It’s painfully easy to surmise that there’s a consensus top tier (or two, depending on the evaluator) consisting of the top four running backs in the draft (Dalvin Cook, Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey and Joe Mixon). After these backs, there’s no real consensus on who the fifth ranked running back should be, nor who the next one selected in the NFL draft will be. I chose to take on Gallman’s rookie profile because I believe he could and should be that player, and may be selected as early as the mid second round.
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Gallman is a physical runner with ample size at 6’1” and 215 lbs. He isn’t susceptible to arm tackles, and brings the type of relentless motor necessary for any runner whose game is not fully finesse based. His feet stay moving and has no qualms with being a battering ram in short yardage and particularly goal line situations. One gets the sense that he mutters “maximum effort” to himself before each snap, a la Deadpool.
The part of his game I like that inexplicably doesn’t receive much attention is his ability to move laterally, largely but not exclusively with lateral jump-cuts to get to the open lane. He’s capable of doing so in the direction of the play, but also has the ability to jump to or plant and shift to a cutback lane and increase the would-be gain.
He also knows how to “get little” in the initial hole to find himself to the second level. He’s not a track star and is unlikely to have many 70+ yard touchdowns at the NFL level, but is far from slow and won’t be chased down inside 30 yards once he gets free. The most fun part of his game, even used infrequently, is a lethal spin-move that puts a clown suit on over pursuing backers.
As a receiver, Gallman is quite fluid and natural with soft hands and takes little time to turn the reception into yards. He is more than willing in pass protection and is probably slightly ahead of the rookie curve in that area, but there is certainly some room for improvement in technique. This is very coachable and should not be a huge concern, but is something to monitor in the early stages of his NFL career. As mentioned before, the physicality and willingness is there but there is some clean up required on body positioning and transference of power.
Assuming this area is addressed (it is safe to assume it will be as there isn’t a mountain to climb here), he is a landing spot away from being a capable three-down back, which is rare, exciting and almost never available in the second and third rounds of dynasty rookie drafts as is the case for those currently drafting their rookies prior to the NFL draft.
Statistics from sports-reference.com.
As you can see above, the aforementioned skill set translated to a very productive three year college career. In a power five conference not named the Big 12, he totaled over 3,900 yards from scrimmage including topping a career average of over five yards per carry and an impressive 36 total touchdowns, which fully illustrates his very real nose for the end zone.
As you can see from his Player Profiler page, his dominator rating is low-ish, but I do believe he is in a unique spot where it should be. He played in an offense sharing the spotlight with Deshaun Watson, Mike Williams, Artavis Scott, Deon Cain, Jordan Leggett, Charone Peake and earlier Sammy Watkins, Tajh Boyd and Martavis Bryant. I am giving a pass for this, as the list above is star-studded to say the least.
As you can see from his Mock Draftable web, Gallman tests far better as a running back on the field than a metrics based player. The spider graph shows the strength that he plays with but is admittedly disappointing from what I’d hoped to see in the change of direction and speed areas of the graph.
In a recent comp, he really didn’t test all that dissimilarly from Jordan Howard just one year ago, save for the vertical jump (which I find to be a worthless metric for running backs). Howard did not provide measurables at the Combine as Gallman has done, but we can compare Howard’s Pro Day to Gallman’s Combine. The numbers in parenthesis are where Gallman tested vs Howard without the benefit of a Pro Day Setting: 40 time (-0.01), 3-cone (-0.03) and broad jump (-2”).
The above instills a great deal of confidence that Gallman can match or surpass Howard as a runner while bringing a great deal more to the passing game and in turn become a three down back. Stephen Gill made the same player comparison in his 20/20 profile of Gallman back in February.
His highlight reel is a nice compilation of his strengths, and shows his ability as a complete running back.
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Not sure I agree that vertical isn’t important for RBs. Weight/40 time combo, vert and broad are the most important measureables for RBs. Gallman fails across the board in that regard.
