Bijan Robinson 2023 NFL Draft Prospect Profile, Outlook & Player Comparison

The 2023 NFL Draft is nearly here, and it’s time to get to know your incoming rookie class. NFL Draft expert Thor Nystrom breaks down top prospect Bijan Robinson. You can find all of Thor’s 2023 NFL Draft rankings and player previews here.

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2023 NFL Draft Prospect Profile: Bijan Robinson

Bijan Robinson | Texas | 5110/215 | RAS: 9.83

Player comparison: Breece Hall

Bio
Bijan Robinson’s grandfather, Cleo Robinson, was a Pac-12 referee. Five-year-old Bijan loved the game programs Cleo would return home with. He would pour over them, then cut out the pictures and glue them to popsicle sticks. Then little Bijan Robinson would divide the sticks into teams, and preside over the game. Just like grandpa did.

By the time Bijan Robinson was in high school, he was a force. There’s a story about how, in the first half of his senior season, the opposing team celebrated after holding Robinson’s first carry to a six-yard gain. Robinson entered that game averaging over 25 yards per carry.

Robinson’s next two carries went for 50 yards and 60-plus yards. He broke the all-time 4A rushing record in the second quarter with more than half his senior season to play. On his team’s final offensive play of the first half, it called for a Hail Mary – and deployed Bijan out wide. Robinson out-jumped everyone in the end zone and came down with the ball.

Bijan Robinson was a mythical creature.

The consensus top running back in the 2020 class, Robinson originally committed to Ohio State. After decommitting, he ended up choosing Texas over… well, basically everyone. He wore No. 5, like his idol Reggie Bush.

His true freshman year, Robinson was underutilized by HC Tom Herman. That was Herman’s last mistake in Austin – he was fired after the season. It was so clear to everyone else that Bijan Robinson was a superstar.

Cleo’s wife, Terri, Bijan’s grandmother, had an idea this is where things were heading early.

“[Bijan] said, ‘I know where I’m going before I get there,'” Terri said. “And he looked at me as if to be able to help him understand how he knows that and I had no clue. I said, ‘You do?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, when they hand me the ball, I already know where I’m gonna end up before I get there.’

“I thought that was interesting, but left it there,” she continued. “Later, when I began to hear people talk about his vision, I was like, that’s what’s happening. That was the moment I knew this was a God-given gift. He didn’t understand it either, but I think that was the point where I recognized there was something a little different about him.”

The NFL is about to learn the same.

Strengths
Good-sized back with incredible feet and a very diverse skillset. You don’t see many runners his size with this degree of make-you-miss ability.

Interestingly, Robinson comps himself to Barry Sanders. “I’m a knee-bender when I run the ball, and another guy who was a knee-bender was Barry Sanders,” Robinson said. “To try to redirect, to try to be as low to the ground as you can and understand you’ve got to feel defenders and read their shoulders and read angles, to try to break as many tackles as you can. … I take pride in that.”

He did a lot of that in college. Per PFF charting dating back to 2014, Robinson is tied with Javonte Williams for the highest missed tackle rate (39%). In 2022, Robinson broke PFF’s single-season record with 104 missed tackles forced.

I think of Robinson as a slalom runner. Cuts are sudden and smooth. Not only can he change direction quickly, but Robinson’s jet-pack acceleration out of those cuts has the effect of putting the entire defense on a balancing platform. That’s what happens when the pursuit angles of all 11 defenders change so quickly and dramatically. Sometimes, multiple times within the same play.

Robinson is at his freakiest when he’s stringing together moves in space. That’s where he’s flammable. It’s more than the sheer movement skills. Robinson has an eyes-in-his-earholes sense of moving bodies in space around him.

Robinson makes it exceedingly difficult for defenders to square him up, and he’s got the horsepower to shirk off-angle attempts. This was a needed skill behind Texas’ mediocre offensive line. Incredibly, in the past two seasons, Robinson had nearly 1,000 yards more after contact than before it (862 yards before contact, 1,840 yards after contact)!

Robinson’s added value in the passing game is what makes him that rare consensus first-round running back prospect. He’s a clever route-runner who is very difficult to stay with, especially when he’s flash-bang accelerating out of those violent cuts.

If you get the ball in his kitchen, he’s almost always reeling it in clean. Over 77 career targets, Robinson dropped only four balls – including zero last season.

Robinson posted a 98th-percentile size-adjusted athletic composite at the NFL Combine. The only tests he skipped were the agilities (3-cone and shuttle). Frankly, we don’t need those tests. His ridiculous change-of-direction speaks for itself on the field.

Robinson excelled in both zone and gap concepts at Texas. He is a fit for any scheme, and will handle heavy usage as his new franchise’s bellcow immediately.

Weaknesses
Robinson can handle oodles of touches – by extension, he takes punishment, and, multiple times in college, suffered injuries. Robinson’s sophomore season ended with a dislocated elbow. Earlier that season, he suffered a neck strain. He has played through nagging shoulder pain.

This, in conjunction with Robinson’s heavy workload the past few years, elevates the fear of an injury that could take him off the field for an extended period of time. That’s something that happened last year with the running back I comp him to, Breece Hall.

Robinson improved as a pass-blocker last season. After giving up three sacks over 104 pass-pro reps as a freshman and sophomore, he didn’t allow any last year over 60. But more work is needed in that area. His four pressures and three hits allowed last year show he was playing with fire in that area.

Robinson also needs to continue working on ball security. Over 539 career carries, he coughed the ball up six times. The issue is not his hands. It’s more, at times, devoting more attention to trying to pirouette through bodies than the ball itself and having it jarred from him in kind.

This last one doesn’t get talked about as much. But it’s my biggest concern. Robinson is a dancer. By his own admission, he is looking to evade. He wants to hit dingers. But, ala his idol Barry Sanders, Robinson is the opposite of a “take what the defense gives you” runner.

Robinson is a creator. But sometimes, in that process, he will give up yards that the defense has “given” to him. There is something to be said for the snap-to-snap cost certainty of hard-chargers upfield. Robinson will hit his share of monster home runs.

But you’re also going to have to accept the strikeouts – the loss of hidden yards on plays where inferior runners would have gained more simply by charging upfield instead of trying to turn every run into a high-speed pursuit.

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