Prospect Profile: Bryce Love

BRYCE LOVE -- RB, STANFORD

Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

Full disclosure: because Bryce Love is such an interesting and unique prospect given the vast difference between his 2017 and 2018 seasons, and because there is very little to go off of as far as the specifics of his measured athleticism goes, this article will make some assumptions and take some artistic license in order to form a more complete profile from which to evaluate Love. I did not do this in my evaluations of any other RB in this class, and this is an inherently unfair evaluation (in Love's favor) with a much higher level of subjectivity involved than there is in my other breakdowns. I don't have any preconceived biases towards Love (or against him), but I think constructing a pseudo-profile for him is better than not evaluating him at all. With that being said:

Physical Measurables & Athletic Profile

Measuring in at the Combine at just under 5'9 and 200 pounds means it's a longshot for Stanford's Bryce Love to ever receive heavy volume on the ground in the NFL. Of the 70 RBs in our database who've averaged at least 10 carries per game for their careers, only Christian McCaffrey, Jahvid Best, Jamaal Charles, Phillip Lindsay, and Chris Johnson weigh no more than 205 pounds while carrying less than 2.95 pounds per inch on their frames. The database average for career carries per game (including only players who've actually touched the ball in the NFL) is 7.3, while for sub-205 pound backs it is just 5.0, a difference of 36.6 carries over a full season's worth of games. RBs Love's size don't typically make a big impact as rushers in the league. The glimmer of hope, however, is that those who do seem to fit a certain archetype: McCaffrey, Best, Charles, Lindsay, and Johnson all ran sub-4.5 in the 40-yard dash, and Best, Charles, and Johnson all ran sub-4.4. Small guys who expect to be fed on the ground better be fast. 

Fortunately for Love, he is fast. He was a track and field prodigy while growing up, and reports of unofficial 40 times he's run at various times from high school through his time at Stanford range from sub-4.3 to 4.4 flat. The most common and seemingly legitimate time I came across was a supposedly laser timed 4.35, and for the purposes of doing justice to Love while not assuming Chris Johnson-level speed, it's the one I used to generate comps. Regardless of the specific time you choose to believe, it's very clear that Love can absolutely blaze. He fits in that archetype of Jahvid Best, CJ Spiller, Jamaal Charles, Chris Johnson-type runner whose athletic talent almost necessitates heavy volume in spite of a lack of size. 

Beyond speed, we don't know very much about Love's athletic ability. Burst and agility are very hard to judge with the naked eye, so I don't want to make any assumptions about how he might have tested in those areas; I did come across a report of Love jumping 37.2 inches in the vertical, which would place him right around the 85th percentile. His 18-rep performance on the bench press at the Combine is decent for a guy his size, and helped to produce an implied Power Score of 43.9, a 21st-percentile figure. Power Score is the best indicator outside of draft capital that I've found of rushing workload in the NFL, and a 43.9 does not indicate strong ability to handle or great likelihood of receiving heavy volume on the ground. It's not a death sentence however, as guys like Steve Slaton, Devonta Freeman, Kenyan Drake, Andre Ellington, LeSean McCoy, and Dion Lewis, in addition to the aforementioned McCaffrey, Best, Charles, Lindsay, and Johnson, have all received a starter's share of carries and produced RB2-level fantasy seasons with lower Power Scores than Love's. 

Production Profile

After sitting behind Christian McCaffrey for two years, Bryce Love smashed age-adjusted rushing yards market share thresholds for success (based on RBs with at least one RB2-level fantasy season on their resumé) in his junior season:

Tool from @theDude_Z with data courtesy of @pahowdy

Love had a down season in 2018 but still managed to meet success thresholds, accounting for more than half of all Cardinal rushing yards.

What's most interesting to me about Love's production profile is the incredible difference between his last two seasons, not just in quality but in his on-field deployment. In 2017, Love was responsible for a 37.7% share of Stanford's total offensive output, an 85th-percentile figure, while rushing for 2118 yards and 19 TDs. He caught only 6 passes though, accounting for just a 2.8% target share and producing an abysmally low, 2nd-percentile Satellite Score of just 7.2. Love's 2017 is an even more extreme version of the kind of production profile that led to questions about the viability of Ronald Jones' game translating to the NFL. Almost regardless of physical talent, it's difficult to imagine a significant role for an undersized back who doesn't contribute in the passing game. Bilal Powell is the only sub-205 pound RB with a Satellite Score under 20.0 in my database who has ever posted even an RB2-level fantasy season, and his Satellite Score of 16.4 is more than double Love's 2017 Score. That's why, despite a severe dip in the overall quality of his performance, I am encouraged by Love's 2018 season.

Hampered by injuries, Love slogged his way to a 3.6-yard drop in his per carry average last year, rushing for just 739 yards and 6 TDs while posting an 18th-percentile Dominator Rating of just 15.1%. As a receiver though, he was a new player, hauling in 20 receptions on a 6.4% share of Stanford's passing targets to produce an 81st-percentile Satellite Score of 42.4, putting him in the range of players like TJ Yeldon, Duke Johnson, and Corey Grant as a projectable NFL pass-catcher. It actually wasn't the first season in which Love posted an upper-percentile Satellite Score, as during his freshman year in 2015, he caught 15 passes on a 6.6% target share in a backup role to produce a ridiculous Score of 104.8. Adding to his resumé a season in which he contributed strongly as a receiver while operating as the lead guy in the backfield is huge for his prospects as an NFL player and fantasy producer. Expanding our parameters to include sub-205 pound backs with Satellite Scores as high as Love's 42.4 finds 12 players in the database who've posted at least one RB2-quality season, and seven of them have posted RB1 seasons. His draft stock likely took a nose dive from what it would have been if he had come out of college after the 2017 season, but I'm a bigger fan of Bryce Love the player after seeing evidence that he can be a quality contributor in the passing game.

note: target data from prior to 2017 is not available (as far as I know -- I'd love to see it if it is), so 2015 and 2016 target share is estimated using seasonal reception totals and 2017-18 catch rates

Rushing Efficiency

Even in a down 2018 and in a 2016 when the Stanford backfield was led by Christian McCaffrey, Bryce Love outperformed his teammates in Chunk Rate (10+ yards) and Breakaway Rate (20+ yards) every year of his college career (I don't display 2015 efficiency numbers, but on 29 carries he did then as well). His 2017 Chunk Rate Over Team (measuring a player's Chunk Rate against the rest of his team's Chunk Rate) is the 4th-highest mark in the database, while his Breakaway Rate Over Team that year (like CROT, but using breakaway runs) is more than a full percent higher than Darrell Henderson's 7.88% mark from this last year, the 2nd-best score in the database. 

Love doesn't look quite as good when long runs are removed from the equation, with a career True YPC rate (which limits long runs to a maximum of 10 yards) of just 3.71. He also lost yards on 13.71% of his attempts in the last three years, the 3rd-highest rate in the database. 

While Love's bread and butter will always be the breakaway run, Pro Football Focus also charts him as a quality tackle-breaker. Even in his down 2018 season, his rate of Missed Tackles Forced per Attempt ranked in the top 10 of this class, and he gained nearly 80% of his total rushing yards after contact. 

The boom/bust nature of Love's running style is unconventional, and it's difficult to project how it might translate to an NFL field. Big plays are simply harder to come by at the next level, and Love has shown that he doesn't produce consistently when he's not ripping off long runs. A good frame of reference is the college efficiency profile of Saquon Barkley. 

Barkley's tendency to lose yards was even worse than Love's, and his team-adjusted efficiency numbers are dwarfed by those Love put up. This isn't to suggest that Love is better than Barkley or even that they win in a similar way as runners, but to illustrate that transcendent talent can overcome inconsistency to be productive and, probably more importantly, to earn touches as a professional. I don't know that Love is a transcendent talent, and I don't know what the college efficiency metrics looked like for guys like Chris Johnson, Jamaal Charles, and CJ Spiller, but I do know that Love is the same kind of ultra-fast small runner that those guys were. They all produced at an RB1-level at various points in their respective careers, and if Love can regain the health and form from his 2017 season, I don't think it's out of the question to expect those things from him as well.

Similarity Scores & Overall Outlook

Love's group of closest comps is tainted by subpar final season production, and I think it's important to keep in mind that his healthy ceiling is much higher than a 78.2% overall match to Ronnie Hillman would suggest: 

I am using an assumed 40 time and only one other data point from which to make Athletic comparisons, but Love is a close match in that regard to three successful NFL runners. Jahvid Best is particularly close (he's actually an exact match here), but I think it's likely that Love is significantly more explosive while perhaps not quite as agile.

3-Down Profile comparisons are generated using size, build, Power Score, and Satellite Score in order to match players who project to have similar carry/target workload splits in the NFL, and it's evident here that players with Love's skillset most often end up in a change-of-pace or pure satellite back role. Most players with Love's skillset were never college football's leading rusher while playing in a Power Five conference though, so this particular comp list is not a reflection of Love's level of talent. What's encouraging about the players on this list is that, as a group, they have had targets make up 27.3% of their total career opportunities (carries + targets), a percentage higher than the database average of 23.2%. If Love can be a better-than-average receiving threat, his odds of earning significant volume go way up.

Overall, I think Bryce Love is a fascinating case study in multiple ways. He makes you think about what to do with players who have injury concerns, what to do with players who have disappointing final college seasons, and most interestingly to me, what to do with players who have starkly different and opposing skillset profiles suggested through their overall college production profile. Somewhat paradoxically, I like Love more because of the season he had in 2018. It expanded his range of outcomes in ways that I can't understate: instead of hoping that Love is a 200-pound non-factor in the passing game that somehow earns a sizable NFL role, demonstrated ability as a receiver means we can now reasonably add the career arcs of players like Chris Johnson, Jamaal Charles, and CJ Spiller to Love's possible outcomes. Even if he's not those guys, it's now reasonable to expect him to at least find a niche as an explosive third-down back. NFL flameout is still a possibility, but if it happens, it will be because his body either didn't recover from injuries sustained in college or because his small frame couldn't handle the physical demands of the pro game -- it will not be because he's incapable of filling a defined role in an NFL backfield. His healthy floor is now Corey Grant, whereas before it was rookie Ronald Jones.

Love is solidly a top-10 RB in this class for me. I can't take him over backs with a full package of quality college production, three-down potential, and no pre-existing injury concerns, but after they're off the board, his blazing speed and the dominant form he once showed means his upside is high enough to outweigh concerns over his size and his torn ACL. He's currently being taken in the mid-late 3rd round of rookie drafts, and at that point, when one side of the die shows the next Jamaal Charles and two others show the most explosive satellite back in this class, I'm rolling Bryce Love every time.

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