I'm always impressed with D'Andre Swift when I seem him play. Feels like he's a decent dual threat RB.
Looked at his stats, and whilst decent they aren't as good as I imagined them to be.
Is D'Andre Swift a potential star in the making or am I just over rating him because he stands out in a poor Lions team?
Wanted to look into this a bit and fell down a rabbit hole.
Swift is really good as a dual-threat and has gamebreaking ability with good vision/cutback moves, so he does seem like a potential star in the making.
It's just the Lions have been weird this season. Prior to the bye, Anthony Lynn was the play caller. Looking at the box scores, Swift had more receiving than rushing yards in 7 of the 8 contests. His longest run was 16 yards. He had 90 carries for 319 yards (a poor 3.5 average) but totaled 415 receiving yards (he has more targets than any other RB this season). It made sense since Goff isn't a great QB, made worse by the complete lack of receiving options outside of Hockenson and their Pro Bowl center getting injured. Swift was doing a lot of work on dump-off passes and such, particularly in second halves with the Lions trailing and abandoning all pretense of running.
Since the bye though, Campbell took over the play calling and now in two games, Swift had 130 against the Steelers and 136 against the Browns on 47 total carries (5.7 average). Even taking away the 57-yarder against the Browns, it's still really impressive. Even moreso since Goff threw for only 114 yards against the Steelers and Boyle threw for 77 yards and 2 picks against the Browns. You'd figure, with that kind of futility, teams would stack the box every play no matter what, and Swift would have even less room, but it hasn't been the case. The Lions did draft Penei Sewell, and maybe the bye week helped with scheming too to get more running room despite the awful QB play. Both games were close too, so the Lions never had to abandon the run. Swift only had 5 receiving yards the last two games, a complete reversal from the first 8 games.
I'll be curious to see how he performs the rest of the way and how the Lions want to use him. With the Lions talent on the O-Line, he should have a bright future going forward. Definitely seems like a patient runner willing to look for and cut back for running lanes but also with elite speed and good hands.