You haven’t played dynasty unless you irrationally fall in love with some late-round running back or wide receiver, spend months talking him up, and then draft him in every single one of your leagues. That player turns into “your guy” for that particular season. It just so happens that DeWayne McBride is “my guy” in the 2023 draft class.
McBride was incredibly productive during his two years as a starting running back, but there are obvious questions about the level of competition he faced at UAB. Are those concerns legitimate, or could McBride be the hidden gem of this class?
The Stats
Courtesy of Sports Reference.
McBride was a highly sought-after three-star recruit coming out of high school and produced immediately after stepping foot on campus during the Covid-shortened 2020 campaign. As a freshman he averaged 9.3 yards per carry and proved he would be the starting running back for the foreseeable future.
After an impressive freshman season, McBride exploded onto the scene in his sophomore year rushing for 1,371 yards and 13 touchdowns on 6.7 yards per carry. He was somehow able to even build on that performance in his junior season where he finished second in the country with 1,713 rushing yards, third in the country with 19 touchdowns, and also third nationally with 7.4 yards per carry. McBride ran away with C-USA offensive player of the year after setting numerous UAB rushing records.
When a prospect plays against inferior competition in college, they have to dominate in order to anticipate that production translating to the next level, and McBride did exactly that. While his gaudy production is exciting, the reason I love McBride so much is that he has also excelled in all of the meaningful advanced analytics.
These two following images were posted on Twitter by Arjun Menon, a very smart and talented analyst who works at Pro Football Focus. The first table looks at the rushing yards over expected (RYOE) for the running backs in the 2023 draft class. RYOE looks at a combination of variables such as down, distance, score, defensive players in the box, defensive yards per carry and more to determine how many yards an average running back would be expected to gain on a particular play given the circumstances. So the higher a running back’s RYOE the better because that means they are gaining more yards than they are expected to given the circumstances.
This table shows that McBride is far and away the most effective rusher in zone concepts, still the most common type of run in the NFL. But even on gap-style runs McBride is holding his own near the top of this class. He barely edged out Tulane’s Tyjae Spears for #1 in overall RYOE, but McBride is nearly a whole yard better than the third-placed rusher on this list.
This second graph, also from Arjun, looks at how effective running backs are on perfectly blocked runs and non-perfectly blocked runs. A perfectly blocked run is defined as a player where every blocker receives a neutral or positive grade on the play. This graph shows that McBride gained over 12 yards per carry on perfectly blocked runs which is an absolutely astounding number. While he was fantastic in this area, he also had the second-highest yards per carry on non-perfectly blocked runs.
While these numbers are impressive, I want to point out one final important detail about this graph. The size of the dots indicate what percentage of each back’s runs were perfectly blocked. Some running backs have enormous dots which signals that they were blessed to play behind incredible offensive lines. That is not the case for McBride; he has one of the smaller dots on this graph. McBride thrived behind an offensive line that was consistently making mistakes, but when his lineman finally put together some good blocking McBride made the most of it.
While McBride looks good compared to his fellow 2023 running backs, how does he hold up against the running backs who have come before him? I have compiled data on 109 running backs who have entered the NFL draft since 2018 and the results were pretty shocking when I first went through them. Below I want to look at the top-ten in four statistics that are some of the strongest on-field performance metrics for college running backs and projecting future NFL success.
Missed Tackles Forced Rate shows on what percentage of rush attempts the running back broke a tackle. This is an important statistic to show how often a running back is able to make that first defender miss and continue picking up extra yards. McBride has the third-highest career MTF Rate out of 109 running backs since 2018. Travis Etienne, Kenneth Walker, and Javonte Williams are three of the best and most exciting young running backs in the game, and David Montgomery had a very productive tenure in Chicago. It also doesn’t hurt that one of the two players above McBride is Bijan Robinson who is universally beloved as the greatest running back prospect in quite some time.
This next table shows the leaders in Breakaway % since 2018. Breakaway % measures how many of a running back’s rush attempts go for 15 or more yards. It is incredibly hard for running backs to accumulate a lot of rushing yards in today’s NFL so they must be good at ripping off big chunk plays when they get the chance and this metric measures that.
This next metric measures career yards after contact. It is slightly correlated to missed tackles forced shown above, but isolates only those plays in which the running back broke a tackle and continued gaining yards. The seven current NFL running backs on this list have all had above average NFL careers, and have been fantasy relevant while healthy; this includes last season’s breakout rookie in Tyler Allgeier.
This last metric that I want to showcase is PFF’s elusiveness stat. It is their own in-house, all-encompassing running back performance metric. While it is not perfect by any means, it does a good job at measuring the best running backs in college football and it has McBride at the top of the list.
While the names on these graphics may be seen as pretty repetitive, I actually think that is a good sign. By and large they represent some very talented running backs who have entered the NFL in the last few seasons and have found success on the field and have been valuable dynasty assets.
Now as much as I’ve hyped up DeWayne McBride, you’d think he was being selected as the 1.01 in rookie drafts. There are some concerns surrounding his game and how he will make an impact at the next level. The obvious one is the level of competition he faced while at UAB. Like I said above, if a player is going up against Group of 5 competition, he better dominate. At least we saw McBride dominate for two whole years before entering the NFL.
The second big concern is his complete lack of involvement in the passing game. In order to be an effective fantasy asset at the running back position in 2023 you have to bring something to the table in the passing game. Not every player can be Christian McCaffrey, but there has to be some involvement. Over two and a half seasons at UAB, McBride caught only five passes for 29 yards and was targeted only ten total times.
The last issue is that McBride has a little bit of a fumbling concern. Throughout his career at UAB, McBride fumbled the ball nine total times which would be tied for fourth most in that same group of 109 since 2018. Fumbling isn’t an issue at a place like UAB where you’re obviously the best player and no one is threatening to take your job, but that won’t be acceptable in the NFL where coaching staffs put running backs in the doghouse in a hurry for fumbling.
The Film
This game against Georgia Southern is the perfect DeWayne McBride experience. In this game, he rushed 28 times for 223 yards and four touchdowns. Every single part of McBride’s game is put on display and I think it gives a perfect look at who he is as a player.
Just like we discussed above, McBride shows off his impressive ability to run through arm tackles and immediately turn nice runs into breakaway runs of 15 yards or more. He demonstrates his knack for finding a hole, putting one foot in the ground, and cutting upfield. McBride’s back-to-back runs at the 3:52 mark are a perfect example of this. In the first run he is running off tackle, finds a hole, gets upfield, and breaks multiple tackles. On the very next play he bounces it to the outside and breaks multiple tackles en route for a 30-yard touchdown.
At the 6:02 mark we see more strong running from McBride. He gets to the second level by breaking a defensive lineman’s arm tackle and realizes he has enough space to plant his foot and explode. Here he showcases above-average top-end speed and a desire to not get tackled.
McBride also gets the added bump from this game because his backfield mate, Jermaine Brown, did not look nearly as impressive. It is easy to say that McBride is going against inferior talent, but when he has 223 yards on 8 yards per carry, and the backup has 42 yards on only 3.8 yards per carry, his performance is all the more noteworthy.
While there is a lot of good in this game, it also showcases some of McBride’s limitations. He was never targeted a single time in the passing game, and he isn’t the most imaginative runner. When he gets contacted behind the line of scrimmage it is usually a negative play, and he sometimes struggles to find those open holes.
The Measurables
While McBride was preparing for the combine, he unfortunately injured his hamstring and was not able to participate in any of the testing events or drills and the plan was to get ready for the UAB pro day.
When the pro day arrived on March 22nd, McBride still wasn’t healed and ready to compete. Instead, he measured 5’10’’ and weighed in at 215 pounds. McBride also opted to participate in the bench press, where he completed 20 reps, because that’s all his recovering hamstring would allow. Even though bench press is not the most helpful skill at forecasting NFL success, it was nice to see a running back who routinely wins with his strength put up a good number on the bench.
During interviews at the pro day McBride said he felt about 90% healthy and plans to hold a private pro day sometime in April. His goals are to show the NFL not only his speed, but some sort of ability to catch the football.
There is some reason for optimism surrounding McBride’s potential 40 time. This past summer, McBride made Bruce Feldman’s Freak List which is an annual list of college football’s most athletic players. In his list Feldman wrote that McBride ran the 40 in the low 4.5s. If we assume that McBride runs his 40 at 4.52s, then he would have an approximate Speed Score of 103 which would be the seventh highest score in this entire class. McBride’s speed will never be mistaken for Devon Achane, but at his size it’s nothing to be concerned about.
The Dynasty Value
Courtesy of DLF’s March Superflex Rookie ADP.
McBride is currently being drafted as the RB13 in rookie drafts, and as the 32nd overall player. Over the last four seasons, the RB13s at this point in the off-season have been Zonovan Knight, Jaret Patterson, Lamical Perine, and Bryce Love. That is not exactly the who’s who of valuable dynasty assets. However, none of those previous rookie running back classes have been near as deep as 2023 is shaping up to be.
McBride is currently going near the end of the third round and the beginning of the fourth round in rookie drafts and I’m trying to accumulate as many shares of his as possible. McBride will never be a three-down, workhorse back in the NFL, but I believe he can excel on early downs and near the goal line in some form of committee. I envision his role in the NFL being similar to that of Isiah Pacheco’s role for the Chiefs this season. Pacheco was averaging roughly 12 carries a game, got a lot of the goal-line chances, but was virtually nonexistent in the passing game which was dominated by Jerick McKinnon.
There are a lot of NFL teams with running back rooms that are currently in a transition period, so that means there are plenty of opportunities to carve out a role. Whichever team selects McBride on day three of the NFL Draft will be very pleased with their new running back, and he has the chance to be productive in the right situation immediately.
Like I’ve said before, I’m targeting McBride in every single one of my rookie drafts this season and if you scroll back up to those top-ten tables you’ll understand why. Taking a chance on a running back with a college production profile that so closely resembles some of the best young running backs in the game today at the end of the third round of rookie drafts is an absolute no-brainer for me. Give me all the DeWayne McBride shares this off-season.
