Welcome back, readers. It’s now June, and while draft season for season-long fantasy football redraft leagues is still a couple of months away, plenty of fantasy football diehards are doing drafts now – for best ball leagues and tournaments, dynasty startups, and a variety of charity and other specialty leagues.
While some might not be ready to start thinking too hard about fantasy rankings and depth charts, many are, and I’m here for you. Click this linkif you’re interested in my rookie landing spot analysis for the 2026 fantasy season, and my division-by-division burning questions for fantasy. I’ll have plenty of additional content throughout the summer, including rankings, players to target and avoid, sleepers, draft strategy, and more.
My focus today is the running back position, and its return to the top of Mt. Fantasy. In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, running backs were the undisputed heavyweight champs of fantasy, as multiple teams deployed three-down workhorse backs who did it all and racked up the points.
But as the league got more pass-happy and teams started using more three-wide receiver sets and rotations in their backfields, receivers started to challenge running backs for predominance, and that started showing up in fantasy scoring, and in how players came off the board in the first and second rounds of fantasy drafts. However, trends are trends, and nothing is permanent in the NFL. As more defenses started deploying two-high safety looks to take away explosive passing plays, offenses adjusted with more heavy personnel, more multiple-tight end sets, and more running.
Those recent trends culminated in a remarkable 2024 season. A bunch of veteran backs changed teams, which in itself was unusual. But the big story was that overall, players at the position stayed remarkably healthy and piled up numbers reminiscent of that earlier period. It was the year of the running back. To prove it wasn’t a fluke, we mostly got a repeat in 2025.
Here’s one of many fantasy stats that illustrates the trend I’m talking about. Last season, the top four non-quarterback scorers, and seven of the top nine, were running backs (Half-point PPR scoring). In 2024, it was even more extreme, as 10 of the top 11 non-QB scorers were RBs. Go back to 2023, and only three of the top eight non-QB scorers were RBs. In both 2022 and 2021, of the top ten non-QB scorers, five were running backs and five were wide receiverss. We are in a mini-golden age for running backs.
With that as the backdrop, here are 23 fantasy facts you need to know about the running back position.
1. Christian McCaffrey, at age 29, led the NFL with 413 total touches in 2025 (24.3 per game) – almost three clear of Jonathan Taylor, who was second with 369 (21.7 per game).
2. McCaffrey has finished as the overall RB1 in Full PPR three different times, including last season, and the overall RB2 twice (he’s been in the league for nine seasons, three of which were mostly lost to injury). So CMC has finished first or second among RBs in fantasy points in five of his six healthy seasons.
3. One season after leading the NFL with 17 carries of 20+ yards in 2024, Saquon Barkley only had four such carries in 2025.
4. Jahmyr Gibbs has scored 49 total TDs in 49 regular season games played (three seasons).
5. David Montgomery has scored 33 rushing TDs across the last three seasons, playing alongside Gibbs. Montgomery is now on the Texans.
6. Bijan Robinson “only” has 34 total TDs in 51 regular season games played (he hasn’t missed a game in three seasons).
7. Tyler Allgeier notched 15 rushing TDs across the last three seasons, playing alongside Robinson. Allgeier is now on the Cardinals. I hope you see where I’m going with facts 4-7.
8. A year after tying for the NFL lead with 16 rushing TDs, James Cook won the rushing title last season, with 1,621 yards.
9. Across the last two regular seasons, Cook has 32 total TDs in 33 games played.
10. Across the last two seasons, De’Von Achane leads all running backs with 145 total receptions.
11. Achane led the NFL in yards per carry last season (5.7), and his career average across his three seasons is 5.6. Achane doesn’t have enough carries to qualify, but the all-time NFL leader in this category is Jamaal Charles, at 5.38 yards per attempt.
12. In his two seasons with the Packers, Josh Jacobs has scored 30 total TDs in 32 regular season games played.
13. Derrick Henry has averaged rushing for at least 90 yards per game in six of the last seven seasons.
14. Henry has scored at least 12 rushing TDs in eight of the last nine seasons.
15. Henry, at age 31 and playing at roughly 250 pounds, led the NFL with 17 runs of 20+ yards in 2025.
16. Jonathan Taylor had an astounding 17 total TDs in the Colts’ first ten games last season, and then scored just three total TDs after the Colts’ Week 11 bye.
17. Kyren Williams has racked up three straight seasons with at least 1,350 yards from scrimmage and 13 total TDs.
18. Williams has punched in 44 total TDs in 45 games played across those same three seasons. We hear a lot about Gibbs and his one TD per game across the last three seasons, but much less about Williams – the TD numbers are almost identical.
19. Cam Skattebo scored seven total TDs in just eight games played in 2025, before injury ended his rookie season.
20. Rico Dowdle has put up back-to-back 1,000 rushing seasons.
21. In his fifth campaign, but first with Dallas, Javonte Williams set career highs in attempts (252), rushing yards (1,201), yards per attempt (4.8), first downs (74), and total TDs (13) last season.
22. In the six seasons since he was drafted, J.K. Dobbins has only played in 47 games, but he has averaged 5.0 yards per carry across his career.
23. Let’s close with one more set of stats that illustrates the trends I discussed in the opening. There have been 16 running backs who rushed for more than 1,200 yards across the last two seasons, which is four more than the prior four seasons combined. Here’s the number of 1,200-yard rushers by season, this decade:
2020 – 2 (the last 16-game season)
2021 – 4
2022 – 5
2023 – 1
2024 – 7
2025 – 9
See a trend? Yup. Will it continue in 2026? I’m not betting against it.
And one last thing: Let’s go Knicks!
