DEVINE OZIGBO -- RB, NEBRASKA
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| AP Photo/Nati Harnik |
Physical Measurables & Athletic Profile
Devine Ozigbo is one of only a couple class of 2019 RBs with a legitimate all-purpose skillset and prototype NFL size to match it. Measuring in at his pro day at almost 6' and 222 pounds, Ozigbo is a strongly-built runner with thick, powerful legs. He fits just about perfectly into the physical mold of an NFL workhorse, the 6', 220+ pound runner who carries the ball 15+ times a game; of the 23 players drafted since 2007 who've averaged that kind of workload in their career, 11 of them weigh over 220 pounds and another 8 weigh at least 215. Ozigbo is what a bellcow NFL RB looks like.
Ozigbo's not being invited to the NFL Combine will likely hurt his draft stock, but he did impress at his pro day. An adjusted 40 time of 4.59 doesn't show elite speed, but it's certainly fast enough to play at a high level in the NFL, especially when considered next to the 81st-percentile (according to playerprofiler.com) 124.9 Burst Score that Ozigbo produced in the jumps. That's rare explosiveness for a player of Ozigbo's size -- in our database, only 20 of the 63 players with Burst Score marks higher than Ozigbo's 124.9 are at least 220 pounds (with names like Jonathan Stewart, Derrick Henry, Nick Chubb, LaDainian Tomlinson, David Johnson, and Saquon Barkley among them). Ozigbo's combination of size, build, and upper and lower body strength produces a 56.5 Power Score, a 75th-percentile mark that indicates strong ability to handle heavy work in the NFL.
Production Profile
Ozigbo is a late-bloomer who flirted with but did not quite meet age-adjusted production thresholds for NFL success (based on players with at least one RB2 season):
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| Tool from @theDude_Z with data courtesy of @pahowdy |
Ozigbo never received more than 155 carries in a season and his final year Dominator Rating at Nebraska of 25.4% is in the 43rd-percentile of RBs drafted since 2007. He doesn't have a single really dominant season on his college resumé, and that's a concern for his profile as a prospect; to feel really confident about a guy, you want to see him be one of the best players on his college team from an early age, and Devine Ozigbo just doesn't have that.
What makes me more willing to look past a lack of great production from Ozigbo is his ability as a receiver. Going back to the first year he garnered significant touches for the Cornhuskers, Ozigbo posted two straight seasons of at least 16 receptions, producing upper-percentile Satellite Scores in both of those seasons. Especially impressive for a guy his size, his 37.0 Satellite Score during his senior year is in the 66th-percentile. The big back with that kind of receiving ability is a rare breed: of players drafted since 2007 with Satellite Scores between 35.0 and 40.0, only two have weighed over 220 pounds; the list of 215+ pound backs in that range is David Johnson, Marshawn Lynch, Devontae Booker, Mark Ingram, Kareem Hunt, Mikel Leshoure, Felix Jones, Andre Brown, Keith Marshall, and Marcus Lattimore. While Ozigbo doesn't have the production of a surefire great NFL prospect, I believe his rare combination of size and ability to contribute in the passing game makes him a skillset match to a lot of the best RBs in the league.
Rushing Efficiency
Devine Ozigbo was one of the most efficient runners in this class during his final season at Nebraska. He showed big play ability with a Breakaway Rate Over Team (a metric that measures the percentage of a player's runs that went for 20+ yards compared to the rest of his team's percentage) of 1.59%, which was top-10 in the class, but where Ozigbo really stood out was in his ability to consistently pick up positive yardage. His Loss Rate was the 5th-lowest in the class at just 6.45%, and his True YPC (which discounts long runs to a maximum of 10 yards) was the 3rd-highest among 2019 backs at a fantastic 4.56, behind only Maryland's Ty Johnson and Georgia's Elijah Holyfield.
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| data from cfbstats.com and expandtheboxscore.com |
These are encouraging numbers for a player who didn't receive a heavy workload in college. They portend an NFL runner who identifies holes quickly, hits them hard, and is able to extend runs into the secondary. Ozigbo likely won't be a guy who rips off breakaway runs at a high rate against NFL defenders with better speed than those he saw in the Big Ten, but I do expect him to find success by leveraging his size and power in short yardage situations and by using his vision and decisiveness to find and accelerate through holes quickly. Ozigbo also displayed quality ability to make things happen outside the contributions of the blocking he received up front. According to Pro Football Focus, Ozigbo was an impressive producer among 2019 draft eligible RBs in missed tackles forced per attempt, as well as gained well over half of his total rushing yards after contact.
Similarity Scores & Overall Outlook
Our closest pre-pro day match for Devine Ozigbo was Eddie Lacy, a skillset comparison I really liked. As it turns out, Ozigbo is lighter and much more athletic than Lacy, which opens him to up to some other very successful pro comps:
Athletically, Ozigbo is almost an identical match to Kenneth Dixon and Jay Ajayi, and with just a quarter of an inch in height and one pound in weight separating them, Ozigbo is a virtual Ajayi clone from a physical standpoint.
I want to acknowledge the possibility that Devine Ozigbo is a Dwayne Washington or Andre Brown-level player in the NFL. Of the only four players in our database with Dominator Ratings, Satellite Scores, and Power Scores each as high as Ozigbo's respective marks in those metrics, one of them is Saquon Barkley and the other three are Cedric Peerman, Andre Brown, and Brandon Bolden. While a pretty unique and exciting prospect, Ozigbo is not a sure thing. But, especially in this draft class, if you're looking for sure things, you're not going to find one. Ozigbo checks almost every box, and has an overall profile that compares well to successful NFL runners.
Of all the RB prospects I've evaluated so far this year (as of 3/31), Ozigbo is the only one with at least an 85% match to four or more players with RB2-level fantasy seasons on their resumés. That tells me that it's not a stretch to expect Ozigbo to one day be a high-quality fantasy contributor. His closest overall match in the database is Kareem Hunt at 90.9%, and that 9.1% gap between them is mostly made up of superior production at a small school for Hunt, and superior size and athleticism for Ozigbo. Ajayi, Ozigbo's second closest Path to Success comp, was also a superior producer against lesser competition, but Ozigbo has him beat in projected receiving ability. While he wasn't a supremely dominant force in college, I don't think it's unreasonable to say that Ozigbo in a vacuum is a better prospect than either Hunt or Ajayi were.
Overall, Devine Ozigbo is a strong prospect with a pretty unique combination of size and pass-catching ability. His not getting a combine invite is a shot to the gut for his potential draft stock, but after a strong pro day showing, he will get an opportunity somewhere in the NFL. I believe his versatile skillset will eventually be his ticket to a starting job, and when that happens, I think he has Kareem Hunt/Eddie Lacy-level RB1 seasons in his future. He's the bigger, more explosive Hunt, the smaller, faster Lacy, the Jay Ajayi with receiving chops, and the player that fantasy drafters want Rashaad Penny to be. Ozigbo and Miles Sanders are 1A and 1B for me in this class, and I think you'll be able to get Ozigbo substantially later in dynasty rookie drafts than you will Sanders. He's not the 3rd-round rookie pick he was before his pro day, but he's still not the late 1st-round pick he should be. Let others bite on the David Montgomerys and the Josh Jacobses early on. You'll get the better player later.
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I see a lot of biased numbers trending towards "bell cow" status without mentioning other things, but nothing about the things that really make a guy pro-ready. How well can he block and how well can he run routes? You have to be in the game to be thrown to, and that's not going to happen if your routes stink or you can't block, and you may be amazed at 16 receptions in a single year, but that's just an average of 1.5 receptions a game ... fewer if he played 12 or 13 games that year. Ajayi had 50 receptions a RB in his final year at Boise, but he's not been able to do anything with it in the NFL. Just because you've had a few catches doesn't mean you're going to light the world on fire, but this article makes it seem as if he's the second coming of Sproles with even better rushing. You spent more time talking about his nearly non-existent catching ability and his weight than anything else, and failed to even mention things that would make him a true prospect and ready to play with big boys. Nebraska, much of the time getting their ass kicked while they worked their way to 5th in their own conference, never even passed to him when playing catchup with passing plays. You can't just say "a few other guys had his weight, and they were bellcows, and he's a catching machine because he caught less than 2 passes a game, Illuminati NFL prospect confirmed!" And you're saying he's the #3 RB? A guy who the NFL didn't even want to see at the combine? I understand that people fall through the holes and there are good players out there that will not be at the combine and that NFL teams draft late and sometimes not even at all ... but you haven't provided anything to truly back this up except for having "GREAT PRODUCTION" in receiving when he's caught less than 50 balls in about 40 games in college and averages less than 10 yards per catch. This was not worth the read.
ReplyDeleteHey man thanks for reading. I appreciate the comment.
DeleteI can assure you my evaluation of Ozigbo is not biased. I hadn't even heard of the guy until I began doing my research on this year's RB class. My player evaluation process leads me to favor guys who profile as 3-down backs in the NFL (typically big runners with good receiving ability), which is why I like Ozigbo. I value size because it's the biggest indicator of rushing volume outside of draft capital, and I value receiving ability because targets are worth more in fantasy football than carries. I want players on my fantasy teams who are likely to receive the most weighted opportunities per season and per game, and that means big RBs who contribute in the passing game.
If I had a good way of quantifying a player's pass-blocking or route-running ability, I would love to include those things in my evaluation. As it stands, I don't have that. I also don't have any evidence that performance in those areas is predictive of NFL production or playing time. That's not to say that they don't matter, just that I prefer to more heavily weigh the elements of a player's profile that are measurable. My goal is objectivity.
I think you misunderstand my method for evaluating a RBs receiving ability. I developed a metric called Satellite Score which adjusts a player's receiving involvement (using target share) for their overall involvement in their team's offense (using dominator rating) to create a clearer picture of how much of a player's NFL role receiving might account for. In my introductory article on Satellite Score, Jay Ajayi is actually the example I use of a player whose receiving production in college can be deceiving when taken at face value. Ajayi's college target share was in the 85th-percentile, while his Satellite Score is just a 51st-percentile figure. Based on Satellite Score, Ajayi profiled as an average receiver at best in the NFL. A guy like Ozigbo, on the other hand, is exactly the type of player my process was created to illuminate. Similar to players like TJ Yeldon, Eddie Lacy, Andre Ellington, and Devonta Freeman, Ozigbo's seemingly unimpressive college receiving production produces an upper-percentile Satellite Score when viewed through the context of his overall involvement in his team's offense. Based on the tests and research I've done, Satellite Score is a better predictor of NFL receiving role than both raw college receiving volume and college target share.
To be clear, I view Ozigbo as a top-3 RB talent in this draft class (pending the combine), not necessarily as a guy I'd be drafting as a top-3 RB in dynasty. For one, I don't think you'll have to take him that high in order to get him, but more importantly, I don't think he'll be taken highly enough in the NFL Draft to garner as much playing time early in his career as the Josh Jacobs or David Montgomery types in this class. My evaluation of Ozigbo is a talent evaluation. Not being invited to the combine hurts his draft stock and, by extension, his likelihood of receiving immediate opportunity. I'm not blind to that. I do think he's more talented than his likely draft position will indicate though, and I think those who stash him on their dynasty teams will be rewarded with good production if and when he receives an opportunity on his NFL team.
Excellent response. And good work man, I'm here for the objectivity. I like to use your work on players I haven't seen, get an idea of what I hope the film shows, and see how it lines up. If it's as the numbers lead me to believe before film, then I'm interested in that prospect. I really appreciate the work you do and your detailed responses to comments .
ReplyDelete