Rookie Profile: Brian Hill, RB Wyoming
I am the first to admit I am not a college football aficionado. There are only so many hours in the day and video games won’t play themselves, so I spend my Saturdays every fall doing something other than watching young men make money for their respective institutions of higher learning. This means come February, I have some serious catchup to do in the realm of prospect evaluation. As such, the four games I watched for this profile were my first exposure to the prolific, but flawed, Brian Hill.
As with every prospect expected to go in the fourth round of rookie drafts, some warts are to be expected. Where you won’t find any is in Hill’s college stats.
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Statistics from sports-reference.com.
I don’t need to tell you that 4300 yards and 35 scores is impressive. Hill’s YPC is a bit lower than you’d like for a future NFL running back, but from what I saw, that is at least partially a function of how Wyoming used him. When your entire offense is built around pounding the ball over and over, you are going to run into some defensive alignments designed to shut things down. How Hill-centric was Wyoming in 2016? He carried the ball only 26 fewer times than they attempted a pass. I should also mention their next busiest back toted the rock only 89 times for a 4.0 YPC average. Wyoming was Hill and Hill was Wyoming.
If you are concerned about his lack of receptions, don’t be. I’ll address this further later on, but Hill’s 41 total receptions are much more a function of his usage than a shortcoming in his skill set.
In order to handle the immense load he carried the past two seasons, Hill had to be a big boy. Standing 6’1” and weighing 219 pounds qualifies him as just that. Let’s examine his Player Profiler page.
As we will see shortly when talking about Hill’s film, there is a real lack of lateral agility for the big back. He makes up for the bad agility score and putrid SPARQ it in part with a solid weight adjusted speed score. All of these figures are based off combine performance, so let’s have a look at how Hill fared in Indy.
Hill’s broad jump makes sense when you see his acceleration on tape. The same goes for the difference between his long and short shuttles, as the 60 yard version plays more to speed and acceleration than it does short area burst. If Mock Draftable’s spider graph does one thing in Hill’s case, it backs up what I saw when watching him play.
Firing up the Cowboy’s games against UNLV, New Mexico, BYU, and Nebraska gave me a pretty good idea what sort of player I was dealing with, but before I share my thoughts, have a look for yourself.
From the first play I saw a back who runs in the most chaotic of manners. Hill is always in a hurry to get where he is going, but like a Ferrari on a road with patches of ice, sometimes speed is the enemy. Running with pace is a skill that allows blocks to develop, lanes to open, and a running back to choose the best path. Hill eschews the notion, putting his foot, and often his head, down, and going full steam ahead. The end result is too many plays where he runs into his own lineman or the arms of a waiting linebacker. In this way Hill reminds me of Darren McFadden, another full steam ahead running back who struggles to create for himself.
Another glaring issue presented on film is a lack of wiggle, particularly once Hill has hit top speed. He has to slow significantly to make anything more than a subtle change in direction, giving smaller tacklers a chance to bring him down when he should be able to break free using his power and size. When he does make such moves, it looks awkward, as though he were a newborn giraffe trying to walk for the first time.
There are some positives to be pulled from Hill’s tape, notably that he is a load to tackle. Hill never shies away from contact and displays excellent pad level as he routinely trucks defenders. This same toughness shows in pass protection. I can’t recall the last time I saw a college running back spend so much time blocking. There were too many plays where Hill whiffed badly, but on the whole, he showed tenacity and physicality. With some polish, he could be an unusually large, but effective third down back.
Despite catching 33 passes his first two seasons, Hill only reeled in eight this past year. I don’t think this was him being cut out as a receiver so much as it was a function of the way the Wyoming offense worked. On pass downs, Hill stayed on the field to block, running very few patterns. When he did, I saw a good enough pass catcher. Don’t look for Matt Forte levels of prowess, but there is no reason to believe Hill can’t be a versatile option.
If I could describe Hill in two words, it would be, “uncontrolled chaos.” Unlike the prince of controlled chaos, Chris Ivory, Hill is too often out of control, careening into blockers, missing developing holes, and making awkward open field cuts. His vision and patience need work if he has any hope of being an NFL starter.
A quick look at our rookie rankings shows Hill buried down in 18th among running backs. I’ll be honest when I say I haven’t spent much time evaluating the players around him, so take my final thoughts here with a grain of salt. My feeling is, pending landing spot, Hill should be drafted sometime in the late third or fourth round of your rookie draft with the hope he slows down just enough to let plays develop. If he can do that one thing, I think Hill could end up a serviceable NFL starter or a solid committee member. Is there top-15 upside here? Almost certainly not, but if Rob Kelley can start games and be reasonably effective in the NFL, so can Hill.
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