Breece
Hall.
Breece
Hall.
Iowa State· 5'11"· 217 lb· 4.39s 40
"The best back in the class and the rare one who carried volume and efficiency at once: a 220-pound one-cut runner with 4.39 speed and three-down hands, drafted to make a young offense whole."Pre-draft read
Hall was Iowa State's entire offense, a 220-pound one-cut runner in a zone scheme who pressed the line, planted and got vertical without dancing. He runs behind his pads, breaks arm tackles at the second level and has the long speed to finish, which is unusual at his size.
He is a genuine three-down back rather than a volume grinder. He caught 82 passes in three seasons, tracks the ball naturally out of the backfield and can be split into the slot without changing the play call. Pass protection is willing and improving. The separator is contact balance at speed — defenders who arrive late bounce off him, and he averaged five and a half yards a carry on more than 700 college touches.
Outside and mid-zone running game that gives him a single read and a downhill track, paired with a passing game that uses backs on real routes.
Year 1: lead back on fifteen to eighteen touches a game including passing downs. Ceiling: 1,500-yard scrimmage back who is the offense's best player.
A gap-and-power committee that rotates him out on third down and asks him to grind between the tackles behind a stacked box for two-yard gains.
Breece Hall — Iowa State 2021 Junior Highlights
Final college season: one-cut vision, contact balance and long speed on breakaway runs.
Breece Hall — 2020 Iowa State Highlights
The 1,572-yard, 21-touchdown sophomore year that made him the class's top back.
Breece Hall breaks an NCAA record vs TCU
Broadcast highlights of the game tied to his record rushing touchdown streak.
A Wichita product who chose Iowa State over bigger programs, Hall spent three seasons as the workhorse of a run-first Big 12 offense and left as the most productive back in the school's history. He was a two-time consensus All-American and the rare college runner who carried both volume and efficiency, never averaging under 4.8 yards a carry despite defenses that knew exactly where the ball was going.
The résumé is the argument. He rushed for 897 yards as a freshman, then 1,572 yards and 21 touchdowns in a twelve-game 2020, then 1,472 yards and 20 scores as a junior, while adding 36 receptions in that final season. He set an NCAA record with a rushing touchdown in 24 consecutive games, a streak that ended only in his last year. At the combine he ran 4.39 and jumped 40 inches at 217 pounds, testing that matched everything on tape. The flags were positional value and a heavy college workload, not the player.
He was the consensus first running back off the board and the debate in rooms was only about where the position deserves to be taken. Boards ranged from the back of Round 1 to the middle of Round 2. The Jets traded up to 36, sending picks to Cincinnati to make sure the class's best back landed with a young quarterback who needed help.
- 01
Contact balance
Runs behind his pads at 220 pounds and bounces off late arrivals, turning would-be four-yard gains into second-level carries.
- 02
Home-run speed
Ran 4.39 at the combine and plays that fast in pads, so the runs that break clean finish in the end zone rather than in a chase.
- 03
Receiving equity
Caught 82 passes in three seasons and can align in the slot, a genuine passing-down weapon rather than a checkdown option.
- 04
Vision in zone
Presses the line, plants once and gets vertical without wasted movement, the exact rhythm a wide-zone scheme demands.
- 05
Production record
Two-time consensus All-American with an NCAA-record rushing touchdown in 24 straight games against defenses keyed on him.
- 01
College workload
Carried the ball 718 times in three seasons for a program with no other run threat, a heavy early-career mileage bill.
- 02
Positional value
The best back in the class still plays the position teams have learned to fill later and cheaper in the draft.
- 03
Pass protection
Willing and improving but not yet reliable against blitzing linebackers, which limits early third-down trust.
- 04
Elusiveness in space
More a strider than a make-you-miss back; in tight quarters he prefers contact to a cut, which costs him some yards.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.39sp50
- Vertical
- 40inp50
- Broad jump
- 126inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Iowa State | 12 | 186 | 897 | 9 | 23 | 252 |
| 2020 | Iowa State | 12 | 279 | 1572 | 21 | 23 | 180 |
| 2021 | Iowa State | 12 | 253 | 1472 | 20 | 36 | 302 |
| Career | — | 36 | 718 | 3941 | 50 | 82 | 734 |
2020 and 2021 verified on the cfbstats player page, which includes bowl games; cfbstats does not publish 2019, so that season comes from the Tankathon prospect ledger. Tankathon lists 1,464 rushing yards in 2021 against cfbstats' 1,472; the cfbstats figure is used and the career total reflects it. Season sums match the career line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Explosive, dependable lead back with genuine pass-game value and around 1,200 scrimmage yards a season.
The version where three-down volume and receiving work make the back the centerpiece of an entire offense.
Talented runner whose production swings entirely with health and blocking and who never holds a full workload.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Breece Hall has played two seasons for the New York Jets as a running back. He quickly established himself as a dynamic playmaker before suffering an ACL injury in his rookie year, returning strong in his second season.
Hall's rookie season was electric and short: 463 yards on 80 carries at 5.8 a pop with four touchdowns in seven games before a torn ACL in October ended it. He came back for all 17 games in 2023 and put up 994 rushing yards and 76 receptions for 591 more, a full three-down workload less than a year after surgery. The next two years told a different story — 876 yards on 209 carries in 2024 as the offense collapsed around him, then 1,065 yards and 36 catches in 2025 in a heavier committee role. Four seasons in he has 56 games, 3,398 rushing yards, 1,642 receiving yards and 27 total touchdowns.
In hindsight this is a solid hit that the surrounding roster capped. Hall came back from the ACL as the same explosive runner and has been one of the most productive receiving backs of his draft class, but he has spent his career in one of the league's worst offensive environments, and his yards per carry has drifted down as the blocking has. The evaluation was accurate — three-down back, real speed, real hands — and the position tax the board argued about is exactly why a great player at 36 has not moved the franchise.
Data note: from NY Giants