Prospect Profile: Justice Hill

JUSTICE HILL -- RB, OKLAHOMA STATE

Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images

Physical Measurables & Athletic Profile

Measuring in at the Combine at just under 5'10 and 200 pounds, former Oklahoma State Cowboy Justice Hill looks more like a third-down back than he does like a high-volume early-down rusher in the NFL. Of the 70 runners in our database who've received at least 10 carries per game for their pro careers, only Jahvid Best, Jamaal Charles, Philip Lindsay, and Chris Johnson have been sub-200 pound backs carrying less than 2.90 pounds per inch on their frames. Several more of the 71 RBs in our database who've averaged at least 2.5 targets per game for their careers (these are fairly arbitrary cutoff points, of course) have the Justice Hill body type: Dion Lewis, Steve Slaton, Tarik Cohen, CJ Spiller, Austin Ekeler, Danny Woodhead, Chris Thompson, Darren Sproles, and Nyheim Hines have all been fairly high-volume receivers during their careers, in addition to the four players previously mentioned. If Justice Hill is going to make an impact in the NFL at his size, history indicates that it's likely to be via a sizable role in the passing game. 

Justice Hill was one of few RBs at this year's Combine to boost his stock by displaying quality athleticism. While his 4.40 40-time shows that he can blaze, I'm most encouraged by the lower and upper body strength he displayed in the jumps and on the bench, respectively. His 95th-percentile Burst Score and impressive size-adjusted bench press showing of 21 reps helped him produce a 50.1 Power Score that ranks in the 47th percentile. Power Score is the best indicator of rushing volume I've found outside of draft capital, and this is an impressive mark for a player of Hill's size. A sub-200 pound RB is going to need to be strong in order to play an early-down role and handle a sizable workload on the ground. Posting a Power Score just below the database average of 50.7 and above those of players like Aaron Jones, Tevin Coleman, Kerryon Johnson, Mark Ingram, Ahmad Bradshaw, Marlon Mack, Maurice Jones-Drew, Frank Gore, and Ray Rice is a good sign for Hill's potential role in the NFL. It doesn't mean a team will just hand him 25 touches a game, but it is an indication that he can be more than an ancillary piece of a professional backfield. 

Production Profile

Even though he shared a backfield with future 1000-yard NFL rusher Chris Carson in 2016, Justice Hill was a quality producer at Oklahoma State from day one, meeting age-adjusted rushing yards market share thresholds for success (based on RBs with at least one RB2-quality season in the NFL) every year of his college career: 

Tool from @theDude_Z with data courtesy of @pahowdy

Justice Hill averaged just over 98 rushing yards per game for his college career, but his seasonal Dominator Ratings of 14.1%, 22.6%, and 14.8%, respectively, aren't quite as impressive as his counting stats. While it's notable that Hill was the primary option on the ground for the entirety of his time in Stillwater, his production profile is lacking. Even during his most dominant season, the 2017 campaign in which he was no longer competing for touches with Chris Carson and was yet to yield work to promising freshman Chuba Hubbard, Hill accounted for only a 42nd-percentile share of Oklahoma State's offensive production.

Hill's production as a receiver adds another strange element to his profile. Despite profiling physically as a satellite back, he produced just one above-average workload-adjusted receiving season in college, posting a 66th-percentile Satellite Score of 36.7 in 2017. He caught fewer than 20 combined passes in his other two campaigns, producing a 5th-percentile Satellite Score in 2016 and a 30th-percentile mark in 2018. His passing game involvement does not scream "elite third-down back." His final season mark is in the range of players like James Conner, Ezekiel Elliott, and Justin Forsett who proved to be quality pass-catchers in the NFL, and Hill's 2017 Score suggests that he'll prove that as well, but it's very possible that he is never the best backfield receiving option on his team in the pros. Physically, Justice Hill resembles guys like Danny Woodhead, Chris Thompson, and Theo Riddick, but unlike them, he's probably just adequate as a receiver.

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

Rushing Efficiency

Justice Hill was not an incredibly efficient runner in college. Like other small backs in this class, he lost yards on a high percentage of his carries (he had the 4th-highest rate of 33 backs charted), and while his Breakaway Rate (20+ yard runs) was 0.98% higher than the combined rate of the rest of the Oklahoma State ballcarriers, he ripped off chunk runs (10+ yards) at a lower rate than his teammates. This relative dependence on big plays for his production led to a True YPC average (a metric that discounts long runs to a maximum of 10 yards) of just 3.90, below the class average of 4.06. 

Hill was also not an impressive tackle-breaking or elusive runner at the college level. According to Pro Football Focus, he gained less than half of his total rushing yards after contact in 2018 (though he approached a 60% YAC rate in 2016 and 2017 -- for reference, RBs like David Montgomery, Devin Singletary, Darwin Thompson, James Williams, Darrell Henderson, Josh Jacobs, Bryce Love, Alexander Mattison, and Devine Ozigbo all had over 60% YAC rates in 2018, some exceeding the 75% mark), and never posted a season with a Missed Tackles Forced per Attempt rate that would've cracked the top-25 in the class. It's pretty clear that Justice Hill's bread-and-butter is the big play, but it's tougher to envision him consistently churning out positive yards against NFL defenses that are better than those he saw in the Big 12. 

Similarity Scores & Overall Outlook

Small and with uninspiring receiving chops is not a great combination, and it shows in Justice Hill's group of closest comps:

Hill's superior 2017 Dominator Rating would've seen him comp more strongly to some more productive prospects, but if he couldn't crack a 15% Rating during the two seasons in which he competed for touches with NFL-quality backfield mates, why should we give him the benefit of the doubt? 

Hill's athleticism is certainly the most appealing aspect of his overall profile. His mix of straight-line speed, explosiveness, and size-adjusted strength makes him a good Athletic match to some exciting players. In addition to the 91.6% match to Reggie Bush, Hill's athletic profile compares favorably to those of guys like LaDainian Tomlinson and David Johnson. Elite athletic talent doesn't ensure NFL success, though, and the list of players who failed with it is longer than the list of those who succeeded, and the rest of the players on Hill's Athletic and Physical comp lists are a microcosm of that: Raheem Mostert, Jordan Todman, Bernard Scott, Montario Hardesty, Michael Smith, and Darius Jackson have no RB2-quality fantasy seasons between them, and several of them entered the NFL with superior college production profiles to Justice Hill. It takes more than physical ability, and as a guy with unimpressive and inefficient college production, less than ideal size, and only adequate passing game acumen, I'm not sure Hill has enough. Some of his strongest Path to Success matches (a comparison that limits the player pool to guys with at least one RB2-quality fantasy season on their resumé) are Reggie Bush and Chris Carson at only 77.1% and 76.1%, respectively, and each of them has elements to their game that are significantly different from Hill's -- Bush was always an elite receiver, and Chris Carson is much better suited to a high-volume workload at 20 pounds heavier than Hill. The hope is that Justice Hill is Matt Breida, but even Breida is an outlier as an undersized non-receiver with just average college production at a smaller school. 

Overall, Justice Hill is a more exciting athlete than he is a high-confidence RB prospect. There is a chance that he turns out to be Matt Breida or Ronnie Hillman or the explosive Dion Lewis, but a Raheem Mostert or Denard Robinson or Corey Grant career arc seems much more likely (and even Mostert and Grant came into the league with substantially better receiving profiles than Hill). For me to feel good about a RB, I want to know that he can fill some defined role in the NFL. Not every guy boasts workhorse size and quality receiving ability like David Johnson or Alvin Kamara, but at least show me one of them. Chris Carson has workhorse size, Reggie Bush has receiving chops, Justice Hill has neither, and because of that it's difficult to project him for anything but a backup role in an NFL backfield. He's a big play waiting to happen, but I imagine he'll be more valuable to his real life team as a kick returner and change of pace back than he will be to fantasy teams. The upside offered by Hill's upper-percentile athleticism likely keeps him in the top-15 of this RB class, but there are other guys in that archetype of small, explosive athlete that boast stronger overall profiles than Hill does -- Travis Homer and Darwin Thompson are two of them. Justice Hill is a good lottery ticket pick in the late rounds of a rookie draft, but I anticipate he'll often be drafted earlier than I'm willing to take him. 

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