Bryce Love – Running Back
School: Stanford
Class: Senior
Height: 5-10
Weight: 196 lbs.
Bryce Love NFL Draft Profile
Top 3 Player Traits
Speed To The Edge
Love has outstanding speed. When given room to do so, he beats defenders to the edge on a consistent basis. You can’t tackle what you can’t catch and opponents had trouble doing just that with Love throughout his career. If he gets to the second level of a defense, good luck.
Making Plays In The Passing Game
Love has a lot of ability as a receiver out of the backfield. He was under-utilized in this area at Stanford. This could be one thing that separates him from the other backs in this year’s draft: The ability to line up all over the formation and create mismatches. Once he catches the ball, especially with any open field in front of him at all, he’s a big play waiting to happen.
Breakaway Speed
This aspect of his game is the most obvious. Whether it’s getting around the corner of the defense, catching balls in space or finding a crease inside (which seemed to happen much less frequently this past season at Stanford), if he gets behind the safeties, it’s probably going the distance. He has a definite second gear when he sees daylight.
3 Player Traits In Need Of Improvement
Pass Blocking
He doesn’t always pick up the right man in pass protection. Whether it’s a vision thing or if he just gets a little anxious about his responsibilities on passing downs, this is definitely a weak point. Especially with his lack of bulk, he can’t afford to be out of position when his man is the one who comes free off the snap.
Running Through Tackles
Love is not an overly strong runner. He needs room to run and if doesn’t get it at the line of scrimmage he struggles to break free of would-be tacklers. If he’s met head-on by D-linemen or bigger linebackers, he can definitely be marginalized.
Vision
He’s a smart player (Stanford, of course), but he doesn’t always seem to know where defenders are when they are not directly in his path. Many times it seems as though pursuing defenders are able to make plays on him because he only sees the man he’s facing. He needs to do a better job of recognizing where cut-back lanes are or, more precisely, when a cut-back lane isn’t there.
NFL Team Fits
New York Jets
They will surely be saying goodbye to some part of their running back unit, maybe most or all of it. Sam Darnold needs pieces around him.
Carolina Panthers
Carolina needs lots of help offensively. Christian McCaffrey is the man in Carolina, but he could use a running mate to compliment him. Why not someone he knows from his Alma Mater?
Oakland? Raiders
What don’t they need?