I have to admit I was pretty unexcited back in April when the Jets selected Braelon Allen in the fourth round of the NFL Draft. There were plenty of reasons for it.
Allen’s statistical profile at Wisconsin was good but nothing special with a downward trajectory. His second and third years were nowhere near as good as his first.
He responded to questions about his athleticism by not taking part in recorded drills in the predraft process.
I also thought a team for a team with an aging roster and no second round pick, using a fourth round pick on player at the lowest value position on the field whose ceiling was a backup was shaky process.
The immediate rationalizations I heard did little to make be feel better about the selection.
Wisconsin changed its offense away from a power running systeam to a spread attack.
That’s one of those things football people say that sounds good on paper but doesn’t really add up under scrutiny. It’s 2024. Most offenses have an element of spread to them. Few teams are consistently running the ball with a tight end and a fullback. In this day and age, teams have figured out how to run between the tackles with physical backs out of spread systems. Allen himself celebrated the system switch at the time it was made because he wouldn’t have to run through so much traffic.
And even if none of that was true, it wouldn’t explain why Allen’s 2023 in the new system was by many measures better than his 2022 in the power run offense that purportedly accentuated his strengths.
And the Jets aren’t a team that uses old school power football formations all that much anyway.
The Jets need a short yardage back.
At the time, I noted how dubious the idea is that a running back would be worth rostering just for a short yardage role. It felt like people just said this because Allen is a big back. That automatically means he’s a short yardage beast. Of course the people who said this did so because they felt Breece Hall, another big back (albeit not as big as Allen), wasn’t getting the job done in this role.
So it didn’t seem like we had much exciting on this front.
But first impressions are just that, first impressions. We always need to dig deeper. And the deeper I dug, the more intrigued I became with Allen.
One of the first facts that came out about Allen is he was the youngest player in the Draft class of 2024. This is because he graduated college football a year early and started playing in college as a 17 year old.
This is where I started to get excited. At an age when he should have been a high school senior, Allen absolutely tore apart one of the best conferences in college football.
It was to the tune of 1,268 yards on an unreal 6.8 yard average. Even more notable, his average against eight man boxes was a tick higher than his overall total, 6.9 yards per carry.
Sometimes you will see a college player pad his season stats with one or two monster games against a weak opponent. That was not the case for Allen in 2021. After having a limited role in the first four games for Wisconsin, he took over as the primary back for Wisconsin’s final nine games. In eight of those nine, he ran for over 100 yards with at least a five yard average per carry. It was consistent, week-to-week dominance.
Let me emphasize again this came at an age when he should have been a high school senior.
Over and over I see people dismiss the idea that the age of a Draft prospect is significant even though that sort of thinking cuts against common logic.
What do people say about every player after his rookie season? “He’s young. He is going to get better.”
Players entering the NFL aren’t yet at their athletic peaks. That means the same is true for players while in college. What’s the difference between a 17 year old like Allen posting those numbers and a 22 year old senior doing the same thing? Allen had five additional years to grown and improve before he hits his peak.
When you are looking to find a gem in the fourth round, I like seeing that the player flashed exceptional skills at some point that might have been obscured for some reason.
We saw exceptional skills from Allen in 2021. So what happened after?
Anecdotally I couldn’t shake the feeling that Allen looked more nimble and more explosive as a freshman than he did as a junior. Maybe my eyes were deceiving me. I decided to run a simple test. I Googled the phrase “Braelon Allen bulked up.”
What did I find?
Allen has bulked up 10 more pounds to 245 now.
Sometimes players bulking up does them more harm than good. They lose explosiveness and don’t gain much in strength.
I would guess Allen either decided or got advice that since he was so big he should model his game after Derrick Henry or a Henry type back.
Here’s the thing. In Allen’s dominant 2021 season, I didn’t get the sense he was at his best bulldozing everything in his path. Yes, there were moments where he straight up ran through guys. But a lot of his big runs came with a subtle difference.
There is more than one way to run with power. Henry just annihilates anything in his path. Meanwhile, it seemed to me like many of Allen’s big runs in 2021 came when he threw a move on a defender that took that defender out of direct position to make a tackle. The defender then had to attempt an arm tackle, and Allen was just too big and too strong for that to work.
It’s very subtle, so sutble that I could understand if you wanted to say I was splitting hairs. But it’s a different type of power. Rather than plowing guys, he’s setting them up at angles where they will never be able to get a good grip on a player so big and bring him down.
I love a runner with some nuance to his game like that. I wonder whether bulking up perhaps robbed him of some of that ability. The good news is at 245, Allen could drop 10-15 pounds and have a lot of success playing in the NFL with his 2021 style.
I would be remiss without mentioning something else. Allen dealt with injuries during his sophomore and junior seasons.
I especially focus on his sophomore season because we haven’t touched on it yet.
Looking through his injury history, the first mention came on October 22, 2022. One thing stands out statistically to me, the lack of big runs after the injury. Prior to the injury (and in the bowl game where he had weeks to presumably get healthy), 46.5% of Allen’s yardage came on “breakaway runs” which are plays that net 15 yards or more. That is comparable with his dominant freshman season where his number was around 48%, among the leaders in the nation. In the games after the injury (and before the bowl game rest), breakaway runs only accounted for 16.4 percent of Allen’s yardage.
If you are of the mindset that the biggest value running backs provide is through big plays, that is significant. Allen was doing big things in that area in his sophomore season before he got hurt.
Suddenly things are starting to add up.
Now let’s talk about what Allen might be able to do in the passing game. Allen’s receiving out of the backfield was one of the most talked about aspects of the Jets offseason program. How do we square this with a college career where he was used sparingly as a reciever?
As my man Rex noted a little while back, a player might have an ability to do something that his college team just doesn’t utilize.
This brings me to a larger point. What skills really matter for a running back who catches the ball out of the backfield?
Let’s be honest, unless you’re talking about a Christian McCaffrey or Alvin Kamara type, you aren’t getting great looking routes. Most running backs are there to simply catch the ball. You call a screen or the quarterback checks it down.
Did Breece Hall have 76 receptions in 2023 because he’s a dynamic route runner? No, the Jets had no talent beyond Garrett Wilson at wide receiver so their quarterbacks had to check it down to him a lot.
Is it a good idea to throw the ball to Breece Hall? Yes, again not because he’s a dynamic route runner but because he’s dyanmic once it gets into his hands. Who cares whether it gets there through a handoff or a caught pass?
With this in mind, I would argue the most important skill for a running back utilized as a receiver is simply an ability to catch the ball.
When I watch Allen in college, I see a hands catcher with soft hands at that.
There is of course another aspect of running backs working in the receiving game, pass protection. Few college backs enter the league refined in this area. Few things keep talented young backs on the sidelines more than an inability to pass protect.
I would say with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, if a back can’t pass block his playing time will likely go down.
I bet if you are on social media, somebody has sliced up a quick clip of a dominant Allen pass block and declared him a beast pass blocker. I would also wager if you saw a clip, it came from this game against Illinois.
The reality is a bit more complex. Allen was not a beast pass blocker. He struggled with his assignments more often than not.
I will also add this is true for most backs who enter the league. And while this game alone is not enough for us to declare Allen a great pass blocker, it does show us that there the raw tools exist for Allen to one day be an excellent pass protector out of the backfield. When a player enters the NFL, there are things they could potentially do in the future and things they can’t. Mac Jones could never have been a quarterback who received a lot of designed runs. Braelon Allen could potentially be a good pass blocker.
Of course none of this is a prediction much less a guarantee. I can’t tell you that Braelon Allen will be a great pro. As with most fourth round picks, the odds work against him.
What I will say is the more I dug, the more I found reasons to at least have optimism there is real potential for this player.
Again, in the fourth round I love a pick where I can at least think it’s possible there is something special in a player that didn’t come to the surface in college. Based on what I have seen from Allen, I think there is at least a chance the Jets could have added a second dynamic running back to their roster.
