20/20: Kareem Hunt

Welcome to the 20/20 series. As part of our continued Dynasty Scouts coverage and in preparation for the NFL Combine, we’ll be profiling 20 of the top incoming rookies of the class of 2017 by giving you 20 facts you must know.

1.) Player Name – Kareem Hunt

2.) College – University of Toledo

3.) Height/Weight – 5-foot-11, 225-pounds*

4.) Birth Date – August 6,1995

5.) Class: Senior (Played in 44 games overall. Three-year starter. Missed four contest his junior season – two for disciplinary reasons and two to injury.)

6.) College stats – Hunt is Toledo’s All-Time leading chain-mover with 5,500 scrimmage yards. 4,945 of those yards came on the ground. He ran for 1,475 yards as a senior, with 10 rushing touchdowns, and tacked on a 41/403/1 stat line through the air, with no dropped passes.

7.) NFL Draft round projection – third-fourth round. According to his agent, more NFL teams wanted to speak to Kareem Hunt with each passing day of practice at the Senior Bowl. He left Mobile as the North team’s MVP. Although currently listed as a potential mid-rounder, a strong showing at the NFL Combine, coupled with his already impressive game tape, could propel Hunt into round two.

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8.) Current NFL comp – Thomas Rawls.

The biggest similarity between Hunt and Thomas Rawls is the compact running style which gives them the ability to recover after being knocked off balance. Rawls is the more powerful of the two, yet Hunt has better lateral agility and quickness, plus a better spin move. When approaching the boundary, they show a willingness to cut runs back inside, rather than letting defenders off the hook by running out of of bounds, a trait far too many running backs lack.  

9.) Best possible destination – The Philadelphia Eagles.

The Eagles backfield is desperate for a workhorse. Darren Sproles has already declared 2017 as his final season, and Ryan Mathews may be released before the start of free agency. Playing in a RBBC with Sproles gives Hunt the opportunity to learn from a great professional, while polishing up his game over the next two off-seasons. Once Sproles leaves, Hunt would function as the team’s lead back, putting him in line for 250, or more touches per year.

10.) Worst possible destination – Any team with a young, established running back. Landing in a place like Chicago, or Miami, each with impressive young runners in place, would be a death blow to Hunt’s fantasy stock. Even teams like the Ravens, Redskins, or Lions provide just enough doubt about his potential workload to cloud Hunt’s outlook and initial dynasty value.

11.) Best current skill(s) – Gaining Yards After Contact / Ball Security.

If Hunt doesn’t shake a defender outright, he typically avoids giving them a clean shot and winds up evading their tackle without stopping his north-south momentum. He cuts back through lanes most runners don’t see, and couldn’t reach even if they did. It’s rare to see him go down at the site of initial contact. More often than not, he eeks out a few extra yards, even with multiple tacklers clinging to him.

Aside from being a perpetual motion machine, Kareem Hunt fumbled the football just once in 855 touches over his four-year collegiate career. For a player who continually fights for extra yardage, this is an impressive statistic. Coaches will allow a player to fight through struggles with productivity. They will not tolerate turnovers.

12.) Skill that needs to be improved – Pass Protection

It’s less a matter of will for Kareem Hunt, and more about technique when it comes to his need to improve as a pass protector. He tends to “catch” or wait for oncoming rushers to initiate contact, rather than stepping out to meet them and cutting off their angles. He also has a bad habit of engaging defenders with his head down, putting himself at a disadvantage.

He received praise for his work in pass pro drills at the Senior Bowl, and once he gets into minicamp, NFL coaches will begin harping on his technique. There’s little reason to doubt he will improve in this area.

13.) Past/Current Rookie ADP – RB10, 20th player overall

The RB10 ranking places Kareem Hunt behind a handful of RBs who are not as well suited to take on a three-down role as he is. Aside from these backs, three of the draft’s top tight ends are currently slated to go ahead of Hunt, despite history telling us tight ends typically don’t yield fantasy production early in their careers.

14.) Projected dynasty value – Kareem Hunt’s ultimate value in dynasty start-ups will hang heavily on his Combine performance, and of course, his eventual NFL landing spot. For many, the perception of his potential will hinge on his forty time, which, based on his previously timed runs, could range anywhere from 4.49 to 4.7 seconds. A score toward the lower end of this scale could earn Hunt a day two pick in the NFL Draft. Anything above 4.59 will bring out the doubters, both in the NFL and dynasty drafts.

If Hunt lands on a team with a clear path to first year playing time, expect him to come off the board between the sixth and tenth rounds in start-ups. A timeshare pushes him into the double-digit rounds.

15.) Projected dynasty value (continued) – Drafting dynasty running backs is tricky. Owners have to decide whether they want to invest in the better athlete, or the better NFL prospect. Only Dalvin Cook, Leonard Fournette, and Joe Mixon strike me as sure-fire better prospects than Kareem Hunt, and Mixon will wear a scarlet asterix around his neck until the day he’s out of the league. The more I watch Mixon, however, the more I’m convinced an NFL team will draft him. His value in dynasty drafts will be even higher.

Every other RB in this class has some level of deficiency in their game. Alvin Kamara is a special athlete, but his durability concerns me. D’onta Foreman has yet to prove he can function in the passing game, and has legitimate ball security issues. Christian McCaffrey and Samaje Perine have the tools to be playmakers, but those tools will look less mind-boggling playing against grown men on Sundays.

All of these players do something better than Kareem Hunt, but outside of the top three, none of them excel in as many areas of the game, and have three down potential right off the bat the way Hunt does.

16.) NFL Teams Swipe Right At The Senior Bowl – The “speed-dating round” went well for Hunt down in Mobile, were according to Tony Pauline of Draft  Analyst, 25 teams requested interview time with the running back. Of those 25, there were 10 “full franchise” meetings held with the team’s general manager on hand. Franchises are permitted to hold 60 player interviews at the Combine, so every prospect they speak with ahead of Indy lets them save one of those slots for different player at the Combine. Still, for 25 teams to have already shown interest gives you an idea of how they viewed Hunt’s week of practice.

17.) True Playing Weight – We have no idea what Kareem Hunt’s NFL playing weight will be. He was listed at 225-pounds his senior year, at Toledo, but weighed in at just 208-pounds for the Senior Bowl. He was productive in Mobile at the lower weight, but it’s difficult to say he looked faster, despite D.J.’s enthusiasm.

Some have taken issue with the decline in Hunt’s rushing efficiency since 2014 when he averaged eight yards per carry, while racking up 1,631 yards on 205 carries. In 2016, he had 57 more attempts, but actually gained 156 fewer yards, or an average of 5.6 ypc.

There’s no doubt he looked faster in 2014, what we don’t know is, why? We can speculate, and blame it on his weight gain, as Hunt went from being a 185-pound senior in high school, to a 225-pound senior at Toledo, with various reports listing him around 200 to 205-pounds that sophomore season.

Mark Podolski of the Willoughby News-Herald, interviewed Hunt’s agent, Dan Saffron, who explained why the running back’s weight loss may prove to be a positive, “Teams now know he can play at that weight, so I think it helped him showing that range. Some teams might prefer him lighter, some a little heavier. Now they know he can be either.” In the end, this only creates more intrigue around the results of Hunt’s weigh-in and 40-yard dash at the Combine, as teams try to pinpoint Hunt’s best size/speed ratio.

18.) Just Catching On – Ultimately, Hunt offset that lost rushing production with 41 receptions for 403 yards during his senior season in college, and as stated above, he did not drop a single catchable ball. Prior to 2016, he had only accrued 32 catches for 152 yards over his first three years at Toledo. This demonstration of his dual-threat capability helps give us the “warm-fuzzy” about Hunt’s prospects at the next level. Combined with his elusiveness and power, a picture of a very complete back begins to take form.

19.) From Floor To Ceiling – In the most optimistic scenario, Kareem Hunt becomes the next Devonta Freeman, putting up 1,500 scrimmage yards per season. He’s a matriculator. Hunt could step into any number of NFL offenses and become an integral chainmover. The Eagles, Packers, Colts, and Giants stand out as destinations with the fewest long-term impediments to his playing time. However, the committee is a way of life, and something every back will deal with to some extent.

Ideally, we want our backs to be RB1A in those situations, (like Freeman,) rather than RB1B, (like Tevin Coleman,) but even a workload like Coleman’s, Terrance West’s, or Bilal Powell’s this past season can garner an RB2 campaign. Kareem Hunt has the skillset to deliver dynasty owners this type of return on investment by the end of his rookie contract, in the worst case scenario.

20.) The Company You Keep – As a senior at Willoughby South High School, outside of Cleveland, Kareem Hunt was in the running for Ohio’s “Mr. Football” award, given to the state’s most outstanding gridiron performer. Rushing for 3,205 yards, with 83 touchdowns over his junior and senior seasons, Hunt was thought to have a fairly decent shot at winning the honor. Yet, he faced stiff competition from a few players you might have heard of before… namely, De’Veon Smith, Malik Zaire, and eventual winner of the 2012 award, a quarterback named Mitch Trubisky.

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