Welcome back to the 2025 NFL Draft Scouting series. While last week we looked at Ohio State’s thunder and lightning duo, this week we’re going to dive into some Big 12 workhorses, namely Devin Neal, Cam Skattebo, Ollie Gordon II, and DJ Giddens. Each of these players was the marquee name on his own offense, but how will they handle their jump to the NFL? This breakdown will allow us to appropriately place these running backs in our 2025 dynasty rookie rankings.
The sections of this article will follow the categories laid out in the final part of the Get Better at Dynasty series, copied here for your convenience. Recall that the highlighting in the template reflects the relative importance of each trait, whereas in the actual prospect report it represents how strong they are in that skill.
Fantasy-Relevant Traits
Goal Line
Cam Skattebo excels here, and I think even worst case scenarios for him involve a heavy goal-line role. Even if his team decides not to use him between the twenties, he could singlehandedly return fantasy value with LaGarrette Blount or Jamaal Williams types of seasons. At “only” 216 lbs, he doesn’t have quite the ideal size, but he’s just so strong and tenacious that there is a feeling of inevitability to him around the goal line.
Devin Neal and DJ Giddens approach this area in the same way, and it’s not exactly a strength. Both players win with their elusiveness, and around the goal line they’re lacking a bit of a grinder’s mindset to get really low, find a crease, and dive in. Both of them still treat it like an early down situation where they wanna remain patient and look for the hole, and they lack the tenacity and strength to just lower their pads and fall forward. Giddens is especially upright and just will not win with pad level.
Ollie Gordon should remain on the field in these situations. To be honest, he gets less out of his size than you’d expect, not really getting low and bowling his way through the goal line, but with his size and pedigree at the college level, if he earns an NFL role, it will include goal line work.
Pass Catching
Cam Skattebo is surprisingly good in this area for somebody who lacks classic scatback traits. He was a reliable pass catcher in college, being called into action on swing passes all the time at Arizona State. He’s also a precise route runner down the field, with footwork that allows him to cut more crisply than you’d expect from his bowling ball build. I’ve seen him create separation on slants and other in-breaking routes this way.
Finally, he shows some natural talent at tracking the ball and making late adjustments on wheel routes, something many backs struggle with. However, Skattebo is almost completely lacking in run after catch juice, and I didn’t think Arizona State actually benefitted from throwing him so many swing passes.
There was one slant he caught where I saw lots of open space and was expecting him to break a big gain, but he just is not a player who erases angles for closing safeties. He instead got tackled with barely any yards after catch at all.
Devin Neal is a competent pass catcher, but is a bit limited by his hands and overall speed. While he catches the easy stuff, he has a pretty small catch radius and really struggled to bring in balls away from his frame. This got exacerbated because he was asked to run routes down field often.
On the bright side though, he is a pretty good downfield route runner, and he will be a nightmare for linebackers to stick with on horizontally breaking routes. His elusiveness is also perfect for a thriving screen game, where the difference between a stop and a big play is usually whether the running back can make the first man miss.
Ollie Gordon actually has pretty good hands in my opinion, as I saw him bring some balls in through tight windows and other times he made catches away from his frame. However, his lack of change of direction is exposed in route running situations and his screen situations better be perfectly blocked.
With DJ Giddens, I’m a bit confused by his route running. He seemed to jog on his intermediate routes. I can’t tell if it’s because he knew he wasn’t getting the ball, or if it was truly that stark of a lack of a second gear. But I also was frustrated that he didn’t attempt to make sharp or crisp cuts.
He rounds routes or taps his feet, and that’s a bad combination with his lack of pure explosiveness. Finally, I saw issues adjusting to off target balls, instead sticking out a single hand.
Elusiveness
This is overall a very elusive set of backs, but let’s start with the odd man out, Ollie Gordon II. When he has a head of steam, Gordon shows decent contact balance, but he’s a little too easy to bring down otherwise. When he is chugging his way downfield, he can make horizontal progress pretty smoothly and really make the most of his opportunities. However, every bit of creation before that is pretty bad, to the point that his lack of elusive traits severely detracts from his size/speed combo.
Gordon really, really gets bogged down in and out of cuts, which means if he needs to change direction, the play is essentially over. This is why he looked so good in 2023, when his offensive line was giving him easy answers to attack downhill, compared to this year when he struggled.
Yes his offensive line play regressed, but it exposed a major weakness in his game. One that I think is severe enough that I don’t want shares of him. I felt like I had to downgrade his other traits because they won’t get to shine in any cases where creation is required of him.
On the other hand, Devin Neal and Cam Skattebo are elite in this area, albeit in very different ways. For both, this is why they’re NFL players and why they have a chance to establish themselves in productive fantasy roles.
Cam Skattebo does not meet your classic definition of “elusive”, as he’s one of the least shifty backs you’ll see. Rather than making the first man miss, Skattebo is essentially guaranteed to get hit by a would-be tackler. Whether that tackle knocks him down is another question entirely. He’s absolutely elite at dictating the terms of the engagement.
He plays with an incredibly low pad level, which means he’s always out leveraging the defender and refusing to go down on first contact. Additionally, he’s really adept at twisting such that defenders are always dealing him glancing blows to his center of mass while he’s in a balanced and stable position. With his strength and stout frame, he’s almost impossible to bring down on first contact. For this reason, he breaks tackles with freakish consistency.
The flip side of this is that he gets less out of his broken tackles than most backs because he’s not exactly the speediest or most explosive after contact. One last note, his lateral movement skills aren’t bad. He’s not that explosive, but he has really good footwork and balance to move through cuts fluidly. This lets him win the corner and bounce runs when he needs to.
Devin Neal is the shiftiest back I’ve scouted so far this cycle. When I say he makes the first man miss, I mean the first man may as well not exist. His footwork and balance are absolutely perfect. He can move laterally without missing any speed and essentially teleport a few yards left of the first tackler without missing a beat.
While sombody like Saquon Barkley or Nick Chubb achieves this with violent jump cuts and freakish athletic ability, Neal just mastered the footwork to do this fluidly and seamlessly in nearly all situations.
The downside is that a Barkley or prime Chubb type could change the complexion of the play by flipping the script on the defense. Neal’s cuts aren’t explosive enough to do that, but he makes the first man miss in tight spaces all the time. This is a quality NFL trait all day, every day, and if he earns a starting role it’s because he does this with such regularity that a coach cannot take him off the field.
Unlike Skattebo’s tackle breaking ability, which requires preparing to absorb a blow, Neal’s elusiveness works at full speed, such that he is immediately able to keep the play going, leading to more long runs. This is why I say “the first man may as well not exist”. He’s not even really slowing Neal down. Sometimes with Neal this can function as a weakness. He is always looking to evade tackles, to the point that he leaves meat on the bone in situations where he should be welcoming contact.
It’s not that he’s afraid of physicality, it’s that he would rather trust his fastball, even in cases where he just needs to grit his teeth and fall forward. This can lead to negative plays and dancing behind the line of scrimmage.
DJ Giddens best trait, by far, is his elusiveness. It’s not as clean as Neal’s, which means it’s harder for him to string together multiple evaded tackles, but in general he will make the first man miss and keep running into the second level. He’s also pretty solid at twisting around a defender’s tackle attempt, absorbing a shot but leaning and driving with his legs to keep moving forward.
He runs fairly upright though, which severely limits his contact balance and ability to win through contact. This is an NFL-caliber trait, but I’m not positive there are enough other strengths in his profile to result in a role that is valuable for fantasy.
Explosive Play Ability
Ollie Gordon will flash at the NFL level because he’s always a perfectly blocked play away from an explosive gain. If he does not have to create or improvise before the line of scrimmage, none of the other backs in this article can match him for size, speed, and explosiveness. For this reason, anybody watching a highlight reel of him will come away seeing a star player.
My issue with him is that he can’t get to these situations except when the context around him is going great. I also did not see him successfully turn the corner in cases where he needed to win a footrace behind the line of scrimmage.
Devin Neal’s lack of loud physical traits is one thing that will keep his draft capital relatively cheaper. His long speed is just ok, where it’s not a value add but it’s not a reason he’ll fail to establish himself as an NFL player. His explosiveness is just fine, and he doesn’t lose any of it in and out of cuts, so it plays up a bit.
Finally, he is a danger on the edges because he has the space to cook a tackler and keep going, but he will lose foot races to the corner. This area is by far Cam Skattebo’s biggest weakness. Let’s call a spade a spade; he just does not have NFL-caliber long speed or acceleration. If he fails in the NFL, this is why. On his tape you can see big plays being left on the field in cases where he just could not outrun a disadvantaged defender, even to the point you’re unpleasantly surprised he didn’t break a big play.
I will say he gets to the corner surprisingly well because his footwork and fluidity are good enough that he can change direction and make horizontal progress better than your classic bowling ball types.
DJ Giddens meanwhile somewhat lacks a second gear. He’s not as slow as Skattebo in terms of long speed, but he plays at one speed all the time. He is a pretty smooth mover so maybe it’s just harder to perceive the higher end of his athletic traits. If I miss my eval on him, this will be why.
Traits That Matter For Earning a Role
Ball Security
Skattebo actually fumbled seven times (albeit only one lost) over the last three years, and this is despite him not getting those many touches until this past season. Ollie Gordon fumbled five times the last two years, albeit as a workhorse on his team. Giddens and Neal were just fine in this area.
Early Down Rushing
Devin Neal’s NFL projection on early down rushing will be a balancing act between his ability to evade tackles and his single-minded desire to turn every last engagement into a contest of shiftiness. There are times when he is penned up in his own backfield and has no momentum at all, yet he still tries last-ditch juke moves against defenders, resulting in a negative play.
He knows his shiftiness is his best skill, and he doesn’t have the intuition for when to abandon ship and just dive forward. I do like his inside vision though and his decision making for when to bounce runs. But his lack of tenacity when he cannot stay clean might frustrate coaches.
On the other hand, Skattebo is incredibly physical and very much a north-south runner. My one gripe with him is that the best between the tackles runners often look like they’re shot out of a cannon when they run through the hole. When they can marry decisiveness with athleticism, they play extremely fast.
This was the trait I liked the most about Quinshon Judkins. Skattebo doesn’t really have the burst necessary to look inevitable running through a properly blocked gap, something you see the best backs do on the occasional drive.
Ollie Gordon II instead looks like a pretty indecisive runner, and he really slows down when it’s not clear to him where to run. He has the ingredients to be a devastating runner between the tackles, but he doesn’t play with great pad level, isn’t overly tenacious, and struggles mightily to improvise behind the line of scrimmage to work to a gap.
DJ Giddens is patient and has good vision on early downs, but sometimes I would like to see more burst into the gap and through the line of scrimmage. Instead, he is always scanning and in a sort of tackle-breaking mode. This usually served him well but it leaves something on the field every now and then.
Combined with his high pad level, his early down rushing will be a bit of a balancing act between his elusiveness and lack of lunchpail between the tackles tough running.
Pass Blocking
Nobody really shined here. Skattebo has the mindset of an elite pass blocker, but maybe to a fault. He relishes contact, to the point he tries to deliver a shot on every play. When it lands, that defender is not going to affect the play, but Skattebo commits really early and leaves his feet, either to cut block or to pancake the defender in the hole.
When the rusher can evade him, it’s Skattebo who will no longer be affecting the play. I’d like for him to get hands on rushers more and land a punch. Still, with his strength and mindset, I like his chances of being coached up here.
Devin Neal is a bit of a “lose slowly” type of player, and the success of his block will depend a lot on how quick the rest of the play develops. He also catches a little, meaning he lets the rusher dictate the engagement. I don’t think he’s afraid to be physical but it’s certainly not a strength of his game.
Ollie Gordon certainly has the size and length to be an effective blocker, but he has a really bad habit of jumping sideways into the block and delivering a sideways glancing blow. His blocks are perfunctory, nominally checking a box but not actually positively impacting his play or showing the most effort or tenacity.
Giddens was asked to pass block suspiciously infrequently for how often he was on the field for pass plays. The vibe I got was that his coaches preferred to use him to synthetically pass block by making a linebacker run down the field with him. I did see one rep where he finally tried to pick up a blitz and was wholly ineffectual, barely slowing the rusher down and letting him pick up an easy sack.
He in theory landed a punch but it was weak and did nothing to divert the rusher. Like with Ollie Gordon, I’ve also seen Giddens half-heartedly landing glancing blows on his attempts to chip or lead block on QB rushes. I don’t see him staying on the field in obvious passing situations.
Short Yardage
For reasons mentioned earlier, I do see Skattebo being a priority to handle these duties in his offense. He’s strong and tenacious. Meanwhile, the other three backs got stopped in this area more than I would like to see.
Gordon and Giddens failed a little too frequently in this area because of their high pad level, which meant they couldn’t drive their legs and fall forward as often as you’d like. Neal is still always looking to evade the defense, even when he only needs to dive into a crease and fall forward.
2025 Rookie RB Rankings
Devin Neal
Profile
Devin Neal brings an elite trait to the table, namely his ability to make defenders miss, thanks to his excellent footwork and balance to absolutely dust would-be tacklers. Combined with a fairly well-rounded skillset, I see enough here to take over a valuable fantasy role eventually.
Best Case
He becomes a starting back who isn’t considered a star in the NFL but is always considered underrated by pundits and ends up being a low end RB1 for fantasy because he gets roped into pass catching work too. His goal line play is ok but shared with somebody else.
Worse Case
He never really gets taken seriously as a starting option for his team, getting bad draft capital and remaining a handcuff due to coaches getting frustrated with his lack of physicality.
Cam Skattebo
Profile
Cam Skattebo is severely lacking in NFL-level explosiveness and speed, which is a major red flag in his profile, but he possesses elite tackle-breaking ability and manages to show it with incredible consistency snap-to-snap. Between his body control and pad level, he manages to turn any engagement into a contest of contact balance. Combined with solid route running and pass catching, there is hope for a major fantasy role.
Best Case
He is paired with a classic scatback who is not a threat for early down work or goal line, and does well enough in the pass catching aspects of the game to have a fantasy floor there anyways. His performance in the CFP bumps up his draft capital and he is drafted high enough to be the presumed starter on his team. I could see lots of old fashioned coaches getting really excited about him.
Worse Case
The lack of speed and explosion means he’s a sitting duck for NFL-qualty tacklers. These athletic traits turn out to be deal breakers and he never becomes a fantasy asset. To the extent he’s used as a goal line back, he becomes a roster clogger because you can’t start him every week but he scores enough that you can’t cut him.
Ollie Gordon
Profile
Ollie Gordon has an imposing size-speed combination that can lead to huge plays when he knows where to run, but he is far less than the sum of his parts. Decision-making slows him down, and he slows down both in and out of his cuts. Overall, I think he’ll flash and generate excitement, but eventually fail to establish himself at the NFL level.
Best Case
He falls into a good situation and is thrust into a starting role due to injury. Think the Isaac Guerendo path as a player whose traits flash when he has a runway but who shouldn’t be asked to improvise. Gordon generates enough flashes and explosive plays in a more functional offense that his dynasty hype train takes off. This would be a good time to sell high on him.
Worst Case
He is a day three pick and the opportunity never materializes. In practice he struggles enough that he’s never trusted with a fantasy-relevant role.
DJ Giddens
Profile
With DJ Giddens, I really see a quality backup here. He will run efficiently in the NFL, but I see too narrow a tightrope between these two reasons. Finding enough reasons to get him on the field and juice for fantasy football purposes when he does get on the field.
If I don’t think an offensive coordinator will prioritize him for his pass catching work, then we’re left with an early down runner who lacks a physical component to his game and isn’t particularly explosive. I just described De’Ernest Johnson to you. That’s not an insult.
Johnson is a quality runner of the football. But it’s hard to milk a fantasy starter out of this profile. Meanwhile for fantasy, you don’t really get many fantasy points for “runs efficiently on 14 carries”.
Best Case
He flashes in a small role, being put in ideal situations such that his elusiveness shines. This leads to fans and pundits clamoring for him to get a bigger role. He can put up big fantasy days as a spot starter, primarily on the ground.
Worst Case
Career backup who has trouble staying on rosters because he struggles at doing the little things that you would like your backup to do. He could be a huge bust for 2025 dynasty rookie rankings.