The Jeremiyah Love Paradox: Why NFL Teams Will Overpay for a Runner Who Doesn't Actually Do Anything Special

Every draft cycle, there is at least one running back prospect who captures the imagination of scouts, analysts, and front offices with a tantalizing skill set that doesn't quite hold up under scrutiny. Jeremiyah Love has all the makings of that prospect in 2025, and the uncomfortable truth that nobody in the pre-draft evaluation business wants to admit is that teams will almost certainly reach for him in the top five because they have convinced themselves that his "potential" is worth the investment. This is how the draft works. This is how teams waste premium picks on running backs who never become what their physical tools suggested they could be.

Let's start with what everyone sees when they turn on Love's tape. The man is a physical specimen. He has legitimate top-end speed. His acceleration is impressive for someone carrying his frame. When you watch him hit the edge in space, there are moments where he simply overwhelms defenders with his combination of size and velocity. The vision is there too, at least sporadically. There are runs where he reads his blocks, finds the seam, and demonstrates decisiveness in his footwork. From a pure athleticism standpoint, Love checks boxes that scouts have been conditioned to value since the day they started in the business.

But here is where the conversation needs to change, and here is where teams will ignore the evidence right in front of them. Jeremiyah Love did not run his offense into the ground. He did not put up historic statistical performances. He did not consistently impose his will on defenders week after week after week. Instead, what we saw was a running back who had flashes of excellence surrounded by long stretches of pedestrian tape. The production does not match the projection, and that gap is the entire story that matters.

Look at his yards per carry average. Look at his touchdown numbers relative to opportunity. Look at the games where he faced legitimate competition and tell me honestly that he was consistently dominant. The honest answer is that he wasn't. Love had good games and he had forgettable games, and the ratio between those two categories is not as favorable as teams seem to believe when they start thinking about spending a top-five pick on a running back. This is not an indictment of his ability. This is a statement of fact about what actually happened on the field.

The blocking he received deserves some credit. Every back benefits from good offensive line play, and Love was no exception. But the flip side of that equation is also true. Every back bears responsibility for what he does with the opportunities in front of him. When a running back runs for 80 yards on 18 carries, we can debate about blocking schemes all we want, but the bottom line is that 4.4 yards per carry is not a number that justifies a top-five investment in professional football.

Here is the calculation that teams making this pick will need to make, and here is where I suspect they will get it wrong. In the NFL, running back production is heavily dependent on circumstance. A back who runs behind a great offensive line with a strong passing game will look significantly better than a back who runs behind a marginal line in an offense that defenses can stack the box against. This is basic football economics. But the corollary to that principle is also true. A prospect with great tape against average competition is not automatically going to be great against elite competition. Love's performance came in a context, and that context will not exist when he gets to the next level.

The tape against Power Five defenses is where this gets interesting. When Love faced top-tier pass rushes and experienced defensive lines, his production dipped noticeably. He did not consistently get vertical. He did not consistently make defenders miss in tight spaces. He had moments, sure, but he also had moments where defenders simply shed his blocks and brought him down for losses. These are not the hallmarks of a top-five running back prospect.

Let's talk about the contract implications, because this is where the real story lives. If a team uses a top-five pick on a running back, they are committing to a four-year deal worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 million per year when you factor in the signing bonus and guaranteed money. That is a massive financial commitment for a position where the injury risk is substantial and where the shelf life is relatively short. The collective bargaining agreement gives teams options to bail out early, but those options come with dead cap ramifications that make moving on a draft bust at the running back position particularly painful.

The smart play, the one that front offices should be making, is to wait on the running back position. The positional value has cratered over the past decade for good reasons. The NFL has figured out that you can find productive running back production in later rounds. The hits outweigh the misses when you take backs outside the first round, and the financial flexibility you retain by not overpaying for the position is worth significantly more than the marginal upgrade you get from reaching on a prospect early.

But teams will not follow the smart play. Teams never do. Instead, they will look at Jeremiyah Love's 40-time and his vertical jump and his bench press reps, and they will convince themselves that his tape was just a function of circumstance. They will tell themselves that once he gets into an NFL strength program and once he plays in a better offense, everything will click into place. This is the oldest lie in professional football scouting. Tape is tape. Production is production. Neither of those things lies, no matter how much we want to reframe them through the lens of potential.

The question is not whether Love has potential. The question is whether that potential is worth the capital required to acquire it, and the answer based on the evidence is probably no. But we will find out soon enough whether the market agrees with that assessment. If Love goes in the top five, you can make a note that somewhere a general manager bet his job on projection over production. It happens every single year.