With their final selection in the 2023 NFL Draft, the Minnesota Vikings took DeWayne McBride, running back out of UAB. McBride was arguably the most productive rusher in the FBS last year. He ended the season second in rushing with 1,713 yards, tied for third in rushing TDs with 19, and third with 7.4 yards per carry.
McBride joins a backfield in transition, as the Vikings have recently moved on from long-term starter Dalvin Cook. They gave Alexander Mattison enough money (two years, $7 million) in free agency that he will go into training camp as the presumed starter. But he has never been a lead back in the NFL. Beyond Mattison and McBride, Kene Nwangwu and Ty Chandler, who have combined for 28 career carries, are the only other RBs on the 90-man roster.
This lack of experience on the roster means it’s very possible a rookie, even a seventh-rounder, could earn snaps at RB this season. That makes McBride an interesting selection to talk about, especially considering his prolific college production. In addition to the box score stats above, PFF data shows that he was incredibly elusive:
- He had 76 missed tackles forced, seventh in the FBS
- 4.6 yards after contact per attempt, second in the FBS
- And third in total yards after contact with 1,072
McBride was also consistently explosive, third in the FBS with 25 rushes of over 15 yards.
Unfortunately, we don’t have athletic testing for McBride, who suffered a hamstring injury near the end of the season. McBride measured in at 5’10 1/2″ and 215 lbs. at the NFL Combine. Those are similar dimensions to many successful NFL starters, including Marshawn Lynch and Cam Akers. Size should not be a concern for McBride, but athleticism might be, as we will see later. While his hamstring injury sidelined him for the Combine, McBride seems to have recovered well from it, practicing during the Vikings’ mandatory minicamp.
McBride dominated against AAC competition, but how will that translate to the NFL? I went to the tape to find out, and fortunately he had one game against a high-level opponent in LSU. In addition to the LSU game, I was able to watch games against Liberty, Georgia Southern, and Western Kentucky.
Vision
McBride processes gap plays like power very well. In the play below, he works his way between his two lead blockers and stiff-arms a defender for a big gain:
On the play below, McBride exploits the lack of edge contain for a big gain on power:
One zone plays, McBride reads the blocks in front of him well to find space. On the play below, he easily identifies the gap for a large gain:
Even when the lane in front of him is clogged up, he has the patience to work across multiple gaps to find a little bit of space:
McBride shows the ability to set up opposing linebackers for failure by approaching the line of scrimmage at one angle, then cutting into a different gap like on the TD below:
On the second level, McBride can set up defenders to make safeties miss and gain maximum yardage, like on the play below.
McBride could improve the speed at which he makes decisions on zone run concepts. While he makes the right decisions, his processing was merely adequate for the college game, but he will need to speed this up at the NFL level to complement his less-than-stellar athleticism.
On the play below, McBride tries to get greedy and cut the run back when he should just hit the hole in front of him immediately. Liberty doesn’t punish his decision, but defenders likely would in the NFL.
On zone run plays, an RB should have made a decision on where to go by his third step. McBride often takes longer than this to read through a play. In the example below, the double team to the front side successfully reaches the 1t to the play side, and McBride should hit the hole between the left tackle and the left guard. It’s fine to take a path to manipulate the LB towards the middle, but McBride needs to cut outside sooner.
Getting tackled in the backfield by the LB you are trying to manipulate is a clear negative:
Contact balance
The hallmark of McBride’s game, and the trait littering most of his highlight tapes, is his contact balance. McBride works through contact at a high level, even for NFL talent. He can sustain direct contact to the hips from a linebacker and stay upright, as seen below:
Here is more contact from a linebacker that barely seems to affect him:
McBride will lower his shoulder into contact and can knock defenders backward, even running throw two defenders with his lowered pads on this incredible TD run:
McBride has the power to run through arm tackles from all levels of defenders, including defensive linemen:
He has the balance to stay upright when his feet are taken out from under him and uses a hand to keep himself off the ground:
McBride will get tackled by most wraps, but he even has an example of running through one of those on tape, on this TD against LSU:
McBride’s ability to work through indirect contact is impressive, but it has led to a bad habit of running too high in situations where he should lower his pads to maximize yardage. He was often stalemated and driven back by defenders because he played too upright, like in the play below.
The occasional play where McBride gets driven backwards is worth the tradeoff of the rest of his work breaking tackles.
Burst
McBride has good burst within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. This allows him to get to the safety level, past the linebackers, and occasionally outrun the safety, as exemplified in the below TD:
On outside cuts, McBride has the ability to burst past LBs (see the TD on power above), and can also get the outside edge on safeties coming down from depth like on the play below:
McBride’s acceleration is more based on having a downhill runway, and isn’t always instantaneous. On the play below, he does a nifty job of avoiding backfield penetration, but is unable to gain significant speed going downhill after the initial cut:
Speed
Unfortunately, McBride lacks the top-end speed that we associate with most elite backs. On tape, he can outrun low-level LBs but will get caught by NFL-level defensive backs. Don’t expect many 40-plus-yard TD runs from McBride.
Here is a series of plays with defenders catching up to him on long runs:
Elusiveness/Movement Skills
McBride does a good job of recognizing and cutting away from initial backfield penetration. This skill allows him prevent potential contact before it even begins, like on the play below:
McBride is also able to sidestep contact on cuts, stiff-arming defenders and maintaining his speed while contorting his upper body:
McBride also shows the ability to adjust to trash at his feet and maintain his stride, like how he steps over a defender in the play below:
Still, McBride lacks dynamic movement skills. He does not get significant lateral displacement on his cuts, and attempting to overextend himself leads to situations where he will slip.
Look at the following slips while trying to cut:
That lack of lateral displacement shows up in the backfield as well, where McBride ended up running into defenders or the backs of his linemen multiple times because he could not cut laterally as far as he wanted to.
Check out the plays below:
In space, McBride was able to make safeties miss when they had to break down and tackle him, as evidenced by a couple of plays above. However, when players were coming downhill in space, he did not succeed. I think some of his elusiveness (including the second play in this section) was assisted by poor defensive play. In that play above, the Western Kentucky LB over-runs his gap by a wide margin, ending up right next to another defender. That’s poor defense.
In the play below, McBride is unable to make an NFL-caliber player in new teammate Jay Ward miss in space:
Ball Security
McBride will show solid technique when carrying the football, but opponents still ripped the football out of his hands at a high rate. McBride fumbled the ball 10 times over his college career, or one fumble in every 49 touches. That’s an absolutely unacceptable rate. Both of the Vikings’ last two primary RBs, Dalvin Cook and Adrian Peterson, were known as relatively fumble prone. Cook has fumbled the ball once in every 79 touches in his career, and AD fumbled once every 72 touches.
McBride’s fumble rate is higher than any NFL running back for the past three seasons, edging out Melvin Gordon, who the Denver Broncos cut midseason because of fumbling problems last year. Devin Singletary fumbled once every 71 snaps, the second-worst fumble rate over that time span. He got less in free agency than Mattison did, despite being the Buffalo Bills’ most productive RB for every season of his rookie contract.
Here is a compilation of McBride’s fumbles:
McBride must resolve his fumbling issue, or it will lead to him being off an NFL roster before his career can begin.
Pass Catching
UAB didn’t use McBride in the passing game. He ran a handful of routes per game in the games that I saw, and those routes were simple flares out into the flats. McBride ended his career at UAB with five receptions on 10 targets for 29 yards. UAB had another back, Jermaine Brown Jr., who they preferred in the passing game. He caught 48 passes on 56 targets over that timeframe.
While this does not mean McBride cannot become a contributor in the passing game, it means that we lack proof of his ability there. Combine the lack of evidence with the fact that UAB clearly preferred a different RB in the passing game, and it seems unlikely that McBride will ever become a high-level pass-catcher.
Below is McBride’s lone target from the games I watched. The throw is right on his stomach, which can be a little tricky, but ultimately we can’t learn much from this single play:
blocking
RBs contribute more to the passing game than just receptions, though. McBride has ample evidence on tape as a blocker, and his blocking shows good mental processing, with room to improve as a technician.
McBride will cut off his path in play action fakes to block when he reads a blitz, like on the play below:
He will also scan the full field and can cross to the opposite side of the QB to make a block. Both of these are rare occurrences among college RBs.
McBride will continue to scan the field after the initial look by the defense and that allows him to pick up late blitzers, like in the play below:
McBride is also effective working in tandem with linemen as a chip blocker:
Technically, McBride could do a better job of addressing contact when delivering blocks. He tends to lean forward into contact, and good blitzers will be able to use that forward lean against him. This is not the end of the world, as many times an RB just needs to be a road block, but reps like the below will gets exploited at the NFL level:
McBride also allowed a strip sack that was due to bad position as a blocker. He needs to understand where he is in relation to the QB and put himself between the defender and QB in this rep. He has a large size disadvantage, but could do more to slow the DT:
Summary
DeWayne McBride is a running back who shows good vision on gap-scheme runs, appropriately following his blockers and defeating LB angles. As a zone runner, he makes the right decision often but could speed up his process. He shows the ability to manipulate linebackers at the line of scrimmage and safeties at the second level. McBride has great contact balance, working through arm tackles from defensive tackles as well as bouncing off direct hits and running through wraps by LBs. McBride maintains his balance through low hits, and will lower the shoulder to deliver punishment to defenders and gain yardage. His tackle-breaking ability leads to him sometimes running too high in an effort to sidestep defenders, and he could play with good pad level more consistently.
Athletically, McBride has the burst to get past linebackers and defeat safety angles at a lower level of competition in the AAC. We don’t know whether that burst will translate to the NFL level. McBride lacks instant stop-start acceleration and needs more of a runway to get going. In terms of top-end speed, McBride is on the lower end of NFL athletes. He regularly gets caught from behind on long runs by opposing secondary members, and does not pull away from corners or safeties.
McBride’s ball security is a concern, as he fumbled once every 49 touches in college. Technically, McBride shows the traits to carry the ball well, but that needs to translate into not fumbling. As a pass-catcher, UAB didn’t trust McBride to run routes and had very few career receptions, leaving him as an unknown in that area. As a pass protector, he is advanced at reading the blitz and identifying the correct assignment. He could approach his blocks better and often leans too far forward at the point of contact.
Vikings’ fit
In his first year with the Vikings, DeWayne McBride will likely serve as a reserve behind the Vikings’ top back, Alexander Mattison. Due to his lack of experience pass catching, it’s unlikely he will be able to earn a rotational third down role over Ty Chandler or Kene Nwangwu. However, McBride’s pass protection will enable him to play on third downs if he has pass-catching ability he didn’t showcase on tape.
If McBride’s tackle-breaking ability flashes in the preseason and Mattison gets injured or struggles mightily, there is a path for McBride to earn significant carries in his rookie season. Neither Chandler nor Nwangwu profile as bell-cow backs. Therefore, with his solid vision McBride could earn a significant role rushing the ball in Mattison’s absence. For McBride to succeed, he would have to show the ability to burst past opposing defenders in the NFL the same way he did in college, something I am uncertain he will be able to do.
Hopefully, McBride’s athletic skills hold up and he is able to bring a significant contribution to the team as a late-round pick.
