{"id":17711,"date":"2017-04-18T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2017-04-18T13:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=17711"},"modified":"2021-06-02T22:09:34","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T02:09:34","slug":"brian-hill-2017-nfl-draft-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2017\/04\/18\/brian-hill-2017-nfl-draft-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Hill 2017 NFL Draft Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Overview<br \/>\n<\/strong><strong>Position:<\/strong> Running back<br \/>\n<strong>Height<\/strong>: 6&#8217;1&#8243;<br \/>\n<strong>Weight<\/strong>: 219 pounds<br \/>\n<strong>School<\/strong>: Wyoming Cowboys<\/p>\n<p><strong>Combine Performance Data<br \/>\n40-yard dash<\/strong>: 4.54 seconds<br \/>\n<strong>Bench press<\/strong>: 15 reps<br \/>\n<strong>Vertical jump<\/strong>: 34 inches<br \/>\n<strong>Broad jump<\/strong>: 10 feet, 5 inches (tied for fourth among running backs)<br \/>\n<strong>Three-cone drill<\/strong>: 7.03 seconds<br \/>\n<strong>20-yard shuttle<\/strong>: 4.32 seconds<br \/>\n<strong>60-yard shuttle<\/strong>: 11.29 seconds (second among running backs)<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Brian Hill 2017 NFL Draft Profile<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Wyoming Cowboys football experienced a renaissance of sorts in 2016. The program\u00a0made its first bowl game since 2011 and nearly clinched its first conference title of any kind since 1993. Over his three seasons in Laramie, <strong>Brian Hill<\/strong> certainly played a part in building towards the success they enjoyed last year.<\/p>\n<p>The Belleville, IL native came to Wyoming as a relatively unheralded two-star recruit. He made a fairly immediate impact as a true freshman, leading the Cowboys with 796 yards\u00a0on the ground as well as seven rushing touchdowns. But the following two seasons truly saw him come into his own as a running back. He finished top ten nationally in rushing yards both seasons, including last year when he ended up top three with 1,860 rushing yards. His 349 attempts led all of FBS.<\/p>\n<p>Hill was a <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/W\/WalkDo00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Doak Walker<\/a><\/strong> Award semifinalist in his sophomore and junior seasons. He finished his Wyoming career with 4,285 rushing yards and 35 touchdowns. Both of those totals are school records.<\/p>\n<h3>Strengths<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>sees the field in front of him well and finds space to get extra yardage;<\/li>\n<li>nice pad level and leg drive post contact;<\/li>\n<li>patient runner who waits for seams to develop in front of him;<\/li>\n<li>makes players miss in\u00a0second level with lateral quickness;<\/li>\n<li>saw plenty of reps in pro-style schemes including power-I sets;<\/li>\n<li>willing blocker able to jolt inside pass-rushers off initial pursuit;<\/li>\n<li>powerful in lower body;<\/li>\n<li>remained durable despite high workload.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Weaknesses<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>doesn&#8217;t hit the hole with a great deal of burst;<\/li>\n<li>more of a finesse player than physical power runner;<\/li>\n<li>can get swallowed up behind the line of scrimmage on runs outside the tackles;<\/li>\n<li>will need work with overall football instincts;<\/li>\n<li>didn&#8217;t consistently factor into the passing game;<\/li>\n<li>not a sure-handed pass catcher;<\/li>\n<li>struggles getting to the outside blocking perimeter pass rushers;<\/li>\n<li>possible discipline issues; sat out first quarter of bowl game last year.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>NFL Comparison<\/strong>: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/M\/MorrAl00.htm?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alfred Morris<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Teams With Need at Position<\/strong>: Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers<\/p>\n<p><strong>Projection<\/strong>: sixth round<\/p>\n<h3>Bottom Line<\/h3>\n<p>Hill put up monster numbers during his final two seasons in college and decided to put his name into the NFL Draft sweepstakes a year early. He excels as a finesse runner who&#8217;s able to make players miss with exceptional lateral movement. The high volume of reps he took on and lack of injury history is another plus.<\/p>\n<p>However, there are concerns. Hill&#8217;s lack of initial burst will make it difficult for him to find penetration at the line of scrimmage. Unless he can prove he&#8217;s more than a one-trick pony on offense, his contribution as an every down back will be limited. Overall, he&#8217;ll need to broaden his game if he wants to evolve from more of a depth piece into a feature back at the next level.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/617810656\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 69.696970% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/617810656?et=5azsYomDSGRHiGt-uXRoQg&amp;tld=com&amp;viewMoreLink=on&amp;sig=9KJxtf4_mmQYYCh45rEotPMcpCeEYHHqG3nq1YFZZTY=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"414\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brian Hill was a force in the Wyoming backfield last year and helped lead the Cowboys to their first-ever Mountain West Championship Game appearance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":742,"featured_media":17712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1647],"tags":[1353,2211,61,40,1173],"class_list":["post-17711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nfl-draft","tag-2017-nfl-draft","tag-brian-hill","tag-football","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft"],"modified_by":"David Latham, Managing Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}