In this second play, Evans gets the ball in a short-yardage situation near the goalline and plows into a linebacker crashing down to make a play. The creator of the original breakdown expressed disappointment at Evans’ decision to just put his head down, suggesting that he could have instead made a move to evade that linebacker toward the outside.

Again, I don’t believe this play is an example of poor vision or a deficiency of creativity. I’m not sure that enough space existed between Evans and the linebacker and the block to the right for a move to be made, but the more important point is that Evans scored on this play! Any judgment of a player’s vision or decision-making process should be made with respect to the circumstances of the particular play in question (in this case, the run came on a goal-to-go opportunity from the three-yard line) and to the unique skillset of the player being judged. For many backs, a head-on collision with a linebacker is a losing proposition. Evans, however, is a 6-foot tall, 215-pound beast with elite burst, and (as more generally alluded to above) his rate of breaking through tackle attempts from linebackers is second in this class (among backs I’ve watched so far) only to Charbonnet. The results on this play were good, and I would argue that -- given his skillset -- Evans’ process was sound as well.

On this play, our Evans detractor questions what Evans is seeing that causes him to run right into his offensive lineman. I wholeheartedly agree that Evans should have found somewhere else to run on this carry. This is a zone run designed to move the defense laterally and give Evans his choice from any vertical creases that develop, but it’s blown up when #73 gives up so much ground that Evans’ path is almost immediately blocked.

There’s nothing Evans could do about that, and there weren’t any great options available by the time Evans needed to cut (the corner blitz means getting to the edge isn’t an option, and #73’s defender has inside leverage), but he absolutely should have committed to something before charging into #73. I have this play graded negatively in the decisiveness category (such a grade is defined by a running back “exhibit[ing] indecision that inhibits his commitment to one or more viable paths, allowing those to expire and/or defensive pressure to overwhelm the play”) and in the “tracking” category (defined by a running back “subtract[ing] from the maximization of yardage available by careless and/or suboptimal orientation of his path in relation to the positioning, leverage, and/or momentum of blockers and defenders”) but as neutral in regards to vision. I don’t believe that Evans didn’t see anywhere else to go (you can see him trying too late to cut inside), but that he simply overshot his opportunity to cut by poor pacing and indecision.

On the above play, the creator of the original breakdown felt that Evans missed an opportunity to cut vertically on the edge, and I completely agree. Given the leverage of both defenders being blocked near the line of scrimmage (and also given the momentum of #20 in pursuit to the outside), I also believe Evans should have cut this one upfield (he does end up turning the corner, but that path was assisted -- and the play called back -- by a hold). I have his vision graded negatively on this play.

This next play is a counter run, and the creator of our breakdown suggests that Evans could have avoided the short gain he ended up with by either cutting backside or flattening out and getting to the edge. I disagree with the premises and therefore with the conclusion that Evans demonstrated poor vision on this play.

First, the sort of hard backside cut being suggested is extraneous to the structure of the play. This is counter, so there is a designed gap that Evans is being led to by his pullers. The same extraneousness is true of the supposed bounce opportunity that Evans has on the playside edge. He is supposed to follow his pullers, and that is what he does (that’s not to say that abandoning structure for open space is universally the wrong decision on gap runs; it can be a fruitful choice, though not reliably, and it’s simply not reasonable to grade a player negatively for not choosing to bail on his assignment).

More interesting on this play is Evans’ choice to dive inside rather than split his pullers one gap over to the outside. While the wider track may have resulted in a better outcome here, the second puller should have stayed tighter to the heels of the offensive linemen on the backside. His drifting into the middle of the gap did two things: 1) it minimized the space between he and #73 that Evans could’ve run into, and 2) it allowed Georgia Tech’s #2 to dive inside and make a play on Evans. The optimal path for Evans was not available given the careless path taken by that pulling tight end (as well as his total whiff on the block). Consequent to all that, I have Evans’ vision with a neutral grade on this play.

This next play is another gap run on which Evans is supposed to follow his pullers to a designed lane, but here, both of those pullers are giving up leverage into that gap. It’s not an easy play to make, but I agree with our original detractor that Evans should have identified that the designed gap was closed from both sides and made a vertical cut into the available crease. I gave him a negative grade in the vision category on this run.

This play is a zone run on which Evans should be looking for vertical creases to hit on his way to the edge. I understand why he hits the hole he hits given the leverage his blockers have to the inside of that lane, but there’s enough pursuit in that direction that I agree with the creator of the original breakdown that cutting off the backside of #73 would have been optimal. It’s not egregious, but I graded Evans’ vision negatively on this play as well.

On this last play, Evans carries wide in outside zone, missing a vertical crease that our detractor and I agree he should have hit. However, I don’t believe this mistake was specifically a vision-related one.

In outside zone, the running back’s aiming point is the outside heel of the playside tight end (or, as in this case, of the ghost tight end -- an imaginary player lined up where an actual tight end would be lined up outside the playside tackle). On this play, Evans’ takes a much wider path than that, almost parallel to the yard-markers on the field. Such a track causes him to overrun what would have been a nice vertical crease, but I don’t believe he misses it because of poor vision -- had he hit the proper aiming point, he would’ve been in better position to identify and cut into that backside lane. I have Evans’ vision graded neutrally and his tracking graded negatively on this play.

Overall, I view several of the supposed examples of vision-related mistakes from our friend’s film breakdown video just as he did, and some of them I view either as non-issues or as mistakes in other areas. I believe reasonable minds can differ in many of these specific instances, but in general, I do not agree that “poor” necessarily follows as a legitimate descriptor of Evans’ vision, at least relative to the same trait in other backs in this class.

On a -1-to-1 scale (on which “0” represents neutrality as a player’s average grade in a particular area, with “-1” and “1” the negative and positive extremes), Evans’ vision grades out at 0.39 on zone concepts and at 0.28 on gap concepts. That zone grade is seventh among backs that I’ve watched so far in this class, identical to Sean Tucker’s and just below those of Bijan Robinson (0.40) and Charbonnet (0.43). Evans’ vision grade on gap concepts is tied with Tucker and Tank Bigsby for fourth in the class, and is barely behind those of Jahmyr Gibbs (0.29) and Devon Achane (0.30).

Bijan Robinson's vision grade on zone concepts is just higher than Zach Evans'

In addition to using averages of per-carry grades, we can also examine each player’s rate of positively and negatively graded plays in the vision category, a lens through which some of the community’s frustration with Evans as a decision-maker makes more sense.

Regarding vision, Evans’ rate of negatively graded plays on both zone and gap concepts is among the highest among 2023 runners. I have only Bigsby as making mistakes more often on zone runs than Evans, and only Bigsby and Israel Abanikanda as making mistakes more often on gap concepts. However, Evans’ vision also boasts above-average rates of positively graded plays. On zone runs, Evans earned a positive vision grade 50.6% of the time, good for fourth in the class (behind Achane, DeWayne McBride, and Gibbs), and his 35.1% positive rate on gap runs is also fourth-highest (behind Bigsby, McBride, and Achane).

Overall, it’s clear to me that -- despite some inconsistency borne mostly of his go-go decisiveness and various infrequent (Evans’ rate of negatively graded plays in all combined non-vision decision-making categories is third-lowest in the class, higher than only Achane and Gibbs), easily-fixable problems -- Evans identifies creative solutions to problems at the line of scrimmage more often than do most of this year’s top backs. While perhaps not excellent, I would classify his vision in general as within the realm of normal in the context of other runners in this class, and any issues its lapses do cause him are more than offset by his many strengths (at least in my opinion, though his quantifiable success as a runner is certainly a strong point in that direction).

A more complete exploration of Evans’ receiving capabilities and potential is a story for another day, but it is true that drops are frequent in his film. I would contend that most of those drops are of the concentration variety and not actual evidence of bad hands, but it’s also true that Evans is not uniquely poor in this area relative to many other running backs, both in this class and historically.

His career mark in True Catch Rate is 81.1%, which isn’t good, but is essentially equivalent to Jonathan Taylor’s career performance in the same metric. Players in this class like Miller, Tucker, Bigsby, and Abanikanda are also similarly unimpressive by this measure, so if you have it out for Evans’ lack of pass-catching prowess, you need to be keeping the same energy with them:

While it is true that Evans does not run with extravagant wiggle, this final criticism could not be further from the truth. As another part of my film study, I chart the rate at which runners attempt evasive maneuvers (including dead legs, jump cuts, spin moves, etc.) relative to how often and how solidly they are contacted by defenders, as well as the individual and collective rates of success of those attempted moves.

Based on the results of that charting process, several things are clear to me. First, Evans does not give a fuck. The rate at which he attempts to evade would-be tacklers is easily the lowest of any back I’ve watched so far (23.2% of the time; for reference, McBride and Abanikanda both hover around 27% and are the only other guys below even 39.7%). As a result of that hard-charging disposition, Evans takes some of the most direct contact among 2023 runners (he’s tied with Charbonnet for second in this category, just behind Robinson).

Second, despite not attempting many evasive maneuvers, Evans is incredibly good at avoiding tackles when he does choose to make someone miss. Using mostly small and fluid movements that allow him to maintain a vertical track while subtly shaking off defenders or sliding in-and-out of second-level blocks, Evans’ success rate on attempted evasive moves is 83.3%. The success rate for the famously-elusive Gibbs is 78.6%, the closest any 2023 back comes to Evans (so far).

Jahmyr Gibbs is one of the most elusive running backs in this class.

As for a supposed lack of creation beyond what’s been blocked for him, I would point to Evans’ marks in Chunk Rate+ and Breakaway Conversion Rate as evidence to the contrary. Per Chunk Rate+, Evans produced gains of 10+ yards at a 6.9% higher clip than did the other backs at TCU and Ole Miss during his career, a mark that lands in the 91st percentile (relative to all backs drafted since 2010) and trails only Keaton Mitchell (who did his damage in the American Athletic Conference, not in the Big 12 or the SEC) in the 2023 class.

Per Breakaway Conversion Rate, Evans turned those chunk gains of 10+ yards into breakaway runs of 20+ yards at a 37.1% clip, a 78th-percentile mark that comes in fifth in this year’s class (behind three Group of 5 conference players in McBride, Tyjae Spears, and Mitchell, as well as Kendre Miller, whose 1.0% mark in Chunk Rate+ is dwarfed by Evans’ performance in the same category). If Evans can’t create for himself, it’s curious how often he was able to rip off long gains relative to talented teammates and against some of the elite competition in college football.