Deebo Samuel: the strolling first down who has damaged the thought of NFL positions | San Francisco 49ers

Every now and then a player comes along who redefines his position.

We’ve seen out-of-position defensive players, hybrid safety-linebacker types. We’ve seen corners that can play in the slot or happily push the limit. In the past decade, we’ve seen the rise of the polar bears, tight ends who are as adept at mauling fools in the running game as they are running down the field as their team’s best receivers.

And yet, as a football collective, we’ve been waiting for the unicorn: the running back wide receiver. There was lightning. The spread revolution created tweener players who could line up in the backfield as a running back or squirm to the slot (or wider) to catch passes. Getting the ball to the best athletes in space became the tenet of attacking football.

In the collegiate ranks, players like Tavon Austin and Percy Harvin welcomed football’s transformation from a tough, between-tackle sport to one based on the principles of pace and space.

But in the NFL, coaches have always preferred specialists to hybrids. They didn’t need a receiver to get in line for the running back—they had a world-class running back. They didn’t need a running back to make their mark as an extreme receiver, they had all the elite receivers to deal with. They were professionals, masters of their trade; there was no time for shared service.

The unicorn has finally arrived in Deebo Samuel. Samuel is the San Francisco 49ers’ best running back and the team’s top receiver. He’s perhaps the best running back and receiver in the league, at least in terms of efficiency and explosiveness. If he’s not, he’s as close as it makes no difference.

There is a childlike joy in Samuel’s brilliance. Watching him is seeing an athlete who is stronger and faster than the 21 other people on the field – and those 21 people are some of the strongest and fastest athletes in the world. Samuel brings complexity for the nerds and loud highlights when you just want to see cool athletes doing the coolest things. With the ball in his hands, he is a leaning, rocking, weaving phantom, always standing in place.

The Niners’ offense now revolves around finding more and more ways to get the ball to Samuel or turn his threat into easy yards for everyone else.

Smart teams have always sought crossover capabilities. During the Bill Belichick-Tom Brady Patriots’ heyday, the team brought along a defenseman whose shot saves surpassed their running skills. They would move this player to identify discrepancies. But that was the value of the player — as a moving pawn that helped Brady identify coverages more than as an individual runner or receiver. Their flexibility accounted for a large percentage of their overall value. It was both what they did without the ball and what they did with it.

Samuel is all about how he damages defenses when the ball lands in his hands, no matter the starting position.

He’s played 555 snaps so far this season, broken down as an outermost wide receiver, 222 in the slot, eight as an inline tight end, and 93 as a running back. However, the trend of moving it on a snap-to-snap basis is relatively new. As recently as Week 9, Samuel had only played seven snaps in the backfield all season. Since then, he’s averaged nine backfield snaps per game (21% of his snaps). The last two games — the do-or-die game against the Rams in Week 18 and the playoff matchup against the Cowboys — were the only times this season he snapped more as a running back than as a slot receiver , the position where Kyle Shanahan usually initiates all the fun and plays on his offense.

Of course, queuing at a number of positions is not a great skill in and of itself. It doesn’t matter where you line up or how many places, if you stink in most or all. And this is where Samuel breaks with convention: He’s the best at everything he does.

His performance is staggering: 1,770 total yards, at an average of 13 yards per touch, with 14 touchdowns added for good measure. He goes down first; a human touchdown.

If you’re interested in the more outlandish metrics, you know that Samuel holds something of a monopoly in all of the league’s key categories, be it as a defender or receiver. He led the NFL in yards per reception during the regular season. He’s averaging more than 10 yards after the catch per reception. For comparison, no other receiver broke the seven-yard mark during the regular season.

If that’s not enough, Samuel leads the league in yards per route rushed to targets of 20 yards or more on the field. That’s comfortably ahead of Ja’Marr Chase. It’s strip ahead of Davante Adams, Stefon Diggs and Tyreek Hill.

The numbers keep coming. Samuel finished second in the league in yards by contact per attempt. He finished second in the league in the “breakaway,” which measures the percentage of a player’s rushing yards that rush for 15 yards or more. You have to go all the way down [rubs fake glasses, squints a little] 60th on the list to find the next non-running back. There is no other wide receiver in the top 200.

He also leads the league in the Guardian’s proprietary Holy Bleep Is That Possible Should That Be Allowed Is That Even Fair™ metric.

Samuel-type players used to be interesting footnotes and quirks. There are now players in the league who are semi-consistently snapping in the backfield and off as receivers. Cordarrelle Patterson enjoyed a late career resurgence this season in Atlanta. Curtis Samuel has filled a similar role in Carolina and Washington. Rondale Moore moves all over the Arizona store. In Buffalo, the Bills’ Isaiah McKenzie can get close to Samuel’s output.

But Samuel is the only multiposition weapon that takes on the creative pulse of a playoff offense. He’s the only one to pilot a championship contender and help strengthen a flawed quarterback with a stellar offensive line. He is the only one to run the ball in a battering ram style and then break out in ballet when asked to run routes.

It’s tempting to portray Samuel as the first of a new breed of positionless player. But that would mean underestimating the absurdity of his season and his talent. Samuel didn’t resist the idea of ​​position designations, but broke them altogether. There are running backs, there are receivers, there are hybrids, and then there’s Deebo Samuel.