Prospect Profile: Benny Snell Jr.

BENNY SNELL JR. -- RB, KENTUCKY

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Physical Measurables & Athletic Profile

Benny Snell is the type of RB that would've gone top-10 in the NFL Draft 35 years ago. A 5'10, 220 pound, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust thumper that ripped through SEC defenses for three years like Snell is just the kind of runner that really gets those old school football guys going. Even today, the backs with the highest-volume workloads are guys that look like Benny Snell: of players drafted since 2007, 47.8% of RBs receiving 15 or more carries per game for their careers weigh at least 220 pounds while carrying at least 3.10 pounds per inch on their frames, and on average, RBs weighing between 220 and 230 pounds carry the ball 19 more times per 16 games than the average RB. Benny Snell's physical profile is one of a high-volume runner in the NFL. 

Snell's athletic profile is not impressive. According to playerprofiler.com, Snell's best athletic attribute is his 47th-percentile agility. His top-5 closest athletic matches is a who's who of JAG runningback Hall of Famers: Kelvin Taylor, Jonathan Dwyer, Elijah Hood, and Mark Walton all represented means that Mike Gillislee is the shining example of NFL success from the list. Considering his size, Snell is especially unimpressive in the power department. His Combine performances on the bench and in the jumps helped produce a Power Score (the best indicator I've found outside of draft capital of NFL rushing volume) in just the 45th percentile. It's just a slightly below average mark, but coming into the Combine at 224 pounds is like swinging at a tee -- you could hit two inches below the ball and still get a base hit. Snell struck out, and by doing so didn't give his future NFL team much of a reason to give him carries over other players who are sure to be more explosive than he is. 

Production Profile

To Snell's credit, he was a good player almost since day one as an 18 year-old at Kentucky, rushing for 136 yards and 4 TDs in the third game of his freshman year after not receiving a single carry the first two weeks. He went on to post the first of his three 1000-yard rushing seasons that year, making his age-adjusted college production profile one of the best in this class. He hit benchmarks for NFL success every year in college (based on RBs with at least one top-24 PPR season): 

Tool from @theDude_Z with data courtesy of @pahowdy 

Snell enters the draft with the 5th-highest final season Dominator Rating among class of 2019 RBs, even more impressive when one takes into consideration his early breakout and the level of competition he faced in the SEC. By my count, he is the only RB in the class who ends his college career with two consecutive seasons with a Dominator Rating above the 10-year average (29.2%) against Power Five competition.

One way Benny Snell can prove he deserves a role in today's NFL is by showing that he can contribute in the passing game. He never was an upper-percentile contributor as a receiver in college, but it is encouraging that his receiving role increased every year: after posting just 2 receptions as a freshman, he hauled in 10 passes as a sophomore and then 17 as a junior. His 22.1 Satellite Score from his final season is a 25th-percentile number, and while players with Satellite Scores between 20.0 and 25.0 have targets make up 6.9% fewer of their total opportunities than the average RB, that doesn't mean Snell will never be a capable pass-catcher. Lamar Miller, Justin Forsett, Kenneth Dixon, James Conner, and Frank Gore were all prospects in that 20.0-25.0 Satellite Score range who became receiving contributors in the NFL, and Snell's year-to-year improvement in that area is already a good sign. It's certainly possible that he is able to continue that progress into his pro career and be a fine option on dump-offs and screen passes. 

*due to lack of available target data, 2016 target numbers are estimated using 2017-18 catch rate and 2016 reception totals

Rushing Efficiency

It's always nice when the athletic testing data and the efficiency metrics match, and that's certainly the case with Benny Snell. While he he was able to consistently churn out positive yards, slotting in just above the class average with 4.07 True YPC (a metric which discounts long runs to a maximum of 10 yards) and ranking in the top quarter of the class for lowest rate of runs that lost yardage, he displayed a lack of big-play ability, posting Chunk Rate Over Team (which measures the difference between a player's rate of 10+ yard runs vs the rest of his team) and Breakaway Rate Over Team (using 20+ yard runs) numbers that rank in the bottom-five and bottom-three of the class, respectively. 

data from cfbstats.com and expandtheboxscore.com

Snell doesn't have the speed to ever be a breakaway threat in the NFL, and while the ability he displayed in college to identify holes at the line of scrimmage and run through arm tackles has some value, he needs to have more than that in his toolbox if he's going to be anything greater than just a guy at the next level. Unfortunately for Snell, that might be it. According to Pro Football Focus, despite gaining over 60% of his rushing yards after contact, Snell barely cracked the top-40 of draft eligible RBs in Missed Tackles Forced per Attempt. If his power running style doesn't translate to success against bigger and stronger NFL defenders (and his weak Power Score suggests it won't), then Snell doesn't have much of a plan B. I don't see a Benny Snell rushing attempt adding much value to an NFL offense compared to the average player. 

Similarity Scores & Overall Outlook

While his combination of prototype size and borderline-elite college production makes him a solid match to some quality NFL runners, Snell's group of closest comps is made up mostly of replacement-level grinders :

The 22.1 Satellite Score that Snell posted in his final college season opened him up to much more attractive comps than he would have otherwise seen (the 12.1 Score he posted in 2017 might have resulted in Thomas Rawls as his most impressive overall comp). The impact of that improvement in Snell's profile cannot be overstated -- because he has significant holes in his game, upping his receiving production to a point that indicates he could someday boast a three-down skillset is huge for his upside as a prospect. A Satellite Score below the 15.0 mark is almost a death sentence for a player's future as a passing game contributor. 

With that boost to projectable receiving ability, we're looking at James Conner as the likely best-case scenario for Snell's career. Conner is Snell's closest Production comp as well as the only player in his top-5 overall closest matches that has posted at least an RB2-quality season; both of them are also sub-athletes.

If Snell is never able to become a viable contributor in the passing game (and let me be clear, it's not likely that he does), then it will be difficult for him to perform as anything more than the slow version of a guy like Mike Gillislee. He's likely a replacement-level backup whose prime years are spent occupying the grinder role in a two- or three-headed backfield. To be fair to a very productive college player, there's always the chance that Snell is one of those Da Vinci Code runningbacks that succeeds on the ground despite an athletic profile that reads like a riddle next to his box scores. The problem with attributing that kind of je ne sais quoi to Snell is that there's nothing about his efficiency metrics that indicates he's more than the sum of his athletic testing results. For that reason, I believe there are players with higher upside and a greater chance of hitting that upside than Snell that will be available in every round of a dynasty rookie draft. I won't be passing over them in favor of the off chance that Snell is the next Alfred Morris. He would've been a 1,000-yard rusher on the Baltimore Colts or Houston Oilers of the mid-1970s, but in 2019, Benny Snell Jr. is a dinosaur. 

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