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Should you draft Cam Skattebo or Jaydon Blue in 2025 dynasty fantasy football rookie drafts? John Johnson breaks down the profiles and landing spots for Skattebo and Blue.
New York Giants running back Cam Skattebo, drafted by his new team with the 105th overall pick in the fourth round of the 2025 NFL Draft, and Dallas Cowboys RB Jaydon Blue, selected in Round 5 with pick No. 149 overall, are two rookie RBs who are garnering plenty of interest in dynasty fantasy football leagues.
Players might seem like similarly talented prospects with thin margins between their skill levels and projected production. But often, reality doesn't follow projections very closely, and players who have small differences in their ADPs before the season can have wildly different careers.
So, rather than blindly pretending that Skattebo and Blue have to be close to each other, we should assume that it's easily possible for one to end up as much better than the other. So, let's dive into player profiles, landing spots, and projections for both Skattebo and Blue, and conclude with which is the better pick in rookie drafts!
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Cam Skattebo Dynasty Fantasy Football Analysis
Skattebo jumps off the charts in most simple and advanced metrics that exist. In his final college season in 2024, he rushed 293 times for a whopping 1,711 yards, averaging 5.8 yards per carry on absurd volume, and scored 21 rushing touchdowns. He added 45 catches for 605 yards (13.4 yards per catch) and caught three touchdowns.
This gives him a ludicrous total of 2,316 yards from scrimmage and 24 total scores. He put his team's offense on his back. With lines like 33 rushes for 262 yards (7.9 yards per carry) and three catches for 35 yards against Mississippi State, Skattebo put up incredible production in the NCAA.
I don’t care if Cam Skattebo is slow.
I don’t care if his game “isn’t sustainable.”
I don’t care if “teams are lower on him than the media.”
He’s an absolute dawg who elevated his team on the biggest stage. 3-down back who can do EVERYTHING. pic.twitter.com/Rz3V0xDOjM
— NFL Draft Files (@NFL_DF) April 19, 2025
These are the kinds of numbers that seriously impress anyone who knows anything about football. And it's not like he was carried by an elite offensive line or a scheme that opened up huge holes in the defense for him to run through with regularity.
Skattebo earned much of his yardage the hard way. He did an excellent job forcing missed tackles and gaining yards after contact. He was very tough to bring down, and the film supports this, especially if you look at the first play in the post above.
2025 RB prospects career missed tackles forced per touch
1. Ashton Jeanty .390
2. Cam Skattebo .387 pic.twitter.com/3AorGpCI9x— Football Insights 📊 (@fball_insights) January 29, 2025
There are even advanced metrics in which Skattebo compares favorably with Jeanty. So, why did he fall so far in the draft? Well, the answer is simple -- a lack of speed. It's obvious from his tape that he's not very fast, and that's not something that will change with time. It's a physical limitation.
It's always concerning when players with speed questions don't run the 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine. Often, players choose to run at their pro days or in private workouts, where they get more favorable results with times being logged by hand. Those are consistently much faster than laser-timed 40s.
Left: All Combine RBs within a half inch of Cam Skattebo's height and 5 pounds of his weight with a Burst Sscore >160
Right: All Combine RBs within a half inch of Cam Skattebo's height and 5 pounds of his weight with a 40 in the 4.6s https://t.co/7UFo3jMlTA pic.twitter.com/y0I1NKOFHM
— Scott Barrett (@ScottBarrettDFB) March 28, 2025
There certainly isn't a lack of precedent for players with similar athletic profiles succeeding at the next level, so we shouldn't write off Skattebo entirely. But with competition in the backfield in the form of the faster and more explosive Tyrone Tracy Jr., it's debatable if Skattebo will become a workhorse.
At his speed, it's also difficult to predict if he'll have much success at all. Players who run that slow -- and keep in mind, since hand-timed 40s are always faster than laser-timed, we should assume he ran more in the 4.7-4.8 range -- the outlook isn't super optimistic.
Cam Skattebo leg drive >>> https://t.co/cRrAUOMInD pic.twitter.com/Hgt3y8XFoS
— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) April 3, 2025
From a technical football perspective, Skattebo's ability to power forward through contact, gain extra yards that way, and break strong tackle attempts will have to translate well to the next level. That's not an easy thing to predict, nor is the amount of volume he will get.
We should probably assume that he'll immediately at least get a large share of the short-yardage and goal-line reps early on, though. Tracy had fumbling issues, so it's possible he could lose some work because of those. Overall, though, I'm lukewarm on Skattebo.
I just can't get over his lack of speed potentially be a problem at the next level. The vast majority of the time, you do well to take athleticism into account and draft more explosive players in dynasty leagues.
You're probably going to see a better version of Cam Skattebo in the Giants offense than you did at Arizona State
You don't always want to buy running backs on bad offenses but he could get the lions share of the work
There's an opportunity for Skattebo in that backfield pic.twitter.com/kJBdyPuWpg
— The FF Dynasty (@TheFFdynasty) May 29, 2025
It's a fact that the Giants have had terrible offenses every year in the past 10 seasons. And that seems unlikely to change. Their rushing offense, and thus Skattebo, seems set to be held back by their offensive line, which has underachieved to a stunning degree most seasons since 2015.
Jaydon Blue Dynasty Fantasy Football Analysis
Ironically, Blue is about as different from Skattebo as it can get regarding the categories talked about above. He doesn't pop much on advanced rushing metrics charts. He barely cracked 1,000 yards from scrimmage in 2024, rushing 134 times for 730 yards (averaging 5.4 yards per carry) and scoring eight rushing touchdowns.
He added 42 receptions for 368 yards (8.8 average) and scored six receiving touchdowns. He wasn't used as a workhorse and split time with the other backs on Texas' roster generously. He wasn't even the lead back -- RB Quintrevion Wisner carried the ball 226 times, outpacing Blue by nearly 100 rushes.
Thread of Jaydon Blue catching the ball and embarrassing defenders in space pic.twitter.com/blVQXFeNXF
— (Foots The King) (@FootsDaKing) April 30, 2025
So, he has a bit of a questionable production profile. What you can't debate are his skills as a receiver, his burst, and his long speed. The NFL loves to take chances on players with fantastic athletic profiles because speed kills and because, of course, players can develop nicely given time at the next level.
At the ADP you can get him in rookie drafts -- around RB9 or 20th overall -- he's not a terrible choice to make. Indeed, the Cowboys don't have great competition surrounding him. RBs Javonte Williams and Miles Sanders have both played dreadfully for two seasons in a row.
Running Back draft class career production pic.twitter.com/2HPoYrbOvE
— Football Insights 📊 (@fball_insights) May 8, 2025
In addition, Phil Mafah was drafted later than Blue in the same draft, and Deuce Vaughn hasn't done anything meaningful yet. But to try to hand-wave away Blue's deficiencies as a pure runner would be foolish. This backfield could be a pretty ugly committee from the rushing side.
Blue is easily the best pass-catching back of this group, but other than on a few well-blocked run plays last season at Texas, Blue was largely unimpressive when not running routes. He didn't create a lot of explosive plays despite his 4.39 speed, which I found interesting.
I've watched four Jaydon Blue games. This run perfectly encapsulates what I've seen lol 👇
1. Vision, tempo, and block-setting
2. Nearly falls down running with weight too high and over his toes, 4.38 speed allows him to still almost pull away
3. Fumbles lolThere's definitely… https://t.co/rN42KGSAiP pic.twitter.com/7Vp1vZtTHU
— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) April 3, 2025
So, it makes sense to expect to have patience if you draft him. It's unlikely that he'll bust out of the gates and take over the RB1 role in Year 1. If he does become the workhorse, it will likely take time, and his rookie tape could be littered with mistakes and teaching moments.
If you draft Blue, don't give up on him. Expect to be in it for the long haul. And understand that his ADP is almost certainly pushed up by the Cowboy tax -- players on this team tend to be overpriced because, well, they're the Cowboys, and a few teams in the league have this problem for fantasy football.
Jaydon Blue isn’t just a great pick in Round 3 of rookie drafts because he’s landed in a spot where he could get opportunities due to an open backfield
He’s ELECTRIC and just the type of player the Cowboys wanted, and needed, ever since Tony Pollard left!pic.twitter.com/p6UWwoNJQD
— Matt FF Dynasty 🏈 (@MattFFDynasty) May 15, 2025
His mistakes aren't unforgivable. Sure, he might be a bit overhyped, but betting on athleticism when picking players in the back half of the second round and later in rookie drafts is generally a good strategy. So, I don't dislike picking Blue at his ADP, if you believe in him.
And Dallas, for all its faults, has consistently had a good to great regular season offense for the better part of the last decade. The later the picks get, the more you should be leaning into good athletes in good situations who can unlock their potential.
Conclusion
I don't think I'm excited about drafting Skattebo. The competition from Tracy has more substance to it than people seem to think, and Tracy is just the better athlete. That's more important in the NFL than it is in college, where less athletic defenders on average can allow players with certain archetypes to thrive.
But Blue, who's cheaper than Skattebo, likely has long-term value. Running backs who are poor athletes tend to lose their jobs quickly, and as their careers wear on and their athleticism starts to fall off, they can fade from relevance in an instant. Blue should have no such issues, so I'm taking him.
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