Dynasty Outlook
April 19
Devon Achane is our RB4 for rookie drafts and checks in as RB21 in our overall dynasty ranks. As the scouts (and NFL history) would note, it is unlikely that Achane becomes a workhorse player for whatever team drafts him. However, we are in an era of committee backfields, and Achane has dynamic skills that few athletes have displayed. If he winds up with the right team, there is definitely still RB1 upside à la Darren Sproles.
Profile Summary
Achane is an excellent athlete, blazing a 4.32 in the 40 after running track through his sophomore year of college. The scouts do not believe he can be a primary back given his size — which lines up with NFL history — but say he has the ability to add value as a receiver to an NFL offense. Ultimately, he will find his most utility with a team that has an early-down banger already in place and is looking to provide some volume of RB catches either out of the backfield or split wide.
Vitals
Age (as of 12/31/22) — 21.2
Experience — 3 years
By the Numbers
Achane was a four-star prospect out of Texas, with a tremendous track background before joining the Aggies. He continued to compete as a track athlete through his first two years at A&M prior to focusing on football. Achane achieved a full breakout as a true junior, but he improved every year in terms of his workload and production. He averaged a blistering 6.4 yards per carry for his career while playing in the SEC.
Achane was a major contributor as a receiver, with 60 catches combined in his final two years. He also returned kicks, scoring twice and averaging over 30 yards per return. The list of players since 2000 with 300+ carries, 50+ receptions, a yards-per-carry average of at least 6.0, and 25.0 or more yards per kick return is fairly short:
Christian McCaffrey
Duke Johnson
Todd Gurley
Dri Archer
Onterio McCalebb
Kerwynn Williams
Chris Rainey
Jeff Demps
Jahvid Best
Joe McKnight
Luke Staley
It’s a pretty wide range of NFL talent, with one of the best RBs of this era being listed alongside players who were not even drafted. Achane’s size and draft capital will be unique. A lot of the smaller players on this list were drafted on Day 3 or not at all, while Achane is yielding 10+ pounds to guys like McCaffrey and Best — Day 1 picks.
What the Scouts are Saying
Lance Zierlein believes Achane will be an explosive complementary back:
Finding a player comparison for Achane is challenging because he has blazing speed and is fearless as an inside runner, but he is very small by NFL standards. He has the creativity and burst to create chunk plays, but durability concerns will likely limit the amount of carries a team is willing to give him. Achane can be a complementary slasher with the ability to mismatch coverage out of the backfield or from the slot. However, he’s simply too talented and explosive as a runner to be confined to gadget duty. History does not favor backs his size, but his playmaking potential could be too tough to pass up on Day 2 of the draft.
Dane Brugler agrees with Zierlein that Achane’s build may keep him from being an every-down player:
Overall, Achane’s undersized build understandably creates doubt about him as an every-down NFL back, but his vision and rare acceleration allow him to access run paths most backs can’t. With his added value as a receiver (a few NFL scouts project him best as a receiver) and returner, he has high-upside potential, similar in ways to Jahvid Best as a prospect.
Draft Projection
Achane currently is not listed on Grinding the Mocks, which sources mock drafts around the interwebs. This year, it only lists the top 50 players. Mock Draft Database is a similar service that has Achane 67th overall. In Brugler’s seven-round mock draft, Achane went 67th. He appears to be on the fringe of Rounds 2 and 3.
Comparable Players
I use Principal Component Analysis to evaluate prospects. In simplest terms, this kind of analysis looks at relevant data points to find the closest comparable players in past drafts. I prefer this to a model output — which yields only a single result — as it can display the possible range of outcomes for a prospect.
Note that the analysis itself isn’t telling us how good a player is; it is simply returning the most similar players. It is then up to us to layer in context and past results to see how good we think this player may be.
As stated before, Achane is a bit unique in terms of his size, production, and expected draft capital. This means coming up with reasonable comps is a bit more difficult of a task. Many of the players you see will match with the latter two categories but miss on the first. Perhaps Achane can pack on some more weight as an NFL player, but it doesn’t seem particularly likely that he could get to 200 pounds and maintain the skills that make him who he is.
This leads to Darren Sproles, the only comp on the list that is a relative match in terms of all categories. He was an early Day 3 pick, but at a time when the NFL was not valuing players of this skill set as highly. In the modern NFL, Achane being viewed as more of a weapon makes sense. But as the scouts have noted, he is likely to remain a complementary player.
