Analyzing the 2025 Running Back Class: Part 1

A Deep Dive into the top of a Deep Class

Before I get into the rankings, I want to touch a bit on the process, which will guide both this post and especially Part 2 which dives further down the list of 2025 RBs.

Running Back is my favourite position to write about and evaluate for fantasy football — especially dynasty fantasy football — because it is full of paradoxes.

I’ve long said that WR is the easiest position to scout through data because there is the largest overlap between skills which translate to real-life value and fantasy value. That doesn’t mean the data tells the whole story, but it does tell us a lot of the story. Every NFL team and every fantasy team needs receivers who consistently get open and earn targets.

At QB the calculation in dynasty is also reasonably simple. Only one QB plays on each team. If you are drafted highly you will probably get a chance to play, and if you aren’t drafted highly you probably won’t. For dynasty, we are tying a large portion of the valuation to that QB’s real life success, because if they can’t hack it in the league they won’t hold their job for long. From there, we layer on the bonus proposition of whether these QBs can run in order to drastically increase their fantasy upside.

At RB however the considerations are most complicated. Like QB, only one plays a time (mostly). But unlike QB, that position rotates at a much higher clip. There are a select few backs who play enough snaps to contender for fantasy RB1 value on volume alone, since many teams are content to operate their backfield in a committee. Those few workhorses typically require a combination of size, pass catching / blocking, durability, and — over the long run at least — talent. When evaluating the top of a RB class, we are generally looking for players who hit all of those marks, at least as many of them as possible.

As you make your way down the list, two different types of bets emerge.

On one hand there are role players — backs who do not check all of the boxes described above, but excel in 1-2 particular areas. These are backs who can form an important part of an NFL team’s running back room, but have a capped ceiling for fantasy football as an RB2 or flex.

Of course, it’s never quite that simple.

Sometimes players who appear to have a capped ceiling show themselves to be more well-rounded in the league than you’d have otherwise thought. Many thought De’Von Achane was too small to be more than a change-of-pace back, or Kyren Williams was insufficiently athletic to be more than a third-down back (including myself in this case).

The other path are backs who have the appearance of a workhorse, but lack the talent (or draft capital) to be afforded that opportunity straight away. Sometimes the NFL is simply wrong about these players and they quickly assert themselves as studs. More often, these players are destined to spend their career as high-upside contingent backs, ready to step into a fantasy friendly role when an opportunity arises, but who wind up without a fantasy-statable role for most of their career.

This is an extremely deep RB class, in which we may see two dozen backs drafted between Rounds 2-7. Ranking them in a linear fashion — especially pre-draft — is quite difficult, because to a large extent you’re weighing apples and oranges, both in skillsets and fantasy use cases.

Jaydon Blue is one of the best receiving backs in this class whose NFL role is easy to envision, but who likely won’t amount to more than a satellite back flex-play in fantasy. Damien Martinez is a powerful and effective between-the-tackles runner who can handle 15 carries per game and short yardage work for any NFL team if called upon. But it’s hard to imagine his fantasy upside exceeding the Brian Robinson / Jordan Howard mold. Raheim Sanders is a big back with a strong pass catching pedigree and has endured a bell cow role. But I’m not convinced he’s particularly good (nor is the NFL based on his projected draft capital). He’s more than likely a backup at the next level.

What bet would you rather make?

It depends. If I’m an NFL team willing to install a committee approach, give me the role players who excel in their own area and let me build a high-level backfield in the aggregate. But if I’m an NFL team with Saquon Barkley, I don’t need premium role players. I just want a reliable RB2 who can step in and absorb touches for a couple games if my superstar turns an ankle.

Similarly, who you prefer in fantasy depends on how you approach the game, your format, and your team.

Players like Blue or Martinez will likely be viable best ball options throughout their career, providing intermittent spike weeks and holding down an every-week role. It’s easy for me to envision Martinez in particular being a mainstay starter on my future ZeroRB redraft teams.

But if you have a stacked dynasty team, how highly do you value an RB2/Flex or bye-week filler? You might prefer to take the shot on pure ceiling. Sure you draft a lot of Eno Benjamin shares, but you look back fondly on stretches you got from Samaje Perine and Mike Davis, you struck gold with Chase Brown, and every once in a blue moon you get David Johnson or Aaron Jones.

As a person who really loves watching RB play and can’t help but grow attached to certain players, I’ll admit to being a touch biased toward the #GoodAtTheGame types. Before film review made up a larger portion of my process, I used to hypothesize that one edge data-based analysts had over film-based analysts was being un-burdened by an appreciation of the intricacies of each back’s game and focusing purely on the fantasy applicability. I think that’s at least partially true. While it’s difficult for me to recommend a player I think is bad but fantasy friendly ahead of a player I think is good but limited, I understand the assignment you rely on me for.

Ultimately I have two jobs in this column (and the rest of my written work on the 2025 RBs). First and foremost, I want to give you a picture of who these players are so you can appropriately take the bets which work best for your team. Second, since you pay me to aggregate probabilities for you, I will attempt to order these backs (both pre and post-draft) in a manner that weighs these various considerations and attempts to create a set of +EV linear rankings for a median dynasty team.

To that end, I am ranking based on how I would order these players in a pre-draft rookie draft taking place today. That means expected draft capital is a factor in my rankings. If you are curious, I’ll provid a “Veil of Ignorance” set of rankings at the very end of Part 2 of this column in which I rank each RB based only on their statistical profile and film, without any consideration of where they are likely to be drafted.

Sources

• I use PFF College for all stats unless otherwise sourced

• I review Pat Kerrane and J.J. Zachariason’s rookie models in the course of my preparation and strongly recommend both

• Metric Plots are from Campus2Canton — which also is a fantastic source of college statistics and Data

• My Film is sourced from DynastyNerds.

TIER 1

RB1 — ASHTON JEANTY, BOISE STATE

Overview

Is Ashton Jeanty generational?

I see how frustrating this debate can be just two years after Bijan Robinson was a “generational” prospect, three years after Jonathan Taylor was dubbed a “generational” prospect, two years after Saquon Barkley was a “generational” … you get the point.

I don’t think it’s particularly actionable to debate precisely where Jeanty falls next to the likes of Robinson or Gibbs as prospects, and much less so to argue about whether he’s superior to Barkley or McCaffrey were coming out. But if you were curious…

From a production standpoint, Jeanty’s third season is the best among the cohort of RBs I would generally consider the best prospects of the last decade — I added Hampton to this chart as well so you can see where he matches up.

How to weight that given Jeanty played inferior competition to each of these players is up to the eye of the beholder, but based on his draft capital projection, the NFL at least agrees he is within this realm of player.

What matters most is that Ashton Jeanty is head and shoulders above any other prospect in the 2025 class.

Production

Here’s Jeanty compared to the consensus Top-5 RBs in this class in my preferred RB production metric — yards per team play (per game).

This metric is my favourite catch-all production metric for the position because it (a) has proven a strong correlation to NFL fantasy production over time ; (b) combines a RB’s ability to demand volume and produce efficiently ; and (c) combines both rushing and receiving production.

I will note that over a large sample, using full-season rather than per-game statistics has a stronger correlation to NFL fantasy production. That’s why the full-season version of this statistic is used in J.J. Zachariason’s model.

However, since I’m not in the business of modelling this class in the aggregate but rather attempting to parse each individual player in a vacuum, I prefer analyzing the clearest description of what they did when they played, and work through the context together with you from there.

From a production standpoint there is no comparison between Jeanty and his competition at the top of this class. This holds true even if you expand the chart to add more names further down the list.

The only flaw I’ve seen pointed out in Jeanty’s production profile is the receiving portion. It’s true he posted just 0.54 YPRR in 2024, but just one season prior he posted an elite 3.19. Here is Jeanty compared to the rest of the top-five backs in this class in receiving yards market share (per game) (MSRY) year-to-year:

The up-and-down nature of his receiving profile is certainly odd. But the profile as a whole remains strong, with his 2023 season providing proof that he has elite pass-game upside. Several college analysts have hypothesized that the change in his 2024 receiving usage was due to the immense rushing volume being put on his plate, and a desire by the team to conserve additional touches for their workhorse. I think this makes far more sense than any other alternative, and I don’t see his receiving profile as a red flag.

Efficiency

Unsurprisingly, Jeanty lit up the efficiency charts in 2024 despite his massive workload.

He ranked first among all RBs with at least 100 carries in Missed Tackles Forced percentage (MTF%) and Yards After Contact per Attempt (YAC/A) in 2024, and ranked top-three in each of those metrics in 2023 as well.

He also led the country in runs of 10+ yards and 15+ yards in 2024. While that’s in large part due to volume of carries, he ranked in the top quartile in both Chunk Rate (10+) and Breakaway Rate (15+), while finishing 8th and 4th respectively in those metrics among backs with at least 200 carries.

Ashton Jeanty has no holes in his profile and projects as an all-around bell cow with elite efficiency upside.

Film

As stated at the top of the profile, the only caution flag on Jeanty’s profile is his level of competition. While it’s possible statistics could be inflated based on a schedule of Mountain-West defences, the film does not lie.

Fortunately for Jeanty, I was as impressed with the eye test as with how he looks on a spreadsheet. His processing speed is incredible, allowing himself to constantly be in perfect position to leverage tackles and hit holes without any wasted movement. His contact balance is absolutely ludicrous, and while he may not have true home run speed, he has more than enough juice to beat line backers to the edge.

Clearly NFL evaluators agree, and it’s why he’s highly likely to be a top-15 pick in this year’s draft.

Summary

Ashton Jeanty is an incredibly fun player to watch, and will be an incredibly fun player to roster in all formats. But he’s somewhat boring to talk about in the context of rookie draft strategy.

If you have the 1.01 you have only two viable options: take Jeanty or trade the pick — there is no other justifiable selection with that pick in this class.

I’ll go into more detail in my post-draft columns on what it would take for me to trade down or out of the pick, but my initial view is that more often than not I will simply stick and pick Jeanty.

Comparisons: Bijan Robinson, Melvin Gordon (Complimentary)

Dynasty Valuation: 2.5 Base 1sts