Jordan’s Film Room: Jeremiyah Love — Clear RB1 and Top Prospect in the 2026 NFL Draft

The 2026 NFL draft presents a unique challenge for NFL decision-makers. With a lack of elite depth or talent at some of the premium positions, the value in this class lies in traditionally non-premium positions such as off-ball linebacker, running back, and safety. These players offer immediate impact and high floors, however, they are also not typically selected at the very top of the draft board.

Amid this landscape, running back is experiencing a bit of a renaissance after the NFL recommitted to the run game in 2025. The brilliant offensive minds of the league are leveraging heavier personnel groupings like 12 and even 13 personnel on a more consistent basis to exploit mismatches, bolster ground attacks, and create balanced offenses. Notre Dame’s Jeremiyah Love, plays a traditionally non-premium position in running back, but embodies this shift perfectly.

2026 NFL Draft: Jeremiyah Love

At just 20 years old, Jeremiyah Love combines elite explosiveness, rare vision, three-down versatility, and Heisman-level production into one transformative package. His 2025 season — 1,372 rushing yards at 6.9 yards per carry with 18 touchdowns, plus 27 receptions for 280 yards and three scores — earned him third-place in Heisman voting, the Doak Walker Award, unanimous All-American honors, and Notre Dame MVP recognition.

With low career mileage (under 500 career total touches), near-perfect ball security (just one fumble), and the ability to dictate matchups from anywhere, Love offers unmatched upside with minimal risk. In a draft where non-premium stars shine brightest, he’s one of the clear top prospects: a dynamic, every-phase weapon poised to anchor a modern run-heavy attack.

Background

Born May 31, 2005, in St. Louis, Missouri, Jeremiyah Love dominated at Christian Brothers College High School, earning four-star status, Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year, and Under Armour All-American honors. He led his team to consecutive state titles and showcased his elite speed with a 10.76-second 100-meter dash on the track. Love chose Notre Dame over elite programs like Texas A&M, Michigan, Alabama, and Oregon.

After a rotational freshman season in 2023 (71 carries for 385 yards and a TD), he erupted in 2024 (163 carries for 1,125 yards and 17 TDs, plus 28 receptions for 237 yards and two scores), helping drive Notre Dame on their way to their national championship appearance and setting a program record for consecutive games with a rushing touchdown.

His junior year in 2025 cemented his status as one of college football’s best: 199 carries for 1,372 yards (6.9 YPC) and 18 TDs rushing; 27 catches for 280 yards and three receiving scores. Career totals: 433 rushes for 2,882 yards (6.7 YPC) and 36 rushing touchdowns, plus 63 receptions for 594 yards and six scores. At 6-feet, 214 pounds, his compact, powerful build is tailor-made for the next level.

Though he did not get the opportunity to leave his mark in the College Football Playoffs he did plenty in the regular season to stand out.

Film Room

Love’s tape reveals a complete, efficient, and dynamic runner. In zone schemes, he displays patience — pressing blocks, anticipating flow, and exploding through creases with decisive cuts. His open-field and close quarters playmaking is electric: stutter-steps, jump cuts, hesitations, ankle flexibility, and seamless direction changes force missed tackles at an elite rate. He absorbs contact without losing momentum, finishes forward, and converts chain moving runs into chunk gains or long touchdowns.

As a receiver, natural hands, route savvy, and YAC ability stand out. In pass protection, he brings consistent effort, awareness, and solid technique. The film shows a manipulative, but decisive runner who attacks horizontally and vertically, creates mismatches, and rarely wastes a touch — making him a constant nightmare for defensive coordinators.

Strengths

Age & Upside

Jeremiyah Love enters the 2026 NFL Draft as one of the youngest, but most developmentally advanced prospects in the class. This rare combination of vision, scheme understanding, three-down polish, and exceptional youth gives him massive long-term upside as he continues in his ascent. Love projects to hit his physical prime in the NFL while already possessing the refinement typically seen in older prospects, allowing for multi-year growth into an All-Pro caliber workhorse with minimal developmental risk and extended prime years ahead.

Size and Build

Love has an ideal modern NFL running back frame — compact, well-proportioned, and built for durability without sacrificing explosiveness. His highly translatable athletic frame bridges traditional feature-back strength with modern dual-threat agility, supporting a heavy workload and every-down role.

Durability and Usage

Love enters the 2026 draft with an exceptionally clean durability profile and low mileage — only 495 career offensive touches (433 carries and 62 catches) across three seasons despite starting full-time in his final two years. This preserved his “tread on the tires”, setting him apart from other experienced backs who rack up 600+ touches in college. This has resulted in no major injury history or missed games.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of the position all backs get banged up to some degree during a season. Rest easy, if or when Love shows up on the injury report, he has the toughness to play through nagging ailments — right knee sprain during Notre Dame’s entire 2024 playoff run and returned after a bruised rib in the 2025 Stanford game. Love projects as a true bell-cow capable of 250–300 touches per NFL season from Day 1 with fresh legs and proven toughness and long-term reliability.

Ball Security

Love is one of the most dependable ball-carriers in the 2026 class, with elite ball security that inspires total trust. Over three seasons at Notre Dame, he has fumbled just once on 495 offensive touches. He keeps the ball high and tight, uses proper pad level, and instinctively covers the ball into contact and in traffic.

In a time where we have seen mental lapses where ball carriers release the ball early near the goal line resulting in a touchback, Love does the opposite. He will cover the ball with two hands while crossing the goal line showing uncompromising discipline. In a league that values protecting the football — especially for feature backs — Love’s near-perfect record makes him a low-turnover, high-trust option ready for 20+ touches per game from day one.

Athleticism

Love’s athletic profile is exceptional with a track background which has clearly translated to the football field. He offers a dangerous blend of burst and acceleration, to hit top speed instantly. Yet even more impressive is that he enters a rare second gear in open space to erase angles and chain moving gains into house calls. This is evident with multiple 90+ yard touchdowns to him name at the colligate level.

His compact build pairs remarkably with his athletic profile, making him a dynamic ball carrier with creativity in space. He leverages his fluid hips, ankle flexibility, lateral quickness, and instant start-stop ability to make sharp cuts, sudden changes in direction, jump cuts, hesitations, and spin moves to redirect his rush all with minimal speed loss to force missed tackles at an elite rate. I would also be remiss if I did not mention Love’s signature vertical explosion to hurdle would be tacklers.

Love is a force in every sense. Whether in short “make you miss” situations, the open field, or when creating and maintaining separation with long speed downfield, Love is an incredibly difficult tackle. This blend of size, athleticism, and flexibility is rare among backs. He is a true home-run threat on every touch who consistently makes the first defender miss.

Contact Balance & Power

Lean, athletic frames don’t always come with the contact balance and power creation that you get with Love. He’s deceptively powerful in his lower half. He has a strong, balanced core that allows him to absorb hits, run through arm tackles, and churn yards after contact with 896 yards after contact (4.5 yards per carry after contact) in 2025. This has made him not afraid to lower his shoulder between the tackles and grind out first down runs.

Love consistently finishes runs forward powering through initial contact, sustaining forward momentum through tackles, maintaining his balance through contact, and churning his legs moving piles. While not a classic pile moving bruiser, his determination, fight, and willingness to earn the “dirty yards” allow him to maximize his power profile. This blend lets him thrive in condensed run fits, overcome stacked boxes, and find success in short-yardage and goal line situations.

Vision

Vision and processing is another calling card of Love’s game. He presses the line of scrimmage forcing defenders to commit to a gap, is patience in declaring his rush track allowing blocks to develop, anticipates second-level flow, manipulates linebacker and safety angles, and identifies cutback opportunities with regularity.

While his patience is obvious, Love is a decisive runner who is not one to pass up on immediate open running lanes. What separates him is his ability to blend his patience with decisiveness. This is demonstrated in his ability to be patient, anticipate gaps as the play develops, and process blocking in live time striking when creases present themselves.

Love’s combination of vision and athleticism make him a perfect fit for zone scheme. His tape shows a deep understanding of the scheme beyond the X’s and O’s — he has the natural feel you cannot teach to succeed. He naturally processes the bend, bang, and bounce principals of zone and can consistently identify cutback lanes for explosive runs.

However, while outside zone is his most dominant scheme fit, regardless of concept Love has proved to be scheme-proof across zone, gap, and RPO concepts.

Three-down Skillset

The three-down skillset Love adds is a trait that significantly separates him from other prospects. He is a legitimate three-down back with a rather advanced receiving skillset that makes him a mismatch nightmare in the modern NFL. He is a natural hands catcher with only four career drops on 74 career targets. His hands are reliable in nearly all situations regardless if throws are within his frame or off-target he can be trusted to reed it in.

This is also worth noting as not all targets are created equal. Love runs a three-level route tree where he is deployed in the short, intermediate, and deep portions of the field. His 74 targets were not all at or near the line of scrimmage where running back targets can typically occur — he is running real routes like an NFL wide receiver. At the catch point Love demonstrates the ability to track the ball, body control to adjust to ball placement, and secure catches outside his frame or in traffic.

The route running is advanced for the position. Love is a three-level route runner capable of attacking a defense at each depth. He shows nuance in his routes, is clean at the stem, and sells routes well to create separation out of the break. He’s very versatile in his deployment showing the capacity to run routes out of the backfield, out of the slot, or out of a wide alignment. He is frequently deployed in pre-snap motions creating mismatches with linebackers. When Love is motioned, his receiving skillset demands attention forcing defenses to account for him horizontally and vertically which will adjust the structure and matchup responsibility across the entire defense. 

After the catch, Love’s quickly transitions back into his natural running back mindset. He leverages his prior discussed athletic profile on space to turn short receptions into YAC chunk plays with an average of 10.5 YAC per reception.

When asked to hang in the pocket and protect his quarterback, he’s a willing and fundamentally sound pass protector who displays awareness, effort to square up blitzes, and the anchor to handle pressure and keep his quarterback clean.

Love is the complete package. His elite receiving production, three-level route savvy, YAC threat, and reliable blitz pickup allows him to stay on the field in all situations without the need for sub packages. Love isn’t just a runner who catches the ball. He’s a legitimate dual-threat weapon who elevates passing-game efficiency and keeps defenses honest on every down.

Intangibles

While Love’s talent makes him a desirable prospect, his character makes him an ideal leader elevating him beyond raw traits and production. His high motor, team-first mentality, relentless effort, and passionate play elevates his teammates and burns a passionate fire. He shows up, plays through injuries, thrives in big moments, and is willing to block for his teammates when their number is called. Love is a low-risk, high-floor prospect who projects as a culture enhancer and locker room cornerstone from day one — Love checks every box.

Weaknesses

Over-Aggressiveness in Contact Situations

Jeremiyah Love and his aggressive mentality is a bit of a double-edged sword at times. His willingness to initiate contact, lower his shoulder, hurdle defenders, and put his body on the line for his teammates is inspiring. However, it can also lead to unnecessary punishment on his body.

There are moments that he needlessly puts his body in significant harms way fighting for extra yardage in non-critical moments. While it’s a selfless act, learning to be more selective about these moments and learning to protect himself over a long 17-game NFL season will be critical for sustained durability and bell-cow longevity in the league.

Limited Between-the-Tackles Power (Not a True Pile-Mover)

Jeremiyah Love isn’t a classic downhill bruiser who overpowers stacked boxes or consistently moves piles in short-yardage and goal-line situations. At 214 pounds, he lacks the elite mass of traditional power backs who can drag tacklers or surge through contact in condensed run fits. Instead, he’s relies on a tough, fight-for-every-yard mindset to convert short-yardage situations. It fits his modern, versatile profile, but caps him from being a pure old-school power runner.

Pass Protection Consistency

Love is a willing and generally fundamentally sound pass protector where he’s shown good effort, awareness, and the ability to square up blitzes. However, inconsistencies can still pop up on occasion where technique, pad level, and anchor can have lapses. The effort and toughness remains consistent and I give him credit for that, but at times the technique can be more consistent.

With continued refinement this area should improve quickly and turn a current solid-but-developing skill into a true strength at the next level. It’s not a major red flag, but refinement will be key for full-time every-down viability.

Draft Range and NFL Projection

The landscape around running backs can be tricky. Sometimes we see two backs in the top-12 selections in the same draft (Bijan Robinson and Jahymr Gibbs). And, sometimes talented backs fall to the second round (Jonathan Taylor and Breece Hall). In this instance, I heavily lean the former with the expectation that Love is selected in the first 10 picks.

Love is a franchise back with an All-Pro upside. He’s one of my top graded prospect overall and undisputed RB1 in the class. A top-5 prospect in the draft, Love should be a top-10 lock and worthy of the top-5 consideration, regardless of the position he plays.

Jeremiyah Love: Player Comparison

Jeremiyah Love is a true blend of Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs. From Bijan, he inherits the vision, patience, contact balance, and overall completeness that make him a polished, three-down workhorse with scheme-proof traits and the ability to handle heavy volume. From Gibbs, he borrows the explosive burst, elite acceleration, open-field elusiveness, and dynamic receiving/vertical threat profile that turns him into a home-run weapon in space. 

Love sits between them physically — adding a touch more size and power than Gibbs while retaining more raw athleticism than Robinson. There are still areas that Gibbs and Robinson exceed him, but Love takes core pieces of each of their games. The result is a modern archetype who can anchor an offense like Bijan in Atlanta with Gibbs-level explosiveness and receiving upside, giving him the scalability to be a true bell-cow star.

Comparatively, my pre-draft grades would have had them stacked in the following manner, again, these are pre-draft grades, not considering what they have done in the league to this point.

1. Bijan Robinson
2. Jeremiyah Love
3. Jahmyr Gibbs

Final Thoughts

Jeremiyah Love is the complete modern running back: explosive, intelligent, versatile, and low-risk with elite production and traits. His ability to generate mismatches, force defensive adjustments, and impact every phase — paired with exceptional ball security and scheme adaptability — gives him the highest floor-ceiling combination in the 2026 class. He’s built to elevate offenses immediately and thrive in any system.