Arizona Took A Running Back At No. 3 — And The Analytics Crowd Lost Its Mind

The Arizona Cardinals walked to the podium with the No. 3 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft and selected Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love — and reignited the most durable argument in modern roster construction. Love is the highest-drafted running back since Saquon Barkley went No. 2 to the Giants in 2018, ahead of where Bijan Robinson (No. 8, 2023) and Ashton Jeanty (No. 6, 2025) came off the board. Taking a back third overall, in an era when analytics departments have spent a decade arguing the position is the one place you should never spend premium capital, was always going to be polarizing. It was, immediately and loudly.

The player is not the part anyone disputes. Love won the 2025 Doak Walker Award as the nation's best running back — the first Notre Dame player ever to win it — and finished third in the Heisman voting. In 2025 he ran for 1,372 yards on 6.9 yards per carry with 18 rushing touchdowns, adding 27 catches for 280 yards and three scores, and at the combine he ran a 4.36 forty. His 2024 season included a 98-yard touchdown that set a College Football Playoff record and a school-record streak of 13 straight games with a rushing score. He broke Jerome Bettis's Notre Dame single-season total-touchdown record. Every evaluator agreed Love was a special back. The fight was never about that.

The fight was about the slot and the bill that comes with it. Running back has seen the largest decline in draft capital of any position over the last half-century, and the analytics consensus locates a back's peak surplus value in the second round, not the top five, because the position's production is cheaper to replace and its bodies wear out faster than the rookie contract lasts. The criticism that played out during the broadcast was specific: a top-three back commands top-three guaranteed money — more than the going rate for established veterans at the position — for a player whose prime may not survive his first contract. "It's the right player in the wrong situation," ESPN's Bill Barnwell wrote, calling it the Cardinals' worst move.

The situation is what sharpened the objection. Arizona went 3-14 in 2025 — a franchise record for losses, its worst winning percentage since 1959 — and the roster around Love is thin where it matters most. Quarterback Kyler Murray missed the back half of the season with injury, the offensive line was among the league's least imposing, and the team had already invested at the position with veterans James Conner and Trey Benson, both of whom were lost to injury in 2025, plus Tyler Allgeier. Critics argued that a rebuilding team with a shaky quarterback room and a porous line should not be spending its premium pick on the position least likely to lift the rest of the offense. Dan Graziano summarized the split verdict: an "awesome player," a "terrible" decision.

The history gives both sides ammunition. Barkley, the last back taken this high, spent years brilliant on bad Giants teams before winning a Super Bowl elsewhere — the cautionary tale about paying a back on a roster that can't support him. Robinson and Jeanty are early in their careers but were drafted by teams further along than these Cardinals. And the Arizona-specific precedent cuts deep: Love is the first running back the Cardinals have taken in the first round since Beanie Wells in 2009, and the highest since Garrison Hearst — also drafted third overall, back in 1993. The franchise's own history with high-pick backs is not a parade of championships.

The counter-case is that the rule has exceptions and Love might be one. Some analysts called him the safest pick in the draft, noted that backs taken in the top ten lately have rarely been outright busts, and tabbed him an early Offensive Rookie of the Year frontrunner. The grades reflected the divide — Mel Kiper Jr. gave the pick a B, at least one analyst handed out a D-plus, and the consensus landed at mixed. General manager Monti Ossenfort, who made the call, framed it around the prospect rather than the position: "It's the person, it's the player," he said, describing Love as "an explosive player, been highly productive the last two years in both the run and the pass game."

Love himself is selling the ambition the pick demands. "I have the opportunity to really set a new standard for running backs," he said after being drafted by the Cardinals under new head coach Mike LaFleur. That line is the whole debate in one sentence. The analytics case says no single running back can set a new standard for the position's value, because the position's value is structural and the contract math is unforgiving. The Cardinals are betting that a 4.36 back with three-down ability and a Doak Walker on the shelf is the player who proves the spreadsheet wrong. If he is, Arizona looks visionary. If he is the rule rather than the exception, they spent the third pick in the draft confirming what the analytics crowd has been screaming for ten years.