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Heading into the 2022 NFL draft, Iowa State running back Breece Hall is arguably the top prospect at his position. While we don’t yet know if he’ll have success if the pros, his family tree may give a hint. If Hall can be half as successful as his cousin, San Francisco 49ers legend Roger Craig, the NFL team that draft gets him will be pretty happy.

Breece Hall is a top RB prospect in the 2022 NFL Draft

The NFL Draft no longer values running backs like it used to. That means that Iowa State Cyclones RB Breece Hall won’t come off the board until late in the first round or even in Round 2. However, he is an incredible prospect who could become an All-Pro someday.

As a freshman at Iowa State, Hall carried the ball 186 times or 897 yards and nine touchdowns, per Cyclones.com. As good as that was, it wasn’t until his sophomore and junior seasons that he became one of the best bell-cow backs in the country.

His 2020 and 2021 seasons were remarkably consistent. His stat lines those two years in Ames, Iowa, looked like this:

  • 2020: 279 carries, 1,572 yards, 21 TDs, 23 catches, 180 yards, two TDs
  • 2020: 253 carries, 1,472 yards, 20 TDs, 36 catches, 302 yards, three TDs

After three seasons, the 5-foot-11, 217-pound ball carrier declared for the NFL draft. Hall’s production and his 4.39 40-yard dash speed made him the favorite to be the first RB drafted in 2020. He’s such a high-quality NFL prospect that NFL.com’s Next Gen Stats give him a 99 grade.

All this won’t come as a huge surprise when you learn more about Hall’s family.

Hall comes from an athletic family that includes San Francisco 49er great Roger Craig

(L-R) Iowa State RB and 2022 NFL Draft prospect Breece Hall and his cousin, San Francisco 49ers RB and 1983 NFL Draft pick Roger Craig.
(L-R) Breece Hall, Roger Craig | David K Purdy/Getty Images; Otto Greule Jr / Stringer

Breece Hall was born in Omaha, Nebraska, before moving to Wichita, Kansas, where he went to high school and became a 247Sports four-star recruit.  

His exposure started young, as his stepfather is former Nebraska Cornhusker running back Jeff Smith, who played for the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1985-88, per WOWT 6.

Hall also has several cousins who are tremendous athletes. Hunter Sallis was a five-star basketball recruit and just finished his freshman season at Gonzaga. Another cousin, AJ Rollins, plays tight end for Nebraska and is heading into his sophomore season.

Hall’s most famous cousin, though, is none other than San Francisco 49ers’ great Roger Craig. That is the cousin who the NFL team that takes Hall in the 2022 NFL Draft hopes he most resembles because Craig had an incredible NFL career.

Roger Craig is a San Francisco 49ers legend

In a reversal of his cousin Breece Hall’s life, Roger Craig was raised in Davenport, Iowa, before attending Nebraska for college. After four years as a Husker, the San Francisco 49ers picked the running back No. 49 overall in the second round of the 1983 NFL draft.

Craig went on to play eight seasons in San Fran before spending a year with the Los Angeles Raiders and two with the Minnesota Vikings.

As a 49er, Craig made four Pro Bowls and one All-Pro team, won the 1988 Offensive Player of the Year Award, and lifted three Lombardi Trophies. He ended his career in 1993 with 1,991 rushes for 8,189 yards, 566 catches for 4,911 yards, and 73 total touchdowns.

While Craig isn’t quite a Hall of Famer, Pro Football Reference rates him as the 11th most valuable player in 49ers franchise history. That’s because his skill and versatility as a runner and a receiver were unique in the 1980s. It also made him the perfect RB for Bill Walsh’s revolutionary (at the time) West Coast offense.  

Craig was as much a key ingredient to the 49ers’ ’84, ’88, and ’89 Super Bowls as Joe Montana or Jerry Rice (for the latter two).

Now, nearly four decades after Craig went in the second round of the NFL draft and helped change the league, Hall hopes to do the same.

All stats courtesy of Pro Football Reference

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Tim Crean

Tim Crean started writing about sports in 2016 and joined Sportscasting in 2021. He excels with his versatile coverage of the NFL and soccer landscape, as well as his expertise breaking down sports media, which stems from his many years downloading podcasts before they were even cool and countless hours spent listening to Mike & The Mad Dog and The Dan Patrick Show, among other programs.

As a longtime self-professed sports junkie who even played DII lacrosse at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, New York, Tim loves reading about all the latest sports news every day and considers it a dream to write about sports professionally. He’s a lifelong Buffalo Bills fan from Western New York who mistakenly thought, back in the early ’90s, that his team would be in the Super Bowl every year. He started following European soccer — with a Manchester City focus — in the early 2000s after spending far too much time playing FIFA.

When he’s not enjoying a round of golf or coaching youth soccer and flag football, Tim likes reading the work of Bill Simmons, Tony Kornheiser, Chuck Klosterman, and Tom Wolfe.