Open Extended Reactions
WHEN NOTRE DAME running back Jadarian Price went through the speed dating-like gauntlet of NFL combine interviews in February, he heard two questions more than any others.
Teams peppered him about his role in a multiback offense at Notre Dame — specifically what it was like sharing the spotlight with Jeremiyah Love, the jet engine who last season won the Doak Walker Award as the top college running back.
"The other half asked: Why didn't you go somewhere else and want to be a feature back?" Price said.
Price and Love were at the combine to be evaluated as individual draft prospects, on their own merits — but fully separating them proved difficult. Not only did they share a position and a team, but both project strongly in the draft, and are set to enter a league that is shifting in how it uses running backs.
Although featured backs remain in some corners of the NFL, more teams are employing and seeking multiback rotations. Super Bowl participants Seattle (Kenneth Walker III, Zach Charbonnet) and New England (TreVeyon Henderson, Rhamondre Stevenson) both used two-back systems in their offenses this past season.
"The NFL has become a two-back league," an NFL running backs coach told ESPN.
"That's the way it goes now," added another NFL running backs coach. "It's hard for any single back to make it [through] a whole season healthy … It's tough for anybody."
Last spring, Henderson and fellow Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins were drafted two picks apart in the second round. Both went on to have productive rookie seasons.
Love and Price could have brighter draft forecasts. They're aiming to become only the fourth running back tandem from the same school to be selected in the first round, and the first since Arkansas’ Darren McFadden and Felix Jones in 2008. ESPN’s Mel Kiper, Jordan Reid and Matt Miller all list Love and Price as their top two running back draft prospects.
The Notre Dame pairing isn't the only one to be featured in April. Penn State’s Nicholas Singleton and Kaytron Allen, seemingly adjoined throughout their four years in Happy Valley, are both possible Day 2 selections. Running back tandems from the same school have been selected in 11 of the past drafts, including four pairs in 2019.
"They obviously love the tandems," Singleton told ESPN, "because they translate into the NFL."
The draft might never see a repeat of 2005, when Auburn backs Ronnie Brown and Carnell “Cadillac” Williams went No. 2 and No. 5 overall. But running back tandems are carrying increased value, both for NFL teams and for college players who embrace the traits necessary to succeed in them, and resist the allure of the transfer portal and its playing time and financial rewards.
"All four of these guys can be Pro Bowl running backs, in the right opportunity, in the right situations," Ja'Juan Seider, who coached Singleton and Allen at Penn State, and then Love and Price last season with Notre Dame, told ESPN. "And they're going to be fresh. These guys don't have the wear and tear."
WHEN DELAND MCCULLOUGH took over Notre Dame’s running back room in early 2022, he viewed players through an NFL lens. McCullough briefly played running back in the league, and spent three years as Kansas City’s running backs coach, helping the Chiefs to a Super Bowl LIV championship, before returning to the college level.
His main message?
"The NFL wasn't about numbers; it was about traits and characteristics," McCullough said. "I told the guys, 'I've sat up in these rooms. I've been in the NFL, pumping out 1,000-yard guys, and it's not a process where we say, 'Hey, give me a list of all the Heisman candidates, give me a list of all the All-Americans.' No, you watch tape.
"I was teaching these guys, 'Don't be driven by the extreme numbers. You can have extreme numbers, but you can have extreme wear-and-tear, too.'"
McCullough, who spent last season coaching running backs for the Raiders, said he has never heard NFL evaluators yearn for college running backs with significantly more carries, but he has heard them wish certain prospects came in with fewer carries (and hits). His goal for Notre Dame’s backs would be efficiency — maximizing the touches each received, without amassing so many that their bodies would start giving out.
In 2022, Notre Dame had three running backs finish with 100 carries and none record more than 165. Audric Estime in 2023 led the team with 1,341 rushing yards and 18 touchdowns, but Love, Price and Gi’Bran Payne all had 45 carries or more.
"They got to sit there and see, 'Wait a minute, this can work,'" McCullough said. "Audric had 1,300 yards, 18 touchdowns, but up until Game 10, he only played 47, 48% of the plays on offense. It was put out there for guys to be highly, highly successful and efficient."
The following season, Notre Dame once again had three players record 100 carries: Love (163), Price (120) and quarterback Riley Leonard (184). Love, Price and No. 3 back Aneyas Williams all averaged more than six yards per rush.
By the time McCullough returned to the NFL with the Raiders, Love and Price had embraced the benefits of a multiback rotation. Their new coach, Seider, had taken the same approach with Singleton and Allen, who each logged 156 or more carries in their first three seasons at Penn State. In 2024, they became the first Penn State pair to record 1,000 rushing yards in the same season.
"You tell them the 'why,'" Seider said. "You being on the field 60 snaps and tired at the end of the game is not going to help Notre Dame win. You playing 40 snaps or 30 snaps, and another guy getting 20 of them, and you're healthy at the end of the game, when the game's on the line, makes sense. Plus, I also want to get you out of this place when you're a high-level player, to give you an opportunity to the NFL and not be banged up and beat up."
Last season, Love led Notre Dame and finished eighth nationally with 1,372 rushing yards, but he logged only 199 carries. Although Price had 113 carries, he maximized them with 674 yards and 11 touchdowns, while becoming an All-America kick returner with two scores.
"… You're going to make every opportunity count," Price said. "The way I approached it is, if I can make an impact on special teams and show people, you know, that I can make things happen with the ball in my hands, then they'll have no choice but to put me on the offensive side and make stuff happen."
WHEN ALLEN AND Singleton came to Penn State as top-150 recruits in the team’s 2022 class, they formed an instant bond.
"What we tried to sell those guys on is staying fresh and not having a lot of tread left on their tires for their NFL experience," former Penn State coach James Franklin said.
Singleton and Allen roomed together throughout college, and have done so during their NFL draft preparation. Their college journey is increasingly rare in the transfer portal era — two successful ball carriers, both with starter-level talent, opting to stay with the same team and share opportunities for four full seasons.
"It clicked because we're the same person," Allen told ESPN. "We stick to ourselves. We're close for real and we don't do all the extra stuff. Our birthdays are like two days apart. It was meant to be."
They had virtually identical numbers in their first two seasons at Penn State: carry ranges of 156-172, touchdown ranges of 6-12, yardage ranges of 752-1,061. Although Allen logged 48 more carries in 2024, he finished with 1,108 yards, just nine more than Singleton, who had four more touchdowns. Last season brought wider discrepancies, as Singleton posted career lows for carries (123) and rushing yards (549), although he reached the end zone 13 times.
"… Sharing the carries meant a lot to us," Singleton said. "We both deserved the carries."
Synergy is a common thread among successful running back tandems in college with eyes on the NFL. Williams and Brown found it at Auburn, combining for 6,538 career rushing yards and 73 touchdowns on 1,254 carries.
They remained close friends after they became pros and were in each other's weddings.
"If you have that positive energy and a resilient type of mindset and unselfish attitude, the two-back system is fabulous," Williams said. "You have to want to celebrate and see the other person do well, even if that's you on the sideline, and you've got to be competitive as hell. Both guys have got to be, in order for it to work."
The closeness that they formed at Auburn didn't just help them in their lives away from football.
"That character piece, when NFL scouts came and interviewed those two guys, that really meant something," said Eddie Gran, who served as Auburn's running backs coach at the time. "[The scouts] asked all the questions: Did they get mad? Was there any dissension? That really meant something to them, that they were getting quality human beings as well as team players."
McFadden and Jones came from similar family backgrounds, spent their early years trying to prove themselves against older players and then became Arkansas' frontmen. Even as McFadden became the dominant college running back of his era — two-time Doak Walker winner, two-time Heisman finalist, three-time first-team All-SEC selection — Jones still carved out a role, eclipsing 1,100 rushing yards in his final two seasons.
Mel Kiper Jr.: Jeremiyah Love would be a tremendous fit for Commanders
Mel Kiper Jr. and Tim Hasselbeck weigh in on whether Jeremiyah Love should be a top-10 NFL draft pick.
"We always pushed each other, in a friendly manner," McFadden said. "We got along so well. It's hard to believe that, with us playing the same position, but the friendship and brotherhood we have built … it was a great experience."
After going through the evaluation process as a player, Williams got to see it from the other side, as Raiders running backs coach in 2024. He said the NFL continues to value how backs in rotations work together.
"It puts an onus on, 'Hey, if you don't get your s— together, you've got somebody just as good as you,' so it holds you accountable," he said. "A lot of people are talented, but what are those things that separate you? When teams come in, they've got to evaluate your character: How unselfish you were, how you were team guys, how you sacrifice."
THE SECOND QUESTION Price received so often during combine week — Why did you stay? — is one he heard many times over the years. Even around the Notre Dame football building.
"You kind of had people assuming I was leaving," he said.
Allen and Singleton heard similar things swirling during their four years at Penn State.
"We could have easily gone somewhere else," Allen said.
Price knew the portal pitch. If he left Notre Dame, he could earn more carries and money, perhaps even play in a warmer climate like the one he left back home in Texas. The allure of being RB1, no questions asked, was real.
When Love surged late in the 2024 season, sparking the team's CFP run with a 98-yard touchdown sprint in a first-round game against Indiana, the pecking order at Notre Dame became fairly clear, even though carries would continue to be rationed.
"Some people, you're put in a situation where you almost have to transfer, but I wasn't," Price said. "I challenged myself to split carries with a Doak Walker Award winner. A lot of people shy away from that challenge. … We accomplished a lot together."
The NFL's evaluation of Price, and where he ultimately goes in the draft, will illuminate how the league views those from two-back systems, especially the so-called second options. Tim Horton, who coached McFadden and Jones as Arkansas' running backs coach, recalled some doubts about Jones, who never logged more than 154 carries in a college season.
"It was kind of like Batman and Robin," Horton said. "There were a lot of questions about: Could Felix be that lead back? Darren got the most carries there, and was kind of the rock star of the room. Could Felix handle that, because he wasn't getting those types of carries? Could Robin step up and be like Batman?"
Ultimately, the Cowboys decided he could, and picked Jones at No. 22 in 2008. But Jones never eclipsed 185 carries and 800 yards in a season during a six-year career.
McFadden recorded two 1,000-yard seasons, which occurred in two of the three years he had more than 200 carries.
During combine interviews, Price had teams point out that he never started at running back for Notre Dame, and never recorded more than 15 carries in a game.
"Some people would mention that negative part about it, and I told them, 'I'm a football player,'" he said. "My body's healthy. I'm capable of being a starting NFL back, I'm capable of playing special teams, I'm capable of having 30 carries a game. It's just the situation I was in [at Notre Dame]."
An NFL running backs coach said Price's overall carries total shouldn't be held against him, noting that the "values have changed" on how backs are evaluated. Another NFL running backs coach said Price brings "a heck of a skill set" to the league.
Many backs in shared situations like Love and Price, or Allen and Singleton, end up splitting apart. Gran, who coached college running backs into the portal era, doesn't expect to see many more tandems like Brown and Williams stay together until draft day. Transferring has and will continue to boost the draft outlook for certain backs.
But the Penn State and Notre Dame players don't regret staying put.
"We're loyal, man," Singleton said. "We didn't want to leave Penn State like that. We came back for a reason."
Said Franklin: "They finished in the all-time leaders in Penn State history with a bunch of other backs who didn't share time. That's very telling.
AS THE 2005 draft neared, Gran’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Everyone wanted to know where Brown and Williams would go.
"[The NFL] did have a hard time separating 'em," Gran said. "Two in the first five picks, it's just unheard of."
Brown and Williams remain the only two running back teammates drafted in the top five, or even the top 20, according to ESPN Research. Since 2005, when three running backs went in the top five (Texas' Cedric Benson was selected between Brown and Williams at No. 4), only six total backs have gone in the top five, including McFadden (No. 4 in 2008).
After a run of three top-five picks from 2016 to 2018 the running back market cooled. No backs were selected in the top 23 picks from 2019 to 2021, with zero first-rounders in the 2021 draft. But an uptick in overall selections could be coming, as five backs went in the top 60 picks of last year's draft, and 15 went in the top 151.
Whatever team drafts Love will peg him as a potential featured back. Miller ranks the Notre Dame star as his No. 1 overall prospect, while Kiper has him No. 2.
"Every team wants that once-in-a-generation, Saquon Barkley, Adrian Peterson, Barry Sanders,” Williams said.
But there's an acknowledgment, too, from the teams and players, that most running back situations will become rotational. Allen and Singleton admired Lions tandem David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, who shared carries the past three seasons until Montgomery was traded last month.
"I would say [Allen] is Montgomery and I'm Gibbs," Singleton said. "We loved that duo so much, how they played off of each other."
After developing in similar situations, the adjustment for college tandems to the NFL isn't expected to be bumpy.
"They've been in the systems, and then they come in here and thrive," an NFL running backs coach said. "It gives a young guy the opportunity to learn the NFL, learn the offenses, understand protections, understand the speed of the game." Singleton and Allen will remain in close contact during draft weekend, as will Love and Price, as they wait to hear their names called. Seider said he might need a private jet to celebrate with both tandems he coached.
Draft weekend can bring surprise and disappointment, especially at a position like running back, where team valuations fluctuate. Featured backs like Nebraska's Emmett Johnson (251 carries in 2025) are available, and players like Arkansas’ Mike Washington Jr. have thrived in the predraft period. Singleton, meanwhile, broke his foot during Senior Bowl practice and underwent surgery, placing doubt into his outlook.
Allen isn't fretting about where he and his close friend will go. He's just excited to reach the finish line, together.
"I can't wait to see both of us go off the board," he said. "We came in with each other, left out with each other and got drafted. It will be our dreams coming true."
