Justin Fields’ 1143 rushing yards from last season was the second-highest single-season mark among quarterbacks all-time and contributed heavily to Chicago’s league-leading rushing attack and to their becoming one of just ten teams in NFL history (and one of just three since the 1984 Bears, along with Lamar Jackson’s Ravens in both 2019 and 2020) to collectively gain more than 3000 yards on the ground in a single season, but their running backs enjoyed success as well. Along with Dallas’ duo of Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard and Green Bay’s tandem of Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon, David Montgomery and Khalil Herbert were one of just three pairs of tailbacks made up of 700-yard rushers last season, a feat they accomplished with the aid of both Fields’ running threat and an offensive line that Pro Football Focus gave the fifth-highest run-blocking grade in the league in 2022.

With Montgomery -- a guy who averaged over 300 touches per 17 games and posted two seasons above 15 PPR points per game during his four-year stretch in Chicago -- now out of the picture, Herbert and the below collection of misfit toys -- listed alongside their 2022 carry totals and marks in the team-relative efficiency metrics that I like to look at -- represent a new backfield era and some untapped fantasy potential for a franchise that leads all NFL teams in all-time rushing yardage:

In addition to a likely non-factor in Trestan Ebner, who was horribly inefficient on limited work during his rookie season in 2022 after entering the league with marks in the 1st and 2nd percentiles, respectively, in Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate from his collegiate career at Baylor, Khalil Herbert is the only returning member of this backfield and should be first in line for ground opportunity going forward.

That primary place in the pecking order, while not guaranteed, is well-deserved given a strong history we have of Herbert producing efficiently with his carries over multiple years and across different situations:

The box-count adjusted numbers that I use in place of raw metrics like yards per carry and Success Rate only go back to the 2018 season for college players, and outside of that year, Herbert has done nothing but smash the efficiency of his backfield teammates at every juncture (he also averaged 2.29 yards per carry greater than the other backs at Kansas on 120 attempts in 2017, producing a YPC+ mark in the 96th-percentile) and against runners who’ve often not been slouches themselves: we know Montgomery is a quality NFL back with a 1000-yard rushing season on his resumé, the primary ball-carrier on the 2019 Kansas team that Herbert dominated with was Pooka Williams, a tremendous college player whose failure to make much noise as a pro has as much to do with a combination of legal troubles and his 170-pound frame as it does with a lack of ability, and even the RB2 on Herbert’s 2020 Virginia Tech squad was an NFL-quality talent in current Carolina Panther Raheem Blackshear. Herbert has been better with his carries while operating in the same offensive environments as all of those guys.

The next-most proven player in this backfield is probably D’Onta Foreman, a former third-round pick in the stacked 2017 running back class who has rejuvenated his career in recent years following a long road back from an Achilles tear he suffered in the midst of a quality rookie season with the Texans. Foreman is an easy guy to root for considering that adversity, but his efficiency profile has been pretty mediocre since the injury derailed what looked to be a strong start to his career:

It’s legitimately impressive that Foreman has come back from an injury that has often been career-ending for running backs and managed to produce replacement-level per-carry numbers while leading an NFL backfield like he did with the Panthers last season, but for the purposes of projecting how the workload split in Chicago will shake out in 2023 and beyond, it behooves us to keep in mind that Foreman’s numbers even during his recent resurgence have been close to replacement-level. He’s produced slightly less with his carries than other backs in his offenses have in the last two years, and while BAE Rating hasn’t captured some of the ways in which RYOE and some other ancillary metrics (he was top-17 in the league in both of PFF’s yards after contact per attempt and breakaway run rate metrics last season) reveal him to have offered value in recent years, I would argue that Foreman is stylistically less suited to occupy the three-down role that Montgomery left behind than he is to simply keep the dynamic Herbert from having to overburden himself beyond what’s been a perfectly calibrated workload in the 100-150 carry range to this point in his career regardless (an idea that Jakob Sanderson introduced and expanded upon in a recent post on his excellent Thinking About Thinking newsletter). Like the 236-pound Foreman, Montgomery is a big, bruising runner, but he provided value (at least in the Fields-led iteration of this offense from last season) by offering competence as a blocker and receiver on passing downs while absorbing volume and keeping the offense on schedule as a runner (his 6.2% mark in RSR was a 79th-percentile figure), whereas Foreman brings little to the table as a receiver (he has 23 receptions in 43 career games) and, in the NFL, has never produced positive outcomes at a consistent rate on his carries.

The newly-acquired Travis Homer has been a well-rounded, role-playing contributor in the Seattle backfield for a few years now (his 2022 RSR is an 86th-percentile mar, and he’s also averaged at least 8.1 yards per target in each of the last three seasons), but the guy on this team best suited to playing some version of the Montgomery role is fourth-round rookie Roschon Johnson. While playing with NFL-quality running backs throughout his career at Texas (including Keaontay Ingram in addition to the obvious Bijan Robinson), Johnson consistently offered more reliable per-carry output than the other runners on the team:

As a 225-pound tackle-breaker (Johnson’s career mark in missed tackles forced per attempt lands in the 98th-percentile among eventual NFL draftees) who runs in the high-4.5s, pass blocks well (he received a 64.1 career grade in that area from PFF), is capable of running varied routes (his yearly route trees never dipped below the 75th percentile in Route Diversity), earning targets on those routes (his career RATE is a slightly-above-average 108.2%), and catching cleanly the balls thrown his way (his True Catch Rate of 88.9% just edges out the career marks of both Jahmyr Gibbs and Deuce Vaughn, at 88.8% and 88.5%, respectively) in addition to producing the consistent, chain-moving output expressed in the above numbers, Johnson is as close to a 1-for-1 Montgomery swap as the Bears were going to find in this year’s draft class. He is the only guy in this backfield who profiles as a three-down, Flex Seal niche-filler with whom on the field offensive coordinator Luke Getsy could conceivably call any play.

Because of that combination of dependability and versatility, I believe Johnson should be viewed as the frontrunner (at least on a weekly basis by the end of the season) to lead this team in snap share. Herbert has been a sub-40% guy thus far in his career, and I think the additions this front office has made to this backfield this offseason speak to a desire to deploy Herbert in a way largely in line with how he’s been used the past two seasons (the Chicago beats also view this as a likely committee). My best guess for how the workload distribution shakes out is Johnson with a 45% snap share (Montgomery hovered between 65% and 75% in each of the last three seasons), Herbert around 40%, and Foreman and Homer sprinkled in here and there to spell the top two backs on running and passing downs, respectively.

The bottom line is that the presence of Fields under center and the way in which this offense functions around him makes can’t-miss fantasy production unlikely from any source in the running back room. With Fields handling 10 of the team’s 20 total rushing attempts from inside the 5-yard line last season, the leader among Bears tailbacks was Herbert, as his six goal-line carries tied him with guys like Kenneth Gainwell, Latavius Murray, and Melvin Gordon. It’s fair to project this offense to improve a bit given the additions of first-round offensive tackle Darnell Wright as well as veteran wideouts DJ Moore and Chase Claypool, so there may be more goal-to-go opportunities to go around, and it’s also fair to speculate that Fields sees less of those opportunities going forward as team brass looks to protect their franchise player (though it’s also fair to speculate about how much of a franchise player those same people view Fields as), but this is a similarly-constructed offense led by the same coaching staff that was calling the shots a year ago -- large philosophical shifts seem unlikely, and Fields’ 50% touchdown conversion rate on those plays meant that he was the most successful goal-line runner on the team as well as an above-average one relative to the league-wide conversion rate of 45.5%.

Additionally, Fields is a run-first quarterback who has never checked down to backs at a high rate. The only runner who earned more than 17 targets in a season on Fields’ Ohio State teams was JK Dobbins, who Fields targeted 14.5% less often than the CFB-wide average on a per-route basis (a RATE mark in the 32nd percentile), and he’s targeted Bears runners 17.4% less often than the NFL-wide average thus far in his pro career, a RATE in the 24th percentile. Additionally, while quarterbacks across the league scrambled on 4.6% of their dropbacks in 2022, Fields took off and ran 15.8% of the time and was the only full-time passer (300+ dropbacks) in the league who did so on more than 10% of his dropbacks.

Justin Fields’ mobility helps open running lanes for the backs in the Bears offense, but his tendencies also limit their production both at the goal-line and in the passing game.

Because of the combination of those two factors -- the team’s goal-line play-calling tendencies and Fields’ unwillingness to checkdown to running backs -- even an every-down role for Johnson would come with an uphill battle to make an impact through the highest-leverage avenues for scoring fantasy points: near the endzone and through the air. The 65% snap share, 200-carry, 40-target Montgomery role would be a massive success for Johnson in year one, but even it turned into just 11.1 points per game and an RB28 finish in PPR scoring. A regular fantasy starter from this backfield will likely have to be a Jamaal Williams-type touchdown vulture (in the case of Johnson) or an uber-efficient two-down runner maintaining effectiveness under enough volume to offset a lack of pass-catching work (in the case of Herbert). I’m not betting on either of those outcomes.

And yet, I don’t hate investing in either of those guys considering how relatively cheap they are in dynasty. Herbert and Johnson are currently valued as the RB35 and RB36, respectively, over at KeepTradeCut, in the same range as other guys who you’re hoping for spurts of injury-to-teammate-fueled RB2-level production from in Alexander Mattison, Tank Bigsby, and Antonio Gibson. You’ll probably have an opportunity to flex both of those guys at various points this season, and I do believe Johnson has the do-it-all upside to grow into a larger role by the end of 2023 and beyond. Foreman is probably a roster clogger even at RB51 prices.