By Jordan Stiers
Now, I restrained myself from making him the 1.1 this year because of Josh Jacobs and his situation. After Jacobs, it gets very opinionated on how people seem to rank this class. I’ve seen Sanders go as early as 1.1 and as late as 1.11. That said, I personally feel 1.2-1.5 will be where his average will end up by August. The biggest knock on Sanders is that he went to the Eagles, who love using a committee backfield. On top of that, the team traded a 6th round conditional pick for Jordan Howard. Normally, when looking at a rookie dynasty player these things would definitely concern me. I watched about two seconds of tape on Sanders and lost all concern.
First off, he has incredible balance while running. This allows him to absorb contact and keep stride. His jump cut is vicious and honestly reminds me a little of Saquon. He has elite field vision to hit holes with speed. His running style seems to be a hybrid of Leveon Bell and Frank Gore - the vision and smooth moves in the backfield of Bell mixed with the aggressive running style of Gore. Frank Gore is most known for his feet; they never stop driving when he’s in contact. Sanders is known for having a very similar style. He didn’t catch a ton of balls at Penn St., but it looked natural when he did. Plus he is electric in the open field, so i expect him to be just fine catching screens and dump offs from Wentz next year.
At the end of the day, Doug Pederson uses a committee backfield because he’s never had a talent at RB Iike Sanders. I fully expect him to be a three-down back with Jordan Howard either not making the roster or vulturing goal-line pops for a year at most. If Sanders can improve on his blitz pickups in the passing game, I don’t see any way the Eagles can allow him less than 250 touches next season.