Outstanding at planting his foot and exploding out of cut
Great acceleration, explosion and speed
Nice agility and lateral movement
Quick feet
Very good vision
Runs with low center of gravity
Elusive
Confident
Keeps feet moving after contact
Nice hands and good pass catcher
Extremely fast
Hits hole quickly
Has a great second gear
Displays good effort
An overall great runner with ball in hands
Home-run threat
Solid inside runner
Weaknesses:
Could break more tackles
Poor pass protection
Lacks physicality in
pass protection
California coaches take him out of game on obvious passing downs – they don’t trust him
Might try to improvise too much on player rather than take what is given
Doesn’t profile as a No. 1 back
Not very powerful runner
Summary: Jahvid Best is a great runner of the football, but he isn’t a great
running back because he lacks some power running the ball and he is a poor pass protector.
He has good hands and some very intriguing tools. Best is a great change-of-pace back
and should come off the board in the late first to early second round. Running backs
are a dime a dozen, so this hurts his draft stock as running backs are often drafted lower
than their talent.
Player Comparison: Felix Jones. These two running backs have blazing speed, but
I would say Johnson is further along in his pass protection. Johnson is probably also
a little faster.
