2020 NFL Draft: 7-round 49ers mock going all offense
Ke'Shawn Vaughn. 210. player. 887. . Running back. Commodores
Running back is another crowded position group for the 49ers, with Matt Breida, Raheem Mostert, Tevin Coleman, Jeff Wilson and Jerick McKinnon already fighting for places on the roster for 2020.
Still, it seems pretty likely the team will add at least another body or two to the mix, either through the draft or post-draft rookie free agency, a favorite tactic for this regime, with three of the five backs on the roster coming to the team via that route.
But since this is an offensive-only mock draft, and since the Niners have two picks very close to one another here in the seventh round, we’ll go ahead and fill that void with a running back with a late-round draft pick.
The pick here is former Vanderbilt tailback Ke’Shawn Vaughn, a senior who started his career as a part-time player at Illinois before transferring to Nashville and racking up two 1,000-yard seasons during his time as a Commodore.
One of the more staggering things about Vaughn’s production at Vanderbilt is not just the 1,244 yards he ran for as a junior and the 1,028 he added as a senior, but the number of carries it took him to get to those totals.
In his first year in Nashville, Vaughn carried the ball just 157 times, an average of 7.9 yards per carry, while scoring 12 touchdowns. Unfortunately, during his senior year, the carries went up (198 attempts) while the yards went down, but his 5.2 YPC that season was still fairly impressive.
Vaughn’s totals during his college career were 572 carries for 3,296 yards (5.8 YPC) and 30 touchdowns. He also added 66 receptions for 648 more yards and three receiving touchdowns.
He’s a smaller, stockier runner who will need quality blocking up front to be successful, but there’s no doubt if Kyle Shanahan likes him, he would figure out a way to put him in a position to be effective.
Vaughn would certainly stand out among the speedy group the team already has in place but would provide the 49ers with a change-of-pace back if they wanted to add that to their already lethal running game mix.