On Tuesday, I took a look at Tyjae Spears’ physical and athletic profiles in the context of his rushing efficiency numbers in order to determine the likelihood that he’s able to successfully translate his collegiate success to the NFL, and while I’ll leave the meat of the insights I gleaned there (as well as the data in the article) to the subscribers who paid for access to them, I will say that I came away from that exploration with tentative excitement about Spears’ analytical profile and an eagerness to answer the questions raised by it through film study.

The first question that needs answering is a simple one: did my own process come to similar conclusions about Spears’ ability out in space as the advanced metrics indicate? Arjun Menon is a good data-centric Twitter follow who works for PFF and formerly competed in the NFL’s Big Data Bowl, and he tweeted out a table earlier this week that shows the impressive degree to which the Tulane back performed in several of the most predictive through-contact metrics for running back prospects:

My process isn’t quite as binary as the ones presumably used to generate the above numbers (insofar as I’m not simply noting either that contact occurred and then counting all the yards gained afterwards, or that a tackle was attempted and either missed or not), but the goal is much the same: quantify how well runners deal with would-be tacklers. My charting system involves splitting contact up into categories based on the defensive personnel that delivered it (defensive lineman, linebacker, or defensive back) and the type of contact that it was (head-on, from-the-side, or reach), and then noting the outcome of the contact (broken, extra yards gained, tackled, etc.). Those outcomes are then quantified on a -2-to-2 scale and pressed through a weighted average (based on mean ratios of contact origin and type) to produce an overall score indicating how successful a back is at powering through contact.

According to that process, Spears is slightly above-average (relative to the other fifteen backs in this class for whom I’ve charted a significant amount of runs) against defensive linemen, slightly below-average against linebackers, borderline excellent against defensive backs, and solid overall:

That fifth-place ranking in power versus defensive backs kind of short-changes Spears’ success in that area, as the five players who join him above the 0.60 mark are all substantially larger players: Tiyon Evans weighed 225 at the Combine, Zach Charbonnet was 222 at his Pro Day, DeWayne McBride was listed at 215 for the last two years at UAB before slimming down to 209 for athletic testing, and Kendre Miller and Bijan Robinson both weighed 215 in Indianapolis. Considering that Spears came into the Combine at just 201 pounds after weighing 195 the last two years at school, his placements on the class’ leaderboards are actually pretty impressive.

Spears also shares elements of his game with the smaller runners in this class, providing a relatively unique dynamic to his game that works to his advantage. Through the same film-charting process used to generate the above numbers, I’m able to quantify how solidly a running back is contacted on his average collision with a would-be tackler, a measurement that I express on a 0-to-1 scale. The average for runners in this class is 0.44, and the average for those big runners that join Spears at the top of the power versus defensive backs leaderboard is 0.47, with all but Miller among them scoring above the class mean. Meanwhile, Spears’ composite mark in that area is a 0.42 that lands below the 2023 average and puts him more in line with the sort of contact seen by smaller, quicker backs in this class like Jahmyr Gibbs (0.41), Chase Brown (0.40), and Devon Achane (0.40), three guys who don’t come close to Spears’ through-contact success against all types of defenders:

As it stands now, Spears is the only sub-210-pound runner in this year’s group (assuming Zach Evans and McBride play at closer to their college listed weights than to their offseason measurements) who experienced above-average through-contact success, and he ranks ahead of some much bigger backs in Tank Bigsby and Israel Abanikanda (0.19 and 0.11, respectively) in that regard. Spears minimizes contact like a small guy and runs through it like a big(ger) guy, a combination that makes him tough to bring down, especially for his size but also in a vacuum.

The next question that needs answering -- and this is one where PFF’s data won’t be of much help -- is whether or not Spears is able to maximize his ability to slip away from tacklers and chew up yardage in the open field by effectively navigating the line of scrimmage on a consistent, down-to-down basis. If he can, the Aaron Jones and Alvin Kamara comps I see for Spears start to look more reasonable, and if he can’t, he’s perhaps more likely to end up somewhere on the Michael Carter-Dion Lewis spectrum as a dynamic-but-undersized space back best suited to a complementary role. Let’s take a look at what Spears’ film tells us about him as a decision-maker:

The key takeaways from these numbers probably aren’t clear, so let me translate: Spears’ net vision grades (essentially an average of his play-level grades, where a negative grade equates to -1, a neutral grade equates to 0, and a positive grade equates to 1) on both zone and gap concepts are among the worst in the class, as are his overall grades (taking into account vision as well as patience, discipline, tracking, etc.) on those concepts. Neutral rate represents the average amount of neutral grades that Spears earns across six total decision-making categories on a per-carry basis, indicating to what degree he is or is not affecting the outcomes of plays (either positively or negatively) while behind the line of scrimmage.

I’ve just recently started using neutral rate as part of my exploration into these film-charting metrics, but I think it’s generally helpful to think of it as an insight-adding companion to the net grades: if net grades are high and neutral rate is low, a back is frequently contributing value to the early execution of run plays, if net grades are high and neutral rate is high (a combination that strikes me as probably elusive on the extreme end), a back is making far fewer miscues than he is value-adding decisions, if net grades and neutral rate are both low, a back is frequently hamstringing his running game’s early execution with mistakes, and if net grades are low and and neutral rates are high, then a back is adding behind-the-line-of-scrimmage value too infrequently on his carries.

Spears’ grades here fit into that final category, and I don’t believe the application of my interpretation of that dynamic would be unjustified in Spears’ case. While I thoroughly enjoyed Spears’ tape and found myself impressed with his contact balance and unique brand of coordination-heavy athletic skill, and while I wasn’t actively struck with the notion that he was a poor decision-maker or severely lacking in technical or cerebral know-how in the backfield, the numbers are a direct representation of how I graded him out on a play-to-play basis. If I were watching Spears and simply taking notes as I went rather than systematically charting and grading his performance in various categories on every play, I probably would not have even realized that he was contributing first-level value beyond what his blockers added at one of the lowest rates in the class.

There should be very few questions about Tyjae Spears’ ability with the ball in his hands out in space.

And yet, there are only two of my grading categories in which Spears’ neutral rate was below the class average -- in other words, he was impacting the game (whether positively or negatively) less often than most other guys in nearly every decision-making category I grade, with the exception of tracking on zone runs and decisiveness on gap runs.

Because of Spears’ special sort of controlled and coordinated athleticism, tracking (which I define as “the ability to contribute to the maximization of yardage available via the orientation of one’s path in relation to the positioning, leverage, and/or momentum of blockers and defenders”) is an area where it makes sense that he would contribute positively on a frequent basis. Indeed, his relatively low rate of neutrally-graded tracking on zone runs is accompanied by an above-average net grade in the same area, and while his neutral tracking rate on gap runs is above-average, his net grade there is top-four in the class.

Spears’ low neutral rate in decisiveness on gap concepts is even better, as it pairs with a net grade in that category that ranks second in the class, behind only Zach Evans’. Spears’ decisiveness on zone runs is not in the same ballpark (his net grade there is 0.05, which ranks 12th and is far below the class mean of 0.11), however, perhaps indicating that the multiple-choice nature of those runs makes him more apprehensive when compared to the more rigid structure of gap plays (his low marks in vision add some credence to this theory, as even though his gap grade in that area is worse than his zone grade, deficiencies in vision more readily impact zone plays given their freer structure). Still, when he knows where he needs to be, Spears can see it and go with the best of them.

While my 107-carry sample of Spears’ film skews slightly zone-heavy (64-43 over gap concepts), PFF’s charting of his entire 2022 season (which contains 124 more carries than I watched) puts him at a near-even split of 112 zone runs to 117 gap runs, while Sports Info Solutions has him with 133 zone runs and 96 gap runs. Regardless of the discrepancies in those numbers, it’s clear that zone concepts represented a large portion of Spears’ carries at Tulane, and if he’s an unsure decision-maker outside of clear structure, then he can be an effective gap runner (as well as an effective second- and third-level runner across the board) whose overall efficiency numbers suffer due to a steady diet of zone concepts that highlight the areas in which he struggles. Those average-at-best Relative Success Rate numbers that I examined at length in Tuesday’s article may be weighed down by assignments that he won’t be tasked with as often as a pro.

To that point and luckily for Spears, NFL running games are trending more gap-heavy, so the odds that he lands in a situation that will enable him to maximize his skillset (and hide his weaknesses) are greater now than they would have been a few years ago. Even so, I don’t want to overstate the degree to which I expect any zone-running deficiencies in Spears’ game to hold him back at the next level: he’s clearly been an effective runner in college, and while I do think my hypothesis that his success has been largely fueled by the athletic advantages he enjoys over his opponents is true, I don’t believe that his ho-hum testing in the forty-yard dash and agility drills will be an issue for him given that his best athletic traits are in the areas of balance, coordination, and explosiveness. Additionally, while his high rates of neutral grades on film mean that he’s not doing everything he could be doing to maximize the success of run plays, they equally mean that he’s not screwing up that often relative to most other backs in this class. He also offers more in the open field than most other guys do, an element of his game that will probably always be his bread and butter.

Austin Ekeler represents the best and most unattainable of outcomes for undersized three-down backs like Tyjae Spears.

Ultimately, I would describe Spears as a below-average but inoffensive pure runner who will likely never be an NFL team’s preferred early-down option. The Austin Ekeler career arc represents the absolute peak for guys in that archetype (and yes, Ekeler has been the Chargers’ de facto bellcow for a few seasons now, but all parties involved would clearly prefer some other arrangement in that backfield), an outcome that has top-end receiving chops as a definite prerequisite. I haven’t done enough close work on Spears’ receiving profile to speak to that issue yet (and I’m certainly not penciling him in for Ekeler-type work regardless), but I think my point is that such hypothetical production should be viewed (even in Ekeler’s case) as almost accidental rather than as the result of a viable, duplicable path to success for players like this. Spears is a good player who I want to take shots on in rookie drafts, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Aaron Jones is part of his range of outcomes, but so are Kenneth Gainwell, Eno Benjamin, Boston Scott, and Travis Homer, and at risk of angering the Spears-at-RB2 hipsters, Dion Lewis is probably a more responsible aspiration on the high end of things.