SEC’s all-time first-round draft picks at RB/HB/FB

With NFL draft media pronouncing the endangerment of the first-round running back, Georgia’s Todd Gurley (No. 10 overall) and Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon (No. 15 overall) flew off the board in the first half of the first round last Thursday.

NFL teams have deflated the value of running backs, but there remains plenty of room for star players at the position.

To date, NFL teams have selected 63 SEC running backs, halfbacks, fullbacks or plain “backs” (more on that later) in the first round. The 1940s, ’50s and ’60s produced a large number of those, but the discrepancy between first-round backs then and now isn’t as large as one imagines.

Based on NFL careers, it’s hard to beat the SEC’s 2000 class of running backs: Jamal Lewis and Shaun Alexander.

A good player at Tennessee, Lewis made an even bigger mark in the NFL, overcoming a ’01 knee injury to rush for more than 10,000 career yards for Baltimore and Cleveland. Lewis added a Super Bowl ring, a 2,000-yard season and NFL MVP honors in ’03 to the BCS championship he won in Knoxville.

Two years later, Alexander won NFL MVP honors himself, setting the single-season NFL record with 28 touchdowns. He finished his own nine-year career with 112 total touchdowns and three Pro Bowl appearances.

Both Lewis and Alexander made the NFL 2000s All-Decade team.

Here’s a complete list of the SEC’s first-round picks, followed by a few observations.

SCHOOLS RANKED BY FIRST-ROUND BACKS

T1. Alabama 11
T1. LSU 11
T3. Auburn 9
T3. Texas A&M 9*
T5. Arkansas 8*
T5. Florida 8
7. Georgia 7
T8. Ole Miss 4
T8. Tennessee 4
T8. Vanderbilt 4
11. Missouri 3*
12. Mississippi State 2
T13. South Carolina 1*
T13. Kentucky 1

*Again, not an SEC member at the time of at least some of the listed first-round picks.

Since 2000, 7 of the 11 first-round SEC running backs came from the states of Alabama or Georgia.

The overall numbers are a little misleading. For example, Herschel Walker never was a first-round NFL pick, and therefore cost Georgia a tie for fifth in the SEC.

And before the mid-1960s, NFL teams labeled many first-round players as “back.” Sometimes that meant they played quarterback and also ran the ball, and sometimes it meant they played defensive back and doubled as an offensive utility player. We’ve included “backs” in this list, along with halfbacks, fullbacks and running backs.

Still, it shouldn’t come as a shock that Alabama and LSU lead the SEC with 11 each. Five of LSU’s players came between 1960-63, including Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon and a few of those mysterious “backs.”

Alabama claims the second player ever drafted by an NFL team in Riley Smith, listed by the Boston Redskins as a blocking back, according to historical records. Smith did run the ball for the Tide, but also passed and handled kicking duties. The Tide also are the only SEC program to claim three in the 21st century: Shaun Alexander, Mark Ingram and Trent Richardson.

With our generous classification, every SEC team has produced at least one first-round back.

SEC FIRST-ROUND BACKS BY DECADE

1930s: 2*
1940s: 9*
1950s: 12*
1960s: 9*
1970s: 2*
1980s: 10*
1990s: 7*
2000s: 9
2010s: 3

*Numbers do not include Texas A&M, Missouri, Arkansas or South Carolina backs drafted in the first round prior to SEC membership for those schools.

Half of the drafts in the 2010s have excluded SEC running backs from the first round. But, thanks to the St. Louis Rams’ selection of Todd Gurley at No. 10, this decade already is more prolific than the 1970s, which produced just two — Alabama’s Wilbur Jackson and LSU’s Charles Alexander.

Outside of the ’70s, the SEC has consistently produced ball-carriers since the ’40s, usually at one first-round selection per year, or close to it.

If Derrick Henry, Leonard Fournette and Nick Chubb all warrant first-round picks before the end of this decade — which seems unlikely in spite of their collective talent — it’s possible we could see the SEC reach seven or eight first-round running backs in the 2010s, putting it pretty close to the historical average.

The lack of first-round running backs may have been overstated after their absence in the ’13 and ’14 drafts, but it is subtly becoming more difficult to get drafted in the first 32 picks as a ball-carrier.

Christopher Smith

An itinerant journalist, Christopher has moved between states 11 times in seven years. Formally an injury-prone Division I 800-meter specialist, he now wanders the Rockies in search of high peaks.