Cin-City Bully
Cin-City Bully
Coming off a 1000-yard season, Cincy's pig has an opportunity to finally make good on the promise he showed early in his career.
Cincinnati is a beautiful city; cheerful, thriving, and animated.
- Charles Dickens, novelist
By all accounts Cincinnati’s first year in the big leagues was a disappointment. Of the four new members in the BIG12, the Bearcats finished with the worst record at 3-9, though they were not too far off Houston’s 4-8 and BYU’s 5-7. However, unlike the other three new members, Cincinnati was working in a new coach, and a new QB. What they did have going for them was returning tailback Corey Kiner, who transferred into Cin City in the 2022 offseason.
Originally a native of Cincinnati, Kiner began his career in the SEC with the LSU Tigers. He kicked off his CFB tenure with a bang, scoring a TD in each of his first two games vs. McNeese State and CMU. In fact, he saw season highs of 11, 12, and 14 carries that season. Not bad for a true frosh. Most of these guys are still figuring out how to get to ECON101 in study hall; Kiner ‘The Cin City Bully’ was punishing future NFLers day one.
His transfer that offseason was a bit of a surprise, but one could understand that homesickness might have played a factor. It was a move that did not go unnoticed by the CFF crowd, who circled like vultures upon the news. Ultimately, Kiner disappointed in his first season back in Ohio as he would go on to average ~7 PPG in 2022.
However, when Scott Satterfield was hired as the new headmaster of the Bearcats program there was a renewed—albeit cautiously optimistic—optimism. On an aggregate level, Kiner did well, going over 1000 yards rushing despite playing for a poor team in 2023. He also shared carries with his QB (as is usually the case for Satterfield’s RBs). Despite that, I’d say that he wasn’t really a great, or even good CFF asset (averaged about 12 PPG). Normally, 1000 yards rushing is a good barometer to assess player value, but the volatility from Kiner combined with the lack of scoring made him a tough one to roster and/or start.
But we CFF players are forever optimistic, aren’t we? And another year under Satterfield could be just what the doctor ordered for Kiner to hit a more consistent stride in 2024. More importantly, Cincinnati in its second year of BIG12 play should be an improved bunch meaning they’ll hopefully score more often. As it happens, the Bearcats brought in a (presumed) upgrade at QB via Brenden Sorsby, and return nearly every snap on the OL (96%).
Before diving deeper into personnel, let us take a look at a man who has been dubbed as a ‘CFF Kingmaker’ at the RB position in the past.
Coaching & System
RB1 PPG AVERAGE — HC: 12.4 — OC: 13.91
Scott Satterfield is the head coach of the Bearcats, and his OC is a man named Brad Glenn. Glenn joined the staff in 2023 as the OC and WRs coach, before that he worked at Virginia Tech as the pass game coordinator and QBs coach. His only other play-calling experience outside of Cincy came in 2019-21 at Georgia State.
Satterfield’s been the head coach since 2023 as well, and before that he spent four years in the same role at Louisville (2019-2022), and six years at App State (2013-2018). He is most famously known in the CFF sphere as a guy who is friendly to the RB position. Every single season he was at App State featured a 1000-yard RB, and since 2013, nine of his 11 seasons have featured a player who went over 1000 yards rushing (QB Malik Cunningham is the only non-RB to do it in 2021).
Below is a summary of the staff’s historical track record dating back to 2018. While the projection hasn’t been fully calibrated, I actually think the number it is spitting out is pretty spot on given what we’ve seen Satterfield’s RB1s do in the past. While coach Satt’s runners frequently surpass 1000 yards rushing, they typically do not dominate the carry distribution the way you’d expect, at least not recently. Since 2017, only one of the four RBs who went over 1000 yards rushing saw over 200 carries (Javian Hawkins in 2019).
You can see from the attempts per game under Satterfield in Table 1. that only one time in the five season sample did his RB1 average over 20 carries per contest.
Looking at Glenn, the OC, while he only has three seasons of play calling to draw from, his patterns look similar. His RB1 averaged almost 20 carries per game in 2019, and around 15 carries the other two seasons.
In terms of tendencies, Satterfield’s teams average approximately a 61/39 run/pass split. Glenn is nearly identical. Team pace was just above average last year with 25.5 seconds per play, which ranked 51st in the FBS. Over the last five years, Satterfield’s teams average 26.4 seconds per play, and Glenn’s 24.
In addition to Satterfield and Glenn, another relevant name is Mr. Sean Dawkins, the RBs coach. Dawkins coached Memphis’ RBs last season, where he had Blake Watson go over 1500 yards total. One of the key components to Watson’s usage was in the passing game (nearly 500 yards receiving). Here he is talking about the RB room in March.
Corey Kiner (5’9, 212)
2023 STATS: 192-1047-5 (12.7 PPG)
The fourth year man out of Ohio returns in 2024 as the Bearcats’ presumed RB1. He finished 2023 with over 1000 yards rushing despite not carrying the football more than 200 times, which is a rare feat. That’s good from an efficiency standpoint, but doesn’t really do much for us as CFF players. Most problematic of all is that he only scored five TDs. For context, in Kiner’s last season with LSU he managed to score the same amount on only 82 carries.
After a fairly solid season, many speculated whether Kiner would try his hand at the NFL Draft. Obviously, he decided to run it back one more time. The former four star prospect will have the benefit of continuity on his offensive line, as the Bearcats return 96% of snaps from a year ago. That could be a good or bad thing though, considering they were 3-9 last year. However, Kiner still managed to average over five yards per carry despite that.
As a high school prospect, he was compared to Kenneth Dixon, and 247 Sports’ Allen Trieu had this to say in his evaluation:
Thickly built with a compact frame. Runs hard and shows good balance and ability to break tackles.Shows burst and accelerates quickly when he gets the ball. Does a good job of quickly finding lanes as well and runs with little hesitation. Has solid change of direction and ability to cut.
Not a back that will make as many defenders miss as he will run through arm tackles. Play speed is better than timed or measured speed at this point. Has done well as a return man as well at the high school level.
Must continue to work on his top end speed and polish pass-catching skills, but projects as a productive, starting back at the Power Five level and someone who will have an opportunity to play beyond college.
Notably, he earned Mr. Football honours in Ohio for the year 2020.
With regards to receiving usage, I can’t say Kiner’s profile stands out. He caught 12 of his 17 targets last year for 49 yards and no scores. In both of his LSU seasons he was targeted only three times each season. That’s unfortunate, because we saw the RBs coach just have a player who killed it in the passing game on top of strong ground usage at Memphis.
Even if Kiner had demonstrated that ability in the past, I wouldn’t have held my breath on this regime utilizing the RB that way. Historically (2018-2023), this staff tends to only send one target per game to the RB position.
Closing
I mentioned that one unfortunate feature of Satterfield’s RBs is that they must compete with the QB for rushing production. Satterfield’s QBs usually are dual threat players who themselves take a lot of the rushing scores near the end zone. That’ll likely be the case again in 2024 with Indiana’s Brenden Sorsby making his way over to Cincinnati. Sorsby finished last season with 112 rush attempts, 286 yards and four scores on the ground.
The staff don’t tend to deliver a huge workload to their RB1s, but they do feature them enough to be CFF relevant. The problem for Kiner last year was primarily the lack of scoring. If you want to bet on Cincinnati being a better team in the BIG12 this year, then Kiner makes a lot of sense as a mid/late round RB.
His current ADP according to Campus2Canton is 159.8, and his April ADP is 147.2, suggesting that he might be rising up boards this summer. ◾
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Sample size of data is 2018-2023, and the PPGs are quoted in half PPR.