Maybe I was wrong…
I have to admit when I’m wrong, my original article which you can find here, The Enigma that is Ashton Jeanty, went over information about how RB’s with 800+ total usage haven not been drafted in round 1 since Darren McFadden. I went over all the running backs that were taken in round 1 since that draft, and even went back to the 2000 draft and added all the RB’s that had been drafted in round 1 w/ 800+ total usage.
What I didn’t do, is look at all the running backs in round to with 800+ total usage to see if there was a correlation between that total usage and why the didn’t get drafted in round 1. I went back to the 2009 draft, the year after McFadden being the last 800+ total usage back taken in round 1. This is what I found.
Since 2009, 39 running backs were drafted in round 2, of those 39, ONLY SIX ECLIPSED THE 800+ TOTAL USAGE MARK. Breece Hall with 800 total usage in 2022, Jonathan Taylor with 968 total usage & A.J. Dillon with 866 total usage in 2020, Ameer Abdullah with 886 total usage in 2015, Montee Ball with 983 total usage in 2013 and LaMichael James with 822 total usage in 2012. So right off the bat we can see that 11 of 16 years didn’t even have a round 2 running back that hit the 800+ total usage mark to even be possible to not make round one.
Now that we know the names and total usage, let’s get down to the reasons why these players fell. LaMichael James and Ameer Abdullah both had size and durability concerns, along with the overusage. Abdullah also had questions about his speed. Montee Ball was considered to be “unathletic” in NFL terms, AJ Dillon was looked at as very one dimensional and lacked top speed. This brings us to the final two, Jonathan Taylor and Breece Hall, who I used as examples in my previous articles.
Jonathan Taylor was highly touted, but his overusage scared some, but that wasn’t his biggest issue, there were questions about his receiving skills, but where people really had issue with him, was his problem of holding on to the ball. Taylor had 18 fumbles and 15 of them were lost to the other team. This was the biggest reason he fell, and coincidentally, Taylor is 2nd for most fumbles by a running back with 13, since he was drafted, in 2020 and has only played in 67 of a possible 84 games.
Breece Hall on the other hand wasn’t exactly due to any other outward concerns, the main reason Hall fell was due to what was considered a strong class in other positions, where teams that could’ve drafted him in the back half were filling their roster based on those parameters, which led to his fall to round 2.
With all this said, Jeanty (830 total usage) doesn’t have a fumbling issue, doesn’t have durability concerns, has a history of being a good receiving back with 80 total receptions and over 800 receiving yards and 6 Touchdowns, he’s also show to be a great athlete with good speed. Now that I’ve done more homework, I can acknowledge that my previous article was wrong, and Jeanty is in fact, a top 12 draft pick worthy running back.
Wolfmantula.com 