Antonio Gibson

“You can label Antonio Gibson as a running back, you can call him whatever you want,” Washington’s first-year OC Scott Turner said earlier this year. “But he played 80 percent of his snaps as a receiver in Memphis.”

So let’s delve into player comparisons. Many of the coaches on the Washington staff worked in Carolina last season. Would Christian McCaffrey be a comparable, at least stylistically?

“That’s fair,” Washington head coach Ron Rivera said excitedly on draft night. “He’s a little bit bigger than Christian, but he’s got a skill set like Christian.”

“He’s a Swiss army knife,” Washington VP of player personnel Kyle Smith said in April, shortly after Gibson’s selection in the third round. The team drafted Gibson as a running back, though he has spent time in the receiver room this summer, the story said, and played 80% of his snaps at WR in college. Gibson was never a high-volume player at Memphis and this year Washington may just take a simple approach with Gibson because of the pandemic and lack of time on the field. There is certainly a plan for Gibson but right now the team is mostly keeping that under wraps, the story said.