What follows is Thor Nystrom's Omarion Hampton 2025 NFL Draft Scouting Report, including a comprehensive breakdown of his collegiate track record, strengths, weaknesses, and more.

Omarion Hampton 2025 NFL Draft Profile

  • North Carolina | 6-foot 219 pounds
  • Comp: Deuce McAllister

Omarion Hampton was terrified. It was his junior season of high school, peak recruiting time, and Hampton had just broken his ankle attempting a tackle on kickoff coverage. Hampton believed his scholarship offers to play college football were going to vanish.

This, of course, turned out to be an unfounded fear. But how did North Carolina ultimately beat out Florida and Penn State—Auburn, Tennessee, Ohio State, and Michigan also offered—for the 2022 four-star recruit’s signature?

Because UNC HC Mack Brown called Hampton once he was discharged from the hospital with a simple message: “He was telling me like even if my ankle never healed up I'll always have a scholarship to UNC,” Hampton said. “That meant a lot to me."

Hampton was back ready for the start of his senior season, and he ended up winning North Carolina’s Gatorade Football Player of the Year award. In 2022, as a true frosh at UNC, Hampton won the RB2 role in a two-back committee. The following season was Hampton’s coming-out party.

One enormously impressive element of Hampton’s evaluation is that circumstances do not seem to affect his production. In 2023, playing with Drake Maye on a top-20 offense, Hampton posted 1,726 all-purpose yards and 16 TDs.

In 2024—with Maye and WR Tez Walker off to the NFL, and Maye’s heir apparent QB Max Johnson knocked out for the season in the opener—the Tar Heels passing offense sharply regressed. Opponents put more defenders in the box to try to slow Hampton. Hampton responded with 2,033 all-purpose yards and 17 TDs.

Following the season, Hampton declared for the NFL Draft. The former consensus top-150 overall recruit will compete this spring with Iowa’s Kaleb Johnson and the Ohio State duo for RB2 honors behind Ashton Jeanty.

Make sure to check out Thor Nystrom's latest QB rankings going into the NFL Draft.

Omarion Hampton Scouting Report For The 2025 NFL Draft

Hampton could really help his case with a big NFL Combine later this month. If you believe his college coach, that’s exactly what’s coming: “He’s got 4.4 speed at 220 pounds, and that’s freakish,” former UNC HC Mack Brown said.

Hampton reminds me of former Saints RB Deuce McAllister, who measured into his NFL Combine at 6-foot-1/222 pounds and ran a 4.41 40 with an 83rd-percentile vertical jump. One NFL scouting service listed Hampton’s 40 at 4.44 over the summer (eyeballing from tape, I’d peg high-4.4s).

Hampton has the same upright running style as McAllister, with similar foot speed between the tackles. He has the same ability to contort and slither through creases into space.

Hampton is a hard-charging north/south runner who does not mess around behind the line of scrimmage. It’s an aggressive ethos—particularly for the zone-blocking system that he played in at North Carolina—that has its positives and negatives.

Hampton always gets, at minimum, what’s blocked for him. He has a very disciplined running style, never out over his skis, and consistently keeps a sturdy base beneath him as he travels his north/south path.

The downside to this style is a lack of evasion. It’s not what Hampton is trying to do, and he doesn’t have the wiggle to try. Hampton has one direction change in him on a given run, and it’s going to come off a cut around the line of scrimmage.

One of Hampton’s most impressive traits is his contact balance. Hampton is a banger, and his style requires a fortified center of gravity—he’s got it. He brings a hammer into contact, trying to blast his way to a few extra yards.

Hampton posted at least 67 missed tackles forced each of the last two seasons, while logging a stellar 4.35 yards after contact per attempt (89th percentile). Hampton broke at least one tackle on a majority of his 45 carries of 10-plus yards in 2024.

Hampton has all the body armor he needs for grunt work. He is a rocked-up 220, a physique he built through maniacal weight room work. In the weight room of Cleveland High School in North Carolina, Hampton’s name is all over the school’s record-setting lifts. His high school numbers?: 405-pound bench, 325-pound incline, 565-pound squat and 370-pound hang clean.

“We (didn't) let him max out in the squat after his sophomore year in high school because the bar would bend if you put any more weight on it,” Hampton’s high school coach Scott Riley said. “We didn't have the equipment to handle him.”

Hampton could stand to run with more patience and more tempo—but that’s just not who he is. He can miss opportunities by not allowing them to develop, or by not seeing alternate lanes open up when he’s become the locomotive on tracks.

Hampton was productive as a receiver at UNC, with 67 catches for 595 yards (and only two drops) the past two years. Hampton’s 1.38 YPRR in 2024 is top 10 in this RB class. He has a very specific niche.

Hampton wasn’t given the opportunity to run many different kinds of routes out of the backfield at UNC—he was rarely asked to leave it at all. Hampton is skilled in the screen game, he has the fluidity for swings, and he’s a reliable last-resort dump-off option.

The Tar Heels’ goal with Hampton in the receiving game was simply to get him into space to let him do damage—extended handoffs behind the line of scrimmage. Over the last two seasons, Hampton had a -1.5-yard aDOT. But thanks to that north/south style suited for the work, and his ability to break tackles, Hampton barreled forward to 11.7 yards per reception. 

Hampton is an inconsistent pass blocker at present. But he has the toolkit to improve in this area if he wants to. Hampton looks for work, and he brings his muscle-bound frame to every fight. But he has a habit of stepping forward prematurely, giving him infeasible angles to reach pressure if it pops up from an unexpected direction.

And when he engages, Hampton’s technique is scattershot. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands. Too often, Hampton simply acts as a human shield, parking his body between the defender and his quarterback, allowing the defender free access to his chest.

Hampton is a top-5 RB in the class. He may never be a superstar, but he’s going to be a reliable bellcow immediately. Hampton seems destined to get taken early in Round 2. If the Raiders don’t take Ashton Jeanty in Round 1, it’ll be interesting to see if new HC Pete Carroll harkens back to his Beast Mode days by taking another tone-setter.