Cleveland Browns: Running back preview, projection

Role Players

Darius Jackson

An early disappointment in 2017 was the loss of Darius Jackson to as yet undisclosed knee injury that sent him to injured reserve. Picked up off of waivers as a sixth-round pick by the Dallas Cowboys, Jackson was hands down the best athlete of the entire 2016 NFL Draft.

Jackson looked good in preseason, but the Cowboys kept a ton of running backs at the start of the season last year and when Darren McFadden was activated from the Non-Football Injury list, the team opted to waive Jackson and the Browns pounced.

Between his outstanding athletic ability at his size and his production at Eastern Michigan, the hope was that Coach Wilson could unleash the seemingly unlimited potential of Jackson this year and have him become Crowell’s backup. Now, the hope is that Jackson’s knee injury isn’t too serious and he will be able to fully recover, so the dream of having Jackson is simply deferred a year.

The good news, if there is any, is that he is in the fold for the Browns as he recovers. The potential bad news would be if Jackson and the Browns come to an injury settlement, which would then make him a free agent again.

George Atkinson III

The grandson of former Oakland Raiders great was the most confusing member of the Browns 53-man roster last year. With all the roster shuffling the Browns did from the beginning of the year to the end, it was strange that someone that barely set foot on the field was someone they felt they needed to keep.

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Atkinson finally did see the field in the final week of the season and to his credit, he looked pretty good, albeit against a less than fully equipped Steelers defense. He carried the ball seven times for 34 yards and a touchdown.

Atkinson has nice size for the position with straight line speed and enough overall athletic ability to make things interesting. He’s still only 24 years old, but it’s a little curious that this will be his fourth year in the league and he hasn’t really done anything. The seven carries he had against the Steelers were the first seven regular season carries of his career.

For training camp, Atkinson’s best path to the roster is becoming Crowell’s backup. In the event that Crowell were to go down, be it for a quarter or a few games, Atkinson has to show he’s a viable runner and ball carrier. Like Crowell, he’s best suited to get downhill immediately, use his size and speed to put pressure on defenses behind what should be an effective offensive line.

Matthew Dayes

The team’s final pick of the draft class and second to last pick overall was one of the players the Browns coached at the Reese’s Senior Bowl. Wilson got to basically take Dayes for a test drive to see how he would react to coaching and improve each day. The actual carries during the practices from the week aren’t terribly important, but it’s an excellent way to see backs deal with pass protection and running routes against some of the most talented players in the country.

In addition to the tape, it seems that week’s worth of practices sealed the deal for the Browns. In terms of athleticism, Dayes looks rather ordinary. He’s not bad, but he doesn’t stand out much. On tape, however, Dayes shows a viable skill set for the NFL.

Dayes is a good blocker and talented receiver that seems to do everything the right way at the running back position. He’s actually more suited as a runner to play in a zone scheme, but he should be able to adjust enough for the small amount of carries he’d get in this offense. Dayes was brought in to block and catch passes in the true sense of a third down back.

In training camp and the preseason, it’s all about Dayes proving he can block. Certainly, they will want him to get open and catch some passes, but if he can block, he can provide insurance for Duke Johnson and let the Browns open it up with him as a weapon. That alone would make him worth the price they paid to acquire him and then some.

Terrence Magee

Magee was brought in when the Browns waived Jackson who then went to injured reserve. After coming out in 2014, Magee is on his third team in as many years, starting with the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks before the Browns.

Magee is a bowling ball at 5-8.5 and almost 220 pounds. He has a downright strange athletic profile in that he had a pretty remarkable vertical jump and pretty average everywhere else. He also attended LSU at a time when it was largely running back by committee, so his production from there isn’t particularly impressive.

Magee has to try to beat out Atkinson for a spot to backup Crowell. It seems as though Magee was largely brought in as a body to get someone here in the wake of the loss of Jackson and it would hardly be a surprise if they were still looking around at possible options.

What does work in Magee’s favor is he is a power runner with a low pad level that can hide behind his blockers a little bit with a lot of mass going forward. This is similar to Jeremy Hill, who came out the same year and also played at LSU with Magee. Hill was a second round pick by the Bengals that year while Jackson was the offensive coordinator there.

Magee would have to prove that to be true, that he is a power back that would consistently fall forward and push the pile with the ball in his hands. That will need to be apparent pretty quickly in training camp and the preseason.