2026 NFL Draft: What Drives Jeremiyah Love, Who Could Be First Top-5 RB Pick Since 2018

During a Notre Dame football practice last season, Jeremiyah Love rejoined his running back teammates after doing drills with the wide receivers. Though Love was gassed, his position coach, Ja’Juan Seider, needed him to take first-team reps in a third-and-short drill during a padded team period. So the star tailback immediately stepped in. Love fumbled the ball. Seider let him hear it, which, as it turned out, Love appreciated. "He’s like, ‘Coach, I need that,’" Seider told me over the phone. "‘I need you to hold me accountable because if you can hold me accountable, it can show everybody in the room that we can all be coached.’ "That was the evolution of J-Love this year." It’s an evolution that’ll continue in the NFL. A superstar for the Irish, Love is arguably the best player in this year’s draft. Recent buzz has him going as high as No. 3 overall to the Arizona Cardinals. It seems unfathomable that he gets out of the top 10. He has a strong chance to be the first running back taken in the top five since 2018 (Saquon Barkley). The 6-foot, 212-pound Love has elite change-of-direction ability. He sinks his hips and gets out of breaks like a wide receiver. He can play all the receiver spots. Seider believes he’s athletic enough to play anywhere outside the offensive and defensive line. According to Oklahoma assistant Deland McCullough, Love’s position coach from 2023-24, the running back would be "phenomenal" in the return game, too. The Doak Walker Award winner and a Heisman Trophy finalist this past season, Love rushed for 2,497 yards and recorded 40 total touchdowns over the last two years combined. "I’ve never seen a guy cut and get to top speed as quickly as him," Scott Pingel, Love's former coach at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis, told me over the phone. "You really have to watch the film again to understand the greatness of it. It looks natural, it looks like everybody can do it. Then you watch it, you’re like, ‘Oh, not everybody can do that.’" Seider thinks Love could one day be a better receiver at the running back position than San Francisco 49ers All-Pro Christian McCaffrey. "He’s like a superhero. … He’s Superman," Seider told me. "I don’t even classify him as just a running back. He’s a weapon. … This kid still has untapped potential." What unlocks it may just be his standard for himself, which grows with his immersion in football. ‘If he trusts what you’re saying, he’s all-in’ Love is a very particular and organized person. It’s how he’s always been. As a high schooler, he kept his room spotless. His shoes stayed on a mat outside the door. If he let you inside, it was a sign of trust. If you get it on the football field, it grabs his attention. "He’s very conscientious about his work," McCullough told me. "If he trusts what you’re saying, he’s all-in." It showed at Notre Dame, where he evolved from an underdeveloped freshman, green to the finer aspects of running back play, into a star worthy of comparisons to McCaffrey and Jahmyr Gibbs. In the meeting room, maybe Love doesn’t write down notes the way you'd want him to. You don’t think he’s paying attention, but he’s paying attention to everything. At the end of the year, he’ll recite what was said verbatim. On the field, he didn’t just want to hear what he was doing well. He wanted to know what tweaks needed to be made with his footwork and hand placement and running track. He wanted to know where the unblocked defender would be against different coverages, and how to attack the line of scrimmage in anticipation. Between series, he’s proactive in communicating with the running backs coach, going to the iPad: What’s the play? What’s the front? What’s the coverage? In practice, he’ll take a hand-off at his own 30-yard line and run 70 yards, well past the whistle, to work on his endurance. In walk-throughs, he’ll catch a checkdown, turn up field and do a spin move against the air, priming himself for the safety that meets him in the open field on game day. In individual training, he loves to improvise, planting the seeds for hurdles and other electrifying moves in live action. "I call ‘left!’ but he went right and still was able to make a move and go right and still get back left to finish the drill," Love’s trainer, Kortland Webb, told me over the phone. "Just to see how he’s quick on his feet. And even when he’s wrong, he’s able to recover and make himself right in a sense. "He’s definitely a visual learner," Webb added. "He’s one to sit back and analyze and let you kind of explain it and go through it. And then once it clicks in his mind, he’s going to go through it full speed like he was the instructor." He’s just as intentional as a teammate. In high school, he was as excited for teammates who scored touchdowns as when he scored his own. In an offense that featured plenty of 20 personnel (two running backs), Love — the best player on the field — preferred to line up as a blocker. When Notre Dame played Syracuse in its last 2025 home game, the Irish wanted to maintain his status in the Heisman Trophy race. His first carry, a 45-yard run, went for a touchdown, and Seider wanted him back in the game for the second drive. But Love deferred to his running mate, fellow first-round draft prospect Jadarian Price, who’d been honored for Senior Day. Three plays into Notre Dame’s second drive, Price scored a 58-yard touchdown. "Man, it’s going to be hard to get you touches, get you stats," Seider told Love. "That could’ve been a 100-yard game [right there]." Love was unbothered. "Coach, that’s my brother," he said. "We gotta keep doing this thing together." An expanding love for football Those who’ve worked with Love aren’t worried that he’ll have a short shelf life in the NFL, a concern with many running backs entering the pro ranks. Seider estimates that Love added 10-plus pounds this past season at Notre Dame. Plus, he was always part of a running back committee in South Bend, posting fewer than 200 carries in both his sophomore and junior seasons. And, as Seider puts it, Love hits people before they hit him. "He’s not going to be a guy whose odometer is nearing its end," McCullough told me. His approach shows that he's actually still ramping up. Webb, who started training Love in his senior year of high school, has always known the running back to be a laid-back, introverted person. But as his time at Notre Dame wore on, his personality opened up. He’d return home to St. Louis with more depth to his questions and what he wanted to learn. What should I do in this situation? In this situation, what am I looking for? Are my eyes right? Am I doing the right footwork? "I think one thing that people are gonna see is that he is starting to fall in love more and more with football, and that might sound crazy," Webb told me. "The further that he gets in the game, the more he’s falling in love with it." The same could be said of NFL teams about the All-American running back.