Players like Adam Randall are the reason I call this series “most interesting prospects” and not “best prospects” or “prospects most likely to succeed.” Those would both be viable approaches, but virtually every other draft analyst on the planet is doing some version of trying to figure out who the best player at a given position is, or who’s the right fit for their team, or some other question along those lines.
I’m happy to leave them to it. We’ll all benefit from their work. But while they’re grinding tape, I’m going to spend some time hanging out with the guys that really pique my interest, because more than a few of them are real weirdos.
I say that with love, of course. If anybody can appreciate someone who’s a little offbeat, or obsessive, or just doing things a bit differently, it’s me. And I love prospects that fall into those categories. Players who may not be traditionally skilled or have unusual attributes or a particularly compelling story. That’s who I want to talk about the most as we lead up to the NFL Draft.
That’s what brings me to Adam Randall, a running back who only just recently became a running back.
Randall, a massive 6-foot-3 and 232 pounder, didn’t start getting reps at running back until the 2024 College Football Playoff, when injuries to a couple of teammates resulted in an in-game career-altering move. Randall ended up in the Clemson backfield, carried the ball four times, and the rest was history.
Prior to that game, Randall had been a wide receiver — though not much of one. Despite compelling size and athletic ability (we’ll talk about that in a bit), Randall didn’t produce much at receiver for the Tigers. He’d logged just 47 career catches before making the position switch, hardly the kind of output you’d expect from someone with his frame and overall athleticism.
Still, a position switch can be a hard pill to swallow; usually, the alternative to saying “yes” in a situation where a coach asks you to change spots is a quick trip off the roster. Randall considered transferring after the 2024 season. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d done so; if you spend years in a program listening to one vision for your football future, only to have that plan abruptly change, it’s only understandable to consider a move. Randall ultimately stayed, and played the 2025 season as a running back.
Now he’s looking to make it to the NFL at his new position. How do you not love a story like that?
Is he a good running back? Well, not particularly. He’s an athlete, and a very good one, playing a new position. But he has athleticism to burn. His 4.5 second 40-yard dash may not sound that impressive, but consider the bulk he’s lugging around on a run like that. I use a metric called “speed score” to add a bit more context to 40-yard dash times just for cases like this. It scores players on a (roughly) 100-point scale based on how quickly they move relative to their size, with a score above 100 indicating elite speed. Randall’s score was 113.2, the third highest among players for whom I had data in this year’s class.
But despite that athleticism, he’s still figuring out the feel for his position. When you watch an elite running back, they often seem to know where holes are before they appear, and they naturally flow to where the defense isn’t. They’ve seen so many plays unfold that you almost get the sense they could score a touchdown with their eyes closed, guided by some football equivalent of the Force that shows them where the headhunting linebacker is lurking.
Randall very clearly does not have that feel yet, but he does have a natural ability for catching passes out of the backfield (as you’d expect from a converted wide receiver), great size, and a willingness to make this project work.
That still puts him in the rare category of being a project player at running back. Almost any other draftable back is essentially a finished product by this point, the result of years of being one of the best athletes on the field and receiving a steady diet of touches. Randall does not have that background. But he’s giving it his all, and for that reason, it’s hard not to call him one of the most interesting prospects of the 2026 draft class.