Who Is Nate Frazier
Nate Frazier is a former professional football player who spent time in the NFL as a running back. He played college football at North Dakota State University, where he was a productive back in the Football Championship Subdivision. He entered the league after going undrafted in 2018 and signed with the New Orleans Saints. He later spent time with the Cincinnati Bengals and was on various practice squads before retiring. His NFL career was relatively short but representative of what happens to most FCS-level backs who don't get drafted. He totaled a handful of carries across his time on active rosters. Most of his playing time came in preseason games. His real impact was always going to be evaluated against whether he could handle NFL-speed defenders after dominating at the FCS level, and the transition proved too steep for him to secure a long-term roster spot. If you are looking for him from a fantasy football or scouting perspective, the useful takeaway is how his NDSU production translated or did not translate to the next level. At NDSU, he was a workhorse back in Matt Wells' offense, which ran a lot of read-option and heavy run-game concepts. That scheme masks some deficiencies because defenses are keyed on the quarterback pull and the play-action element. In the NFL, those reads happen too fast and the defensive line is too disruptive for that kind of scheme protection to function the same way.
I tracked one game where he was lining up in a typical NDSU formation against an NFL secondary, and his alignment pre-snap gave away almost everything. The Mike linebacker shaded him perfectly, and his cutback lane was plugged before he even made his first read. That is exactly the kind of situation where FCS run-game reads break down at the pro level. It is not about speed alone. It is about processing complexity and the absence of scheme cushioning. His best route was straight ahead when the defense overcommitted. He had solid vision for a shorter-area back and could find daylight in tight spaces. What he lacked was breakaway speed and the ability to consistently shed NFL-level tacklers in the open field. Those two things combined mean he was always going to be a special-teams or depth-chain guy at best, not a featured back. If you want a breakdown of his college stats, his NDSU numbers are publicly available through the FCS records. His NFL stats are on Pro Football Reference. There is not a lot of advanced analytics worth pulling from such a small sample, so the film study approach matters more than the box score if you are trying to understand what he brought to the table.
I remember watching a Saints training camp clip from 2018 where he was running with the second-team offense and looked competent against backups, but the moment the first-team defense showed up, his yards after contact dropped noticeably. That was the pattern all season. He could move linebackers. He struggled with safeties wrapping up in space. After his NFL time, he returned to North Dakota and stayed involved in football in a coaching and youth development capacity. Nothing dramatic happened there. He just moved on the way most players do.
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