Dylan Sampson

Week 1: 8 catches, 64 yards as a pure receiver. Week 17: 11 carries, 27 rush yards. A rookie season in two acts.

Dylan Sampson — Cleveland’s 4th-round pick out of Tennessee — started 2025 as almost exclusively a checkdown target and finished it earning real carries.

Weeks 1–9 (8 games): 28 carries, 51 rush yards (1.82 YPC), 23 targets, 20 receptions, 133 receiving yards. A receiving-first back.

Weeks 10–18 (7 games): 37 carries, 124 rush yards (3.35 YPC), 17 targets, 13 receptions, 138 receiving yards. A back adding a rush dimension.

His YPC nearly doubled in the second half of the year (1.82 → 3.35), and his two highest carry games — 11 carries vs PIT (Wk 17) and 10 carries vs CIN (Wk 18) — came at the very end of the season. The offseason question: can he hold onto that carry role?

Led all Browns running backs in receiving yards in 2025 — 271 yards on 33 catches, as a 4th-round rookie.

Dylan Sampson wasn’t just Cleveland’s best receiving back by default — he beat out a full RB room that included veteran options.

Sampson’s 82.5% catch rate (33-of-40) and 271 receiving yards led all Browns RBs despite sharing backfield snaps all year. His Week 1 debut — 8 catches for 64 yards vs CIN — set the tone: the receiving role was his to lose, and he never lost it.

His YPC rushing was a rough 2.69 (lowest of any 2025 rookie RB with 50+ carries), but the hands kept him on the field every week.

His rush-to-receiving yard ratio (0.65) is more inverted than CMC’s 2017 rookie season — lowest of any rookie RB with 50+ carries in database history.

Of every running back to enter the NFL with 50+ carries in their rookie year, no one in the database has had a lower rush-to-receiving yardage ratio than Dylan Sampson in 2025.

Sampson (0.65) edges CMC (0.67) as the most receiving-dominant rookie RB with meaningful carry volume in the modern era. Only 5 rookies ever (in the database) have had more receiving yards than rushing yards with 50+ carries — Sampson is in that group alongside CMC, Kamara, Duke Johnson, and Nyheim Hines.

3 games with negative rushing yards in 2025 — and the lowest YPC (2.69) of any 2025 rookie RB with 50+ carries.

Sampson’s rushing line in 2025 has been brutally inefficient on low-volume looks:

In 3 different games he netted negative rushing yards — typical of an RB who only gets a 1–2 carry change-of-pace look and gets stuffed at the line.

His 2.69 YPC for the season ranks dead last among all 2025 rookie RBs with 50+ carries — below Ollie Gordon II (2.84), and well below the class leader TreVeyon Henderson (5.06). League average for RBs with 50+ carries in 2025 was 4.30 YPC.

His receiving profile is the only thing keeping him on the field — and in the second half of the season, his YPC improved to 3.35 as he got higher-quality carry opportunities.

More receiving yards than rushing yards as a rookie RB — only CMC, Duke Johnson, Nyheim Hines, and Kamara have done it with 50+ carries.

Sampson’s 2025 line: 175 rushing yards, 271 receiving yards as a rookie. That’s a rush-to-receiving ratio of 0.65 to 1 — he has less than two-thirds as many rushing yards as receiving yards.

This profile historically belongs to elite, multi-dimensional receiving backs:

Of those five, CMC and Kamara became multi-year Pro Bowl studs; Duke Johnson had a long career as a pure receiving back; Hines carved out a decade of spot duty. Sampson has the most inverted ratio of all five.

The path to a bigger role: his YPC improved from 1.82 in Weeks 1–9 to 3.35 in Weeks 10–18 — if that trend continues, the archetype could shift from ‘receiving specialist’ to ‘all-around weapon.’