Breece Hall

Running the Ball

Good footwork on gap running plays, he is patient and sets up his blocks effectively when following moving blockers. In this he can slow play his path and change speeds effectively. When he does press his key effectively in this way and cut right off the OL’s butt his burst, physicality and contact balance through body control, make him hard to bring down between the tackles. There are also times when he’s super patient and makes a great decision to press the LOS for even longer than normal and allows different running lanes to open up. However on zone plays this patience can make him too slow to make decisions as back-side defenders come free to hit him from behind or he doesn’t move quickly enough to make his blockers on the front-side right. In these scenarios he presses his read to a fault and either follows his initial aiming point blindly missing cutback lanes and/or doesn’t allow him to be creative enough to mitigate losses. 1st-level vision is okay, but when he plays it safe in this way he misses potential bigger running lanes. He needs to be better as a problem-solver when the blocking and the play doesn’t go to script, he sees color where he shouldn’t and has defenders in the backfield.

He doesn’t have the pure lateral agility to make a man miss in the backfield and so needs to do it with smarts but too often he runs down blind alleys or into trouble and defenders take him down for a loss. He doesn’t manipulate interior box defenders with his footwork and leaves them to read him like a book on the way to make a tackle. He runs a lot in the Cyclones’ RPO game when he must stay square to the LOS but he stays square for too long and doesn’t declare an intention that LBs can start to work off before changing it up on them, then DL starts to close in on him. More patient LBs and those who read their keys with discipline can see that his body lean, hips and toes give away his intention before he gets anywhere close to his blockers. He is more of a one-cut and go type back and this should suit a more heavy Zone scheme but his footwork limits him with this. When he does go, he has excellent burst and vertical explosion with good speed. He runs with high knees so diving tackles whiff and he can work over the trash well. He knows when to dip his shoulder to avoid contact, shows good body lean to make tackles, arm tackles, plays with a low center of gravity reducing his surface area. He finishes at the second level, metes out punishment to DBs. He knows his limitations, how he wins and can make people miss with his speed and contact balance.

Passing Down Skills

Good pass catcher with nice separation at the top of his routes and body control but can see some concentration drops when there is a lot of open space in front of him. Good pre-snap processor as a pass protector but needs to work on post-snap processing and hand placement/leverage in pass pro

SUMMARY
Great explosion, burst and good speed, one cut and go type back with some footwork deficiencies – presses the LOS too long or not long enough. Needs better loss mitigation

PRODUCTION JR: 251 Att, 1460 rush yards (5.8 avg), 20 TD, 2 Fumble, 41 tgts, 37 Rec, 310 rec yards (8.4 avg), 3 Rec TD INJURY: None

RAVENS FIT
Toughness 4
Intelligence 3
Versatility 2
Grit 4
Scheme 3