre teammates (I like to further contextualize team-relative performance by approximating the talent-level of the teammates to whom a player is being compared, and the 2.09-star rating that Evans’ teammates at Louisville and Tennessee combined for as high school recruits is a mark in just the 15th-percentile), his combined performance in BAE Rating and RSR scores out as the equivalent of a 56th-percentile showing. The only historical draftees whose adjusted BAE Rating and RSR marks come in above the 50th-percentile by that method and who also score near the center of the Volatility Index (we’ll say within 10 points of Evans in either direction) are the following (in chronological and then Draft pick order):

Of those nine players, two were selected in the first round, six were selected on days one or two of the NFL Draft, and all but one of them enjoyed a sizable role (100+ carries) as first-year pros. I’m not predicting any of that for Evans, but it’s clear to me that we should be taking him seriously as a potential late-round rookie draft target in this class, and I don’t perceive that that’s where the market currently stands on him (if it’s aware of him at all).

Another angle through which Evans impresses is in his ability to produce efficiently without breaking off many long runs. The average Breakaway Conversion Rate for running backs drafted since 2010 is 31.0%, a number that Evans didn’t hit in either 2021 or 2022 -- he turned 15 chunk gains (of 10+ yards) into just three breakaways runs (of 20+ yards) at Tennessee, and converted 14 chunk runs into just four breakaways last season at Louisville.

We’d obviously love Evans to be an elite open-field runner, but that’s not in the cards for every player (not that I’m writing Evans off in this area, as he probably doesn’t lack the speed necessary to extend runs into the secondary; also, BCR is inherently a small-sample metric made even smaller in this instance by Evans’ light college workload, so maybe variance was simply not on his side for the 29-run sample we’re looking at here). For those who don’t rip off long runs often, it’s encouraging for the rest of their skill-set if they still manage to produce with high-level efficiency, something Evans definitely does. Among 52 running backs drafted since 2010 who left college with sub-25.0% marks in BCR, Evans boasts the second-highest career BAE Rating (behind only Montgomery) and the third-highest career YPC+ (behind only Wendell Smallwood and Jordan Howard).

The collegiate rushing efficiency profile of two-time 1000-yard NFL rusher Jordan Howard bears some strong resemblances to that of Tiyon Evans.

Some of that YPC+ is boosted by the season Evans spent at Hutchinson Community College, where he averaged an incredible 3.27 yards per carry greater than the other backs on his team (at a decent football program: Hutchinson is a hot-spot for talented guys who need to make detours out of the FBS ranks, and was the same school that Alvin Kamara played at while transitioning from Alabama to Tennessee). For reference, that’s a greater disparity in per-carry average than any of Chase Edmonds, Tarik Cohen, Danny Woodhead, David Johnson, James Robinson, or Austin Ekeler posted relative to their non-FBS teammates in college. Evans left Hutchinson as the #1-ranked JUCO running back in the transfer portal.

If we ignore that season and credit Evans with the YPC+ mark of 1.13 that he posted across his two campaigns at Tennessee and Louisville, he still boasts the sixth-highest figure among backs with a sub-25.0% BCR (in addition to Smallwood and Howard, that puts him behind only Chris Carson, Jonathan Taylor, and Michael Cox).

Evans has also been impressive so far in my film study. I’m just two games (representing 24 of the 100+ carries I intend to watch) into Evans’ tape, but it’s already clear to me that he’s one of the hardest runners in this class. He makes little effort to make tacklers miss, but the rates at which he powers through contact from linebackers and defensive backs are third- and second-highest, respectively, among eleven 2023 backs that I’ve watched so far. It also seems that Evans could end up with high grades in several decision-making categories, especially on gap concepts, where he’s so far exhibited impressive vision and patience.

If Evans comes in close to the 5’9 ⅞” and 215 pounds that I project (based on historical weight gain patterns for running back prospects; Evans was listed at 5’11 and 210 pounds at Louisville after being listed between 220 and 225 at both Tennessee and Hutchinson), he’ll have good NFL size to pair with what seems to be natural running ability (and early looks at his receiving profile don’t rule out passing game functionality, either; his career marks in yards per target and True Catch Rate each best their counterparts in the profile of Zach Charbonnet, who is widely considered a three-down back). In that event -- and even with league-average athleticism -- I don’t see why Evans can’t be the Jaylen Warren (or even Chris Carson!) of this year’s class. All he’s done is ball out at three different college programs, including one in the best conference in the country and another in a second Power 5 league. I say keep giving this guy opportunities until he proves he doesn’t deserve them, including in the late rounds of your rookie drafts.