Former Georgia Football RB, D’Andre Swift among Top 3 in PFF’s Rookie RB's
With the announcement that NFL Training Camps are still on schedule we are a little over a month away from seeing how some of the rooks perform, namely D’Andre Swift. On Wednesday, PFF released their Top 3 rookie RBs based on projected rushing yard totals for the 20/21 season.
Swift ranks third on this list with a projected yards total of 727.6, behind Jonathan Taylor and Cam Akers.
On Draft night, it came as a shock to many that Swift fell into the second round. With two consecutive 1000+ yard seasons in which he split the load with Holyfield in ‘18 and Herrien in ‘19, Swift was pegged as a first-round pick by a plethora of draft analysts.
So why the seemingly low yardage total? The answer is Kerryon Johnson, but should it be?
Albeit the Lions’ o-line has struggled heavily, Johnson has rushed for only 1,044 yards in not one, but two seasons and was 46th in the NFL in yards during the 2019 season. I fully expect Swift to take over the RB1 position and have a similar rookie year to that of Sony Michel’s who had a little over 60% of the team’s carries and rushed for 931 yards.
Even if Swift has only 50% of the carries for the Lions this year at a little over 200 carries, I don’t see him ever averaging less than 4 yards a carry when he averaged over 6 all three years at Georgia.
As for the two running backs ahead of him on the list, it's likely opportunity based. Jonathan Taylor is likely to be the feature back in Indianapolis, and Cam Akers is set to take the bulk of the carries with the Rams.
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