Tyjae Spears is This Week’s Biggest Riser

First Round Mock’s NFL Draft Analyst Nick Martini says Tulane running back (RB) Tyjae Spears has taken the NFL Draft world by storm this past week at the Reese’s Senior Bowl practices. He’s turning heads left and right, and is showing how valuable he can be for a team at the next level.

The story behind Spears

This Tulane RB is a four-year player coming out of Tulane, as a native of the Louisiana area. He got limited playing time in his first two years with the Green Wave. Still, he posted about 450 yards in those years combined.

That changed in 2021, as Spears entered the scene as the team’s featured back. In that role, he posted 861 yards on the ground and a total of 1,008 all-purpose yards.

This past season Spears put on a show.

1,581 rushing yards (fifth-most in the country)

19 rushing touchdowns (tied for third-most)

Production

Gaining yards after contact is one among many of his impressive traits.

Listed at 5-foot-11, 195 pounds (per Tulane’s roster), Spears doesn’t appear to be this tall, and he did measure to be 5-foot-9 and change at the Senior Bowl. This is not overly concerning, in fact, it better explains his incredible ability to maintain a low center of gravity with such a flexible lower half to move through contact with the best of them.

Pro Football Focus had posted Spears put up an average of 4.55 yards after contract per attempt, which earned him a silver medal out of all eligible running backs this past season.

This makes sense after watching his game film.

Spears is a patient and decisive runner with good vision. He shows excellent burst and explosiveness when he has the ball in his hands, and he’s often able to beat defenders to the edge when that’s what the play development calls for.

All of these characteristics combined with great elusiveness makes Spears very ‘slippery’ when defenders are trying to get him down.

Here’s a beautiful play by Spears, demonstrating his uncanny ability to explode out of his cuts at every level of the field.

Balance, vision, and toughness are among many ideal traits that are on full display here.

What a great week (and month) it’s been

A quick search on Twitter and it’s easy to find how many people are raving about Spears. He even earned the Practice Player-of-Week honors at the Senior Bowl. This is an award that was voted on by NFL executives and scouts.

This past season, Spears has somewhat been quietly one of the top running backs in all of College Football. He ended his season with a 205 yard, 4 touchdown performance in the Cotton Bowl leading the Green Wave to a New Year’s 6 Bowl victory. This was the school’s first post-season victory since the 1935 Sugar Bowl in the first ever rendition of that game.

Spears followed that up that performance with this kind of a showing at the Senior Bowl. Plays like this were seemingly happening every practice.

Possible Shortcomings

As eluded to previously, his size. While that doesn’t limit Spears completely by any stretch of the imagination, he will have to continue to play with toughness and physicality to be able to run between the tackles at the next level. This is something I can see him being able to do.

He is not the best pass blocker in this year’s running back class by any means. That’s not because of lack of will though. He’ll stand in there and do his best to get under the chin of any blitzing defender.

Spears was not an elite pass catcher either at any point in his college career. This is something many NFL teams will likely ask of him. However, if the above clip is any indication of what he can do as a receiver out of the backfield, Spears should be just fine.

Summary

The running back position in the league is seemingly getting younger and younger. Once guys hit age 25, 26, 27, and are in line for their next contract, it seems like they usually lose a step. With what Spears has shown in his burst, explosiveness, quickness, and patience as a runner, many teams that are looking to get younger at the position should be taking a considerable look at Spears.

Game film reviewed and 2023 NFL Draft grade:

SMU ’22

Cincinnati ’22

UCF ’22

Draft Grade: Third-Fourth Round

Nick Martini is a college student that has a passion for sports, but in particular football. He’s loved the game since a very young age, and to this day is a die hard Bengals fan. He has aspirations of a career in the scouting world upon finishing school and right now he covers the NFL Draft for firstroundmock.com.