Before he even stepped onto the Lucas Oil Field turf to participate in the NFL Scouting Combine, Penn State running back Saquon Barkley was listed as the 2018 draft’s highest rated player with a 7.45 rating by the league’s own website staff evaluator. His workout performance appeared to do nothing to delineate from that. However, I decided to go back and look at the stats from the games played this past season; and I came out of it with mixed thoughts.

While it’s true that over the past 2 seasons, Barkley amassed over 2,700 rushing yards (5.658 avg.) and over 1,000 receiving yards (12.609 avg.); I wanted to take a closer look into which teams gave him trouble and which ones didn’t. Which Saquon Barkley will the NFL be getting . . . the one that ran for 172 against Akron, 211 against Iowa, 108 against TSUN, 158 against Nebraska and 137 against Washington or the one who ran for 47 yards against Georgia State, 56 against Indiana, 44 against Ohio State and 35 against Rutgers? Keep in mind that, against Ohio State those 44 yards came on 21 carries with a 36 yard long. That translates into eight yards over the remaining 20 carries. For those of you who are into statistics, that’s a mere 0.4 yards per carry over those 20 carries, and the 36 yard long carry brings his average for that game at 2.095 yards per carry for the entire game.

So where does that leave him in the grand scheme of things? While I don’t believe that Saquon Barkley will be a draft day bust, I’m not thoroughly convinced that he’s a generational type of player either. I think that the truth – as in most cases – is somewhere in between. If you draft him, you’ll get a legitimate starting NFL caliber running back that has some explosiveness in his game. If utilized correctly, he should have a very good NFL career, barring injury . . .  maybe even All-Pro for a year or more. The big question for any team thinking about drafting Barkley early in the first round is wrapped up in a single question. Do you want to invest the high dollars required for a high draft pick into a position whose longevity is (on average) the shortest of any position in the league?