Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love is an outstanding football player. He's the premier option at running back this year and one of the best players in the entire class. As impressive as Love is, the idea that the Cleveland Browns should select him with the sixth overall pick would be a horrendous misallocation of their draft resources.
Jeremiyah Love is an incredible back. Speed, strength, contact balance, vision. His spin move into game-breaking speed is poetry in motion. He can contribute in the passing game and could offer some schematic versatility. Maybe he can be as impactful as a player like Christian McCaffrey.
None of that changes the fact that drafting Love to the Browns as they are currently situated won't fix their offensive woes and fails to address the issues that held them back on that side of the ball.
Not only did the Browns draft two running backs last year in Quinshon Judkins and Dylan Sampson, picking them in the second and fourth rounds respectively, in a far superior class for the position, but Judkins was exactly who the Browns hoped he would be.
Judkins was the engine for the Browns offense. He showed speed and power, able to create explosive run plays and put points on the board. From my perspective, Judkins actually demonstrated better vision than in his college career.
Once defenses realized how good Judkins was, they stacked the box to stop him, forcing the offense to do something else. The Browns couldn't. Not consistently anyway.
Among running backs with at least 100 carries, Judkins was third in average defenders in the box. It won't surprise anyone that Derrick Henry was number one with 7.92. Judkins saw an average of 7.76 defenders in the box.
735 of his 827 rushing yards were after contact. That's 88.8 percent. In other words, Judkins was facing loaded boxes, which was overwhelming an underpowered offensive line, creating virtually zero room to run.