La'Mical
Perine.
La'Mical
Perine.
Florida· 5'11"· 216 lb· 4.62s 40
"A four-year Florida workhorse-by-committee who added 40 catches as a senior and left as the safest three-down backup in the class, with no fifth gear to raise the ceiling."Pre-draft read
Perine is a compact, physical back who runs behind his pads and finishes every carry falling forward. At 5-11 and 216 pounds he is decisive through the hole, slips arm tackles with a hard jump-cut and keeps his legs churning through contact, the kind of runner who turns a two-yard look into four.
The real growth came as a receiver. As a senior he caught 40 passes for 262 yards and five touchdowns after 32 catches in his first three years combined, and Florida split him wide to get him matched on linebackers. He is also a willing pass protector. What he lacks is a second gear: he does not pull away in the open field, so the home runs come from broken tackles rather than separation. The signature is three-down reliability.
A gap or inside-zone running game that wants a physical rotational back who can stay on the field on third down.
Year 1 rotational and third-down back, with a ceiling as a lead committee back producing around 1,000 scrimmage yards in a two-man rotation.
An outside-zone offense that asks its back to bounce runs and win with long speed on the perimeter.
LaMical Perine Florida Gators career highlights
Four-season cutup showing the contact balance and the senior-year receiving growth.
Lamical Perine Highlights vs Auburn | 1 TD, 145 YDS, 3 REC
The 2019 Auburn game featuring the 88-yard touchdown run, then the longest in Florida history.
2019 Capital One Orange Bowl MVP: Lamical Perine
His Orange Bowl MVP performance against Virginia, the last game of his college career.
Perine was a four-year contributor in Gainesville and the steady presence in a backfield that kept changing around him. He came out of Theodore, Alabama, played thirteen games as a true freshman in 2016, and never missed significant time, appearing in fifty games across four seasons and never carrying fewer than 91 times in a year.
His production climbed with his role. He ran for 421 yards as a freshman, 562 with eight touchdowns in 2017, then broke out in 2018 for 826 yards at 6.2 a carry. As a senior he rushed for 676 yards and six touchdowns and added a career-best 40 receptions for 262 yards and five scores, capping it with an Orange Bowl MVP performance against Virginia and an 88-yard touchdown run against Auburn, the longest run in Gators history at the time. He finished with 2,485 rushing yards, 22 rushing touchdowns, 674 receiving yards and eight receiving scores.
The evaluation was about ceiling, not floor. Scouts liked the contact balance, the pass protection and the late-blooming receiving ability, which together projected a genuine three-down backup. Nobody argued he was an explosive difference-maker, and in a deep back class that pushed him to the middle of day three. The Jets took him at 120 to pair with Le'Veon Bell.
- 01
Contact balance
Runs behind his pads and consistently falls forward, converting negative blocks into positive yardage.
- 02
Emerging receiving ability
Caught 40 passes as a senior after 32 in three prior seasons, showing real growth as a route runner out of the backfield.
- 03
Pass-protection willingness
Squares up blitzers and accepts the job, a rare trait for a day-three back and a fast path to snaps.
- 04
Durability and availability
Appeared in fifty games over four seasons at Florida without a lost year to injury.
- 05
Big-game production
Orange Bowl MVP as a senior and an 88-yard touchdown run against Auburn that stood as the longest in program history.
- 01
No breakaway speed
Gets caught from behind in the open field, so his long runs depend on broken tackles rather than separation.
- 02
Never a true workhorse
Split carries throughout his Florida career and never topped 136 attempts in a season.
- 03
Limited elusiveness in space
Is more a one-cut runner than a creator, with modest production when the first read is covered.
- 04
Deep class context
Entered a running back group where similar profiles were available in later rounds, squeezing his value.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.62sp50
- Vertical
- 35inp50
- Broad jump
- 118inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.13sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.31sp50
- Bench
- 22repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Florida | 13 | 91 | 421 | 1 | 9 | 161 |
| 2017 | Florida | 11 | 136 | 562 | 8 | 10 | 81 |
| 2018 | Florida | 13 | 134 | 826 | 7 | 13 | 170 |
| 2019 | Florida | 13 | 132 | 676 | 6 | 40 | 262 |
| Career | — | 50 | 493 | 2485 | 22 | 72 | 674 |
Season lines come from his StatMuse college career page, which includes bowl and championship games. Every column sums exactly to the published career totals of 493 carries for 2,485 yards and 22 scores plus 72 receptions for 674 yards and eight scores across fifty games.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A between-the-tackles rotational back who fills a specific role without ever becoming the offense's engine.
The ceiling: a physical committee back who seizes a lead role and produces starter volume for multiple seasons.
A depth back whose lack of explosiveness confines him to spot duty and short career totals.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
It never came together. Perine played ten games as a rookie in 2020, carrying 64 times for 232 yards and two touchdowns while adding eleven catches, and that turned out to be the peak of his career. A 3.6-yard average in a struggling Jets offense left little to build on, and injuries and roster churn limited him to four games and eight carries in 2021 before New York moved on.
He signed with Kansas City and did not appear in a game in 2022, then played five games in 2023 with 22 carries for 77 yards, earning a Super Bowl ring as a depth back on a championship roster. He finished his career with nineteen games, 94 carries for 340 yards, two touchdowns and fourteen receptions. In hindsight this reads as a miss, though a defensible one: the tape said solid three-down backup rather than starter, and a back without breakaway speed has almost no margin when his efficiency dips. The Jets used a fourth-rounder on a player who gave them one usable season.