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Tyrion Davis-Price 2022 NFL Player Outlook: Forming a Committee in San Francisco
While most analysts projected the 49ers' 2021 third-round pick Trey Sermon to lead the team's backfield last season, it was a sixth-round pick, Elijah Mitchell. He carried the majority workload throughout the year. Fast forward to 2022, and the 49ers spent another third-round choice on running back Tyrion Davis-Price out of LSU. Davis-Price graded out as the best pass-blocking RB in this draft class, and the 49ers already love getting their FB Kyle Juszczyk involved on the field. Davis-Price is listed at 6'1, 223 lb, and ran a 4.48 40-yd dash, making his skill set much more similar to Sermon (6'0, 215 lb, 4.58) rather than Mitchell (5'10, 200 lb, 4.32). Furthermore, considering that Sermon could only muster just three games where he played on more than 5% of snaps, all of which came in games that Mitchell had missed entirely, it's fair to assume that Trey Sermon was not the talent that we thought he was. Since 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan was hired in 2017, the team has given 100 or more carries to two separate players in every season, except for 2021. Despite never having done so before, due to the team's lack of depth at the position, the 49ers were forced to feed their RB1, which inevitably led to a couple of injuries throughout the season. Elijah Mitchell's 18.8 carries per game were by far the most of any 49ers RB during the Shanahan era. Now, with the team's recent investment into another RB, I expect Mitchell's carry totals to drop to ~13-15 carries/game while Davis-Price handles the remaining ~5-8 carries/game. Most importantly, Mitchell missed six games in his rookie season with injuries, and if he is injured again, Davis-Price could be set up for a full workload on one of the highest rushing-volume offenses in the league. At his current ADP of RB66, I am more than willing to take an end-of-draft flyer on a potential breakout rookie running back.
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