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Daniel Hill, RB Alabama

My most-drafted running back cost a 16th-round pick. Two games in, he has three touchdowns and just carried Alabama's second half at Kentucky.

50% exposure across 16 drafts · ADP 199.0 · my board had him 228th · stats through Sept. 13

Daniel Hill is on eight of my sixteen teams. That ties him with Faizon Brandon as the player I drafted most, and I took him in round sixteen.

Two weeks in, he has scored 37.3 half-PPR points, 18.7 a game. That ranks 18th among the 158 running backs in Underdog's player pool who have played two games in our box-score data. The market priced him as the 66th back off the board.

The number that matters: 18 of 40

The touchdowns are nice. The carries are the part I care about.

Against East Carolina in Week 1, a 48-10 win, Hill got 9 of Alabama's 49 rushing attempts, 18%. Quarterback Keelon Russell was credited with more rushes (13) than he was. Hill still scored twice, which is how a back with 9 carries puts up 18.7 points.

At Kentucky the shape changed. Hill got 18 of Alabama's 40 attempts, 45%, and ran for 104 yards and a touchdown in a 45-17 win (ESPN box score, Sept. 12, 2026). No one else on the team had more than eight. The play-by-play shows where it came from: Alabama trailed 17-13 at halftime, scored the last 32 points, and Hill had 11 carries for 68 yards after the break, including a 31-yard run that set up his own 3-yard touchdown.

Across both games that is 27 of 89 team carries, 30%. How I count it: his rushing attempts divided by every rushing attempt Alabama logged in the ESPN box score. College stats count sacks and kneel-downs as runs, so a back's true share of designed runs is a little higher than this.

What he is not: a pass catcher

Hill caught 28 passes for 203 yards last season (ESPN). This year he has 4 of Alabama's 35 catches, 11%.

That matters for the floor. A back who gets his points from carries and short touchdowns needs the game script to cooperate, and the Week 1 version of him (9 carries, two scores) is hard to repeat. The Kentucky version is the one that holds up.

What I paid, and where my board was wrong

My preseason board had Hill 228th, 29 spots below his ADP. I drafted him anyway, about ten picks before ADP on average, and all eight of those teams are in The Tailgate. He ran for 284 yards on 75 carries last season, so the board had no strong reason to love him either.

Two games is not a season. But a 16th-round pick producing like a top-20 back is exactly the outcome a best ball pick at that price is supposed to be chasing, and my board would not have put me there.

Playoff weeks

Week 12 is the one to like: a home game against a Southern Conference (FCS) team is the kind of script where the lead back racks up carries early. It cuts the other way too, if Alabama empties the bench by the third quarter.

Verdict: 50% is the ceiling in my next drafts

These are Underdog best ball teams. Nothing gets traded or dropped, so the verdict is about what I do in my next drafts at this price.

Half my teams is already a big bet on a back who had one real workload game. I would not go higher. If I could draft again at 199, I would still take him every time he was there, which is how I ended up at eight.

What would change my mind

If Week 3 against Florida State looks like Week 1, a fifth of the carries with the quarterback leading the team in runs, then Kentucky was the outlier and I am holding a touchdown-dependent committee back.

If he gets 40% of the carries again against a Power Four defense, he is Alabama's lead back and the price was a gift.

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Exposure figures from my own Underdog draft exports. ADP from Underdog best ball rankings. Statistics and quotes from published reporting. Nothing here is betting advice, and I am telling you what I did, not what you should do.