My 2025 Unknown Freshman Running Back
Baylor's potential future face of the program!
Last year I made a big deal of Aneyas Williams who was a recruit not discussed by the masses. A year later, Aneyas became a vital piece even as a freshman for the Notre Dame offense as it made its way to the championship. He did not overtake the incumbent veterans on the roster, but his role was crucial nonetheless. And the cost to bet on him, essentially FREE (unless in a league with me).
This year I have found my new “my guy” that is going overlooked by the C2C community. Baylor seems to be my new destination but it is not for Bryson Washington, Dawson Pendergrass, Richard Reese, or the incoming freshman Michael Turner. My personal rooting interest for the 2025 unknown RB is Caden Knighten.
Early enrollee Knighten joins a loaded backfield in Baylor with the vets ahead of him but with a lot of potential to show for himself.
Knighten will arrive at Baylor with little noise from most people because he is so far down the list by recruiting services in the overall running back rank. 29th in just 247 but 37th in the overall composite numbers. However this is not the first time my model has pointed to guys ranked low as potential with past examples such as Kaden Feagin, Breece Hall, Ke’shawn Vaughn, Jonathan Taylor, Darius Taylor, LJ Martin, Devin Neal, Kyren Williams, and Quinshon Judkins. And that is just guys below 0.9000 in the recruiting service composite but 84% or higher for my HS model. It does include 3 likely misses in Johann Cardenas, Damari Alston, and Kalen Ballage. If we consider the overall group of 13 players that Knighten finds himself part of here, the odds are looking solid for him.
In 2024, he rushed for 1,883 yards and added 617 receiving yards, totaling 38 touchdowns. As a sophomore, he rushed for 2,278 yards and 35 touchdowns, also throwing for 820 yards and nine scores. The efficiency is crazy solid with Knighten’s career. However I believe he went too far under the radar in part because of his injury prior to junior season. While signing with Baylor, Caden according to 247 also had official offers from Colorado, Michigan State, SMU, USC, and Vanderbilt as other P4 programs of note. Vanderbilt does a good job identifying talent and Michigan State with HC Jonathan Smith has found solid backs like Damien Martinez in the past too.
But let me dive into the analytical profile I have on Knighten. Like all high school athletes, I expect to be able to follow the stud theory.
Typically the guys who are the best in the NFL were the best players on the fields in college. For my own process, I expect (and the data backs up) we see those same guys excelling wherever they are in the high school level. Knighten with his production passes that test with a 90% overall for his high school recruit score. Focusing first on the 2025 recruit class, that number sits third overall in the class! I do have 9 players (if Michael Terry even ends up being a running back) with incomplete scores because of lack of high school data present. Even if all 9 scored higher (which I doubt; maybe 2 max), that would put him 12th in the class which is a far cry from being RB29 or RB37. His score all-time in my database of 693 running backs currently has him tied for 49th highest as one of fifty-eight running backs able to crack 90% or higher. We can even look at that list below.
So quick breakdown of that list:
37 RBs have college careers done
18 went pro with draft capital in the top 100
28 got drafted at least.
Omarion Hampton, TreVeyon Henderson, Trevor Etienne, and Jaydon Blue will add to that list this year.
Several more of the remaining 17 names could add to the list in future years too.
That is very promising when we compare it with the talent that Baylor has had over the years. While not the end all if guys like Bryson Washington came in much lower as recruits, but it does show that the ceiling could be much higher for Knighten who comes in with a higher score than any other Baylor RB in my model.
But here is where I get to the fun point of this exercise; I can use my database to find similar comps to Knighten coming out of high school .
Let’s play a game and sort down some filters:
8+ yards per carry for the career to represent efficiency
195 pounds leaving high school or more to shoulder a workload
110+ rushing yards per game to show high involvement
0.25 receiving TD/game rate to show some scoring ability in the receiving game
5+ receiving FPTs/G to show all-around effective receiving usage
35+ total FPTs/G to show dominance as a high school stud
The results are fairly outstanding as we see a lot of past names that were highly thought of and some college guys with upside too.
However the results I originally focused on was with a criteria of 0.5 receiving TD/G that way I knew offenses were actually using the RB in all facets of the game as the heart of their team. That gave the following refined list:
Christian McCaffrey
Saquon Barkley
Derrius Guice
Kyren Williams
Bhaysul Tuten
Kaden Feagin
Aneyas Williams
Bryson Donelson
Caden Knighten
With a profile that promising and a cost of next to nothing based on the ranks of college freshmen, this is the home run swing we take! Bryson Washington could be gone by the end of the year so we just need to see Caden have a role this year and beat as many Year 1 Zero Metrics as possible before taking off in year 2.