D’Andre Swift pro comparisons: The next Dalvin Cook or Alvin Kamara?

Georgia Bulldogs running back D’Andre Swift is expected to be the first player drafted at his position group this spring. Who are his NFL comparisons?

D’Andre Swift will be the first running back taken in the 2020 NFL Draft.

The junior running back out of Georgia offers a ton of versatility out of the backfield and one whose game fits in perfectly in the modern NFL. At Georgia, Swift rushed for 2,885 yards on 440 carries for 20 touchdowns. He also had 73 catches for 666 yards and five trips to pay dirt as a receiver out of the Georgia backfield.

At 5-foot-9 and 215 pounds, Swift has the frame you’d like to see out of a potential bell-cow back. He has a low center of gravity, the size to take a pounding running between the tackles and the dexterity to be a three-down back in this league. Even if people doubt his ability to be an undisputed No. 1 running back in the NFL, he did rush for over 1,000 yards in 2018 and 2019.

And with a surname like Swift, of course, he’s going to be a great running back in this league. The question is what are his NFL comparisons? How good of a player can Swift be in this league? Is he the next great Georgia running back or was he a product of their ball-control offense? Let’s find out now.

Who are some of D’Andre Swift’s high-end NFL comparisons?

Overall, draft analysts are pretty well split on how they view Swift, but there are three names that keep coming up.

• ESPN’s Matt Bowen sees Swift as the next Dalvin Cook. Interestingly enough, Cook’s younger brother James Cook was Swift’s college teammate for the last two years.
• Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller responded to Bowen’s Cook comparison with his own comp. Miller views Swift as a player more in the vein of Alvin Kamara because of his shiftiness.
• NFL.com’s Lance Zierlein gave Swift the loftiest comparison by likening him to a future Pro Football Hall of Famer in Frank Gore. If he’s Gore, this would be an unbelievable get for anybody.

Bowen thinks Swift fits in perfectly to an NFL offense because of his ability to run downhill, his vision and his ability to be a three-down back in the league because of his skills as a receiver out of the backfield. Georgia has run a pro-style offense for the last two decades, so it shouldn’t be a surprise if he makes a huge contribution right away as a rookie on whatever team that drafts him.

Miller’s comparison to Kamara is lazy. Kamara has never been a bell-cow running back in any capacity. Swift may never be the pass-catcher of Kamara out of the backfield, but Kamara was never the runner between the tackles Swift was in the SEC. Kamara needs a good change-of-pace back backing him up, while Swift could be an NFL bell-cow back if place into the right system.

While Zierlein’s comparison to Gore feels a tad overstated, it is Gore’s longevity that has assured him of a future bronze bust in Canton. Gore was never the best running back in the NFL but was consistently one of the best in his prime. To say Swift will play into his mid-30s sounds ludicrous, but then again, nobody saw that coming when Gore came out of Miami well over a decade ago.

What is Swift’s NFL ceiling?

Simply put, Swift is being drafted in the first round because he projects as a multi-time Pro Bowler before he enters his 30s. He doesn’t have to be a future Pro Football Hall of Famer like Gore to have success. If his best looks like Cook’s best, that would be wonderful. If his best looks more like Kamara’s from a multi-dimensional standpoint, that would be fantastic as well.

Other names that have drawn comparisons to Swift are LeSean McCoy and Josh Jacobs. A McCoy comp kind of feels lazy like one to Kamara because people want to make him into a glorified fantasy scat-back for some reason. Swift is significantly more of a runner than a receiver, though that’s not to say he can’t do both at the next level.

As for the Jacobs comparison, that one feels a bit more realistic. Swift was a better college player than Jacobs and could have as good of a rookie year as the former Alabama product did last year with the Silver and Black. Jacobs is a more punishing runner, but again, Swift isn’t afraid of initiating contact.

Again, all these comparisons for Swift are favorable ones. If he has the career of any of these five guys, that would be tremendous. If we had to narrow it down, he’s more like Cook and Gore than he is Kamara or McCoy. It’s a tad too early to tell if he’s Jacobs, but he might be. The Cook comparison is the one that most closely resembles his career at Georgia.

What is Swift’s NFL floor?

This is much harder to figure out than his ceiling. Since there are a ton of former running backs drafted out of Georgia in recent years, let’s start there. He’s not going to be a Nick Chubb or a Todd Gurley. Chubb is too physical and Gurley is too tall.

Swift could be Sony Michel, who hasn’t been as good as we thought he was coming out of UGA. He could end up like former first-round pick Knowshon Moreno and not have staying power in the league. People forget how electrifying Moreno was in his two years at Georgia. If he has low-end staying power, then maybe he’s like Isaiah Crowell, who only lasted one year at Georgia.

Given the amount of praise he has garnered from NFL Draft analysts, some combination of Michel or Moreno would be his floor, at least from a Georgia sense. He’s not likely to bust, so there’s a good chance he ends up becoming someone akin to a high-end comparison. With the Gore comparison being too tied up in longevity, Swift feels like the next Cook or Jacobs in the league.

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