It’s now been almost two months since I published this article outlining a new methodology for formulating my dynasty running back rankings, and I have directed much of my intervening efforts toward the development of a similar system for use with my devy rankings. That development process is now complete, and this article will serve as an introductory explainer for the new rankings methodology it resulted in.

As with my dynasty rankings, the devy rankings process will incorporate a point-based rating system structured around two different classifications for each player (which was first inspired by this thread from Adam Harstad). The first of those applies to both the dynasty and devy rankings and involves rating players’ sustainable professional ceilings. Basically, I’m looking to answer the following question: “What sort of real-life role and standing in the NFL could this player’s ability be expected to justifiably maintain for multiple seasons during his rookie contract, assuming he receives the requisite opportunity?”

I qualified and clarified that question in detail in October’s dynasty rankings article, but I want to quickly hit the broad strokes again here. Because running back production is so fundamentally tied to the environment in which players operate, and because we have no way of knowing in what professional environments current college players will eventually operate, it doesn’t make much sense to classify those players based on how good I think they will be in fantasy football. It makes more sense to classify them based on how good I think their in-a-vacuum abilities could allow them to be in the NFL, with all situational factors being equal and relative to other professional backs. That also means ignoring considerations about expected draft capital or brand value.

Answering the aforementioned question will involve categorizing players on the following numerical scale:

For reference, here is a sampling of where I rate current NFL players on this scale:

Unlike with the dynasty rankings, these classifications are very much subject to change on an individual basis. When we entered the season, guys like Raheim Sanders and Nick Singleton would probably have been classified as 5s or 6s on the above scale, but given their struggles in 2023, it’s now difficult to justify rating them as anything above 4s. Conversely, someone like Jonathon Brooks could jump from the 1-2 range into 3+ territory with an unexpectedly strong season. We’ll go over where I rate a bunch of different players on this scale a little later.

The second classification scale is where the devy rankings process takes a sharp diversion from the path laid by the dynasty rankings process. Given that the players on your NFL dynasty rosters are necessarily lineup-contributing assets, it makes sense to care about the kind of fantasy production they can offer you in the short-term future and independent of their inherent abilities. College players are not lineup-contributing assets (at least in a traditional devy format), so there is no short-term fantasy production to care about as a supplement to the attention we’re paying to their inherent skill-sets. What instead fills that void is projected draft capital, which I’ve classified on the following scale:

Rating players on this scale is different in a few key ways from rating players on the sustainable ceiling scale. First, the amount of players who can reasonably be placed in a particular category is necessarily constrained by several factors, the most directly relevant of which being the round distribution and size of a typical running back draft class. Given that we’ve seen an average of 5.7 and a maximum of 7 running backs selected prior to day three in a single draft over the last three years, it wouldn’t make sense to classify 40 college runners as projected picks in the third round or higher.

This scale is also different from the sustainable ceiling scale in that players’ positioning on it is only tangentially related to their actual ability to play running back. This rating is based on my subjective impression of how much the NFL will value players, while the other is based on my subjective impression of how good those players are.

Here is a sampling of players who I determined fall into each of the above categories: