Contextualizing Jaylen Samuels’ 2017 Season Rushes At North Carolina State

The Pittsburgh Steelers selected former North Carolina State running back Jaylen Samuels with their second of two fifth-round picks in the 2018 NFL Draft and he might just be the most intriguing player of this year’s class due to the various ways he was used during his college career.

Samuels’ career offensive stats at North Carolina State certainly paint a picture of how versatile of player he was as he caught 201 passes for 1,851 yards and 19 touchdowns in addition to carrying the football 182 times in total for 1,107 yards and 28 touchdowns. That painted statistical picture aside, Samuels’ rushing stats need contextualizing due to the various ways he was used when it came to him carrying the football. In an effort to give you a good idea as to how Samuels was used as a runner at North Carolina State, I have contextualized every one of his rushes from 2017 and you can see a breakdown of those in the table below along with links to each and every run.

As you can see by Samuels’ rushing stats breakdown above the detailed play-by-play data, the North Carolina State product had 43 traditional handoffs last season. On those 43 runs he was lined up as either a tailback or halfback in the backfield in either a pistol-I formation (I-PI) or as deep tailback behind a quarterback who was under the center (DTB).

13 of Samuels’ 2017 rushes came with him lined up as a Wildcat quarterback while his other 20 carries were non-traditional types and that includes jet sweeps and end-around runs that came via him not being lined up in the backfield and behind the quarterback.

The below breakdown in addition to the linked videos should definitely paint a clearer picture to you as to how Samuels was used as a runner during his entire college career.