Can Kaelon Black Become the Next Josh Jacobs? 2026 NFL Draft Scouting Report & SPS Grade

Updated May 10, 2026

Josh Jacobs entered the league as the No. 24 overall pick of the Las Vegas Raiders out of Alabama in 2019, a workhorse who eventually cashed a $48 million deal with the Green Bay Packers after rebuilding his stock in the AFC West. The San Francisco 49ers are now betting that Kaelon Black can chart a similar arc by taking the Indiana running back in the third round at No. 90 overall. Black checks in at 5’10”, 211 pounds with a 4.45 forty at his pro day, and his final season at Indiana produced 1,040 rushing yards, 10 touchdowns and a 5.6 yards-per-carry clip on a national championship roster.

The Josh Jacobs Comp

Josh Jacobs entered the league as the AFC West’s lead back behind the Raiders’ rebuild, then escalated into the NFL rushing crown in Year 4. Now that the landing spot is set for Black, can he have a similar delayed career arc like Josh Jacobs – assuming CMC doesnt have much time left in San Francisco?

Indiana asked Black to share work with Roman Hemby through the Hoosiers’ historic title run, and the film community responded with a “high motor, fights for extra yards” consensus on the tape. Kyle Shanahan went a step further, telling Bay Area media that he and John Lynch “had him as the second-rated back” on their board. The selection itself was tagged a reach by most of the draft media, and Black has leaned into that motivation publicly, telling reporters: “It makes me want to go harder. I got to prove my coach right.” But will Black’s analytics share the same sentiment as those film analysts? Further, will he score high enough to make the top 10 all-time RB SPS list? Let’s dive in.

The Film Breakdown: Pros & Cons

We all should be looking at both film and analytics as we know they go hand-in-hand. The following consensus film critiques are derived from looks into Black’s game film. These highlight the positive and negative traits the 49ers just bought into with a third-round pick:

The Pros (The “Elite” Upside)

• Contact-Balanced Power Runner: Evaluators love that Black “earns his yards after contact” and “possesses the balance required to absorb contact and stay on his feet” as a “low-center-of-gravity runner” who converts speed to power at the point of attack (Bleacher Report).
• NFL-Ready Pass Protection: Black is “great in pass protection” and “wins in pass protection with great technique and anchor,” a trait that historically accelerates a rookie back’s path to passing-down snaps (Steelers Depot).
• Patience-Then-Burst Vision: Black is praised for “pressing the line of scrimmage with patience and vision” and skill at “finding open lanes,” with the foot quickness to “get skinny to slip through small creases on the offensive line” (Bleacher Report).

The Cons (The Refinement Needs)

• Limited Receiving Profile: Black “offers a limited receiving profile” and “was rarely deployed as a receiver out of the backfield” at Indiana, which caps his three-down ceiling until that role is proven in camp (Bleacher Report).
• Athletic Ceiling Concerns: Bleacher Report warns Black “lacks explosive or dynamic athletic traits to raise his ceiling as an impact contributor” and is “not known for generating big, explosive game-changing plays” (Bleacher Report), and Steelers Depot flags “average athletic ability” plus “does not have elite burst” on the prospect (Steelers Depot).

Jacobs walked into a Las Vegas backfield in 2019 with a clear runway after Marshawn Lynch’s retirement; Black walks into a more crowded room. The 49ers’ ESPN depth chart currently houses Christian McCaffrey at RB1, second-year pro Jordan James at RB2, Black at RB3, and Isaac Guerendo at RB4. McCaffrey’s recent injury history and the open competition behind him creates a believable handcuff lane in Year 1 with a Jacobs-style ascendency on the table if McCaffrey’s workload dips. The fantasy ceiling depends on who emerges from the James-Black-Guerendo scrum first, and the early signal in San Francisco is that Black has been “springy” through rookie minicamp work alongside fellow rookie De’Zhaun Stribling.

Jacobs Was Not An Instant Hit

The Jacobs framework was also dependent on experience gained through usage: Jacobs needed three pro seasons before winning the 2022 NFL rushing title with the Raiders. On another point: Black already earned an NFLPA Rookie Premiere invite alongside Stribling, a marketing-driven nod that historically tracks with the players a franchise believes will be on TV early and often.

What Is Kaelon Black’s SPS Grade?

For those of you who aren’t familiar, The Star-Predictor Score (SPS) is a scouting tool designed to maximize investment potential and reduce risks when drafting rookies in Fantasy Football. It is proven to have a higher accuracy than draft capital alone to predict fantasy football success. The SPS includes 13 to 17 metrics, with the exact number varying by the player’s position. All metrics are pre-NFL and some are proprietary to BrainyBallers, providing a complete analysis of a player’s analytical profile. The system has been profiled in Barstool Sports and on The Pat McAfee Show for back-tested accuracy on rookie hits and misses. The full database lives at the SPS hub, and the locked rookie projections sit behind the SPS rookies portal for members.

As the Pat McAfee crew noted when reviewing our top 10 all-time prospects graphic: “They haven’t missed… those are all the guys they predicted would be stars and they hit on all of them.” 

The Verdict

Is Kaelon Black the next Josh Jacobs? Both arrived as compact, contact-balanced runners, and both landed on rosters where the path to a feature workload runs through one veteran’s body. The Round 3 capital, Shanahan’s “second-rated back” stamp and a Bay Area RB room with real questions behind McCaffrey all gives Black the runway Jacobs eventually needed two seasons to solidify his name in the NFL. Even the criticism aligns: Jacobs entered the league with receiving-down doubts, and the same “limited receiving profile” flag is one of the loudest knocks on Black today. The film community has signed off on his vision, leverage and pass-pro anchor; the question is whether the analytics agree, because draft capital alone has a long history of tested past predictions against fantasy outcomes. The SPS framework was built precisely for testing this Round 3 archetype, the player whose draft capital is good but not elite, whose film grade is high but not unanimous, whose landing spot is favorable but crowded. So when the SPS algorithm sorts him against every running back prospect of the modern era, does Black grade like a future top-10 RB, a long-tenured handcuff who eventually breaks through, or a roster spot burner?