Even ignoring the possibility that Dalvin Cook lands in Miami and immediately steps into the team’s RB1 role, figuring out who’s going to lead the Dolphins backfield in snaps, opportunities, and fantasy points is not easy. Raheem Mostert and Jeff Wilson are both proven NFL veterans with familiarity with head coach Mike McDaniel and his scheme, while rookie third-rounder De’Von (they Trojan horsed an apostrophe in on us this summer) Achane possesses youthful juice and also seems like a strong schematic fit, and even Salvon Ahmed and Myles Gaskin -- presumably the team’s fourth and fifth runners, respectively (assuming they roster that many) -- have each proven capable of starting games and handling 20+ touch workloads if called upon.

My aim in this article is to do the impossible: accurately project the workload split among those players. As usual, the first step on that journey is an examination of the rushing efficiency profiles that each of them have put together in recent seasons, starting with Achane:

I dedicated quite a bit of thought to the Texas A&M product when working through my rookie evaluations earlier this offseason, writing multiple articles on his skill-set from both film (see here and here) and analytical perspectives (see here), and the relevant takeaway for our purposes in this article is that Achane was a ridiculously efficient runner in the context of the Aggie offense while also grading out very well as a decision-maker on both gap and zone concepts. Basically, Achane is an awesome runner of the football despite being less than 195 pounds, so much so that I had him at RB2 in this rookie class prior to (predictably) being forced to move him down after the draft.

The other main players in this backfield have also been impressive as ball-carriers recently, with Mostert and Wilson both averaging over 4.5 yards per carry and posting the following team-relative and expectation-based efficiency marks in Miami last season:

Mostert was more efficient by nearly any measure than Wilson was a year ago, and also started all eight of the games for which he was active during the nine weeks that he and Wilson overlapped with the Dolphins during the second half of the season. Given that combination of facts, it’s interesting to me that other smart analysts (Jakob Sanderson and Mike Clay among them) seem to assume that Wilson will occupy the top spot in this pecking order in 2023.

I do see where those guys are coming from, though: yes, Mostert was starting games, and yes, Mostert was slightly more efficient (and, according to Relative Success Rate, substantially more consistent) on a per-carry basis, but Wilson out-carried, out-snapped, and out-targeted him (albeit slightly in each regard) during their shared time in Miami despite playing a half game less than Mostert did in that stretch (Wilson left the Chargers game with a hip injury before halftime).

There’s also the added element of age in separating these two veterans. Wilson will turn 28 in November and Mostert is already 31 -- both of them are past the age apex for running backs, and despite the fact that neither of them are dealing with the accumulation of any large workloads (though he missed half of 2021, Derrick Henry has almost 100 more touches in the last two seasons than either Mostert or Wilson do in their entire careers), they also haven’t been bastions of health since entering the league. Wilson has missed 29 of a possible 82 games since joining the 49ers in 2018, while Mostert has missed 55 of a possible 130 games since he first turned pro back in 2015. Still, neither of them have shown much sign of decline even in these relatively late stages of their careers:

So, where does this all leave us? First of all, I think it’s clear from the above team-relative and situationally-adjusted metrics -- especially given that Mostert and Wilson played on the same team for pretty much the entirety of the represented sample -- that Mostert is simply a better runner than Wilson is. He’s never experienced what I’d categorize as a “down” season since he became a regular contributor back in 2018, and while you can identify a downward trend in his marks in the above metrics, falling from the 90th-percentile range to the 70th-percentile range is just as easily explained by natural regression to the mean as by age-based decline. Wilson, on the other hand, has been anything but consistent on a season-to-season basis, as he posted multiple campaigns of sub-four yards per carry on the same 49er squads on which Mostert never dipped below 4.9. At other times he’s been a definite plus contributor, but it’s hard to look at the above numbers -- or even the raw per-carry marks -- and conclude that Wilson is the guy who deserves the first spot in this pecking order.

Still, Wilson was the primary ball-carrier (even if just barely) on this team a year ago, contributed at an above-league average level, and ran into defensive fronts that were heavier than those Mostert faced (with a 43rd-to-59th percentile difference between the two of them). As he’s also the younger of the two players, it’s reasonable to expect him to once again have a slight advantage in the carry share department even if he’s a slightly less effective runner overall.

I also think it’s reasonable to expect Achane to take a backseat to the two main veterans here, at least early on. In the last ten years, there have been 25 running backs selected in the third round who went on to play at least eight games during their rookie seasons. Among those, eight of them were in situations that are not comparable to Achane’s on the basis of their not having to deal with an incumbent starter (Spencer Ware’s preseason PCL tear gave Kareem Hunt a clear runway to lead back work in 2017, Willis McGahee’s retirement after the 2013 season meant that Terrance West didn’t have to contend with a veteran atop the depth chart going into 2014, etc.).

Terrance West split carries with Isaiah Crowell as a rookie with the Browns in 2014.

Nearly all of our remaining 17 players had rookie season workloads that were backloaded. No matter how productive a player ends up overall, a normal distribution of touches would see them accumulate approximately one seventeenth of their season-long work in each game (assuming a 17-game season), but twelve of our 17 backs saw first-month workloads that were disproportionately light when compared to their season-long totals. More than half of them experienced the same effect through midseason and through week 12. After week 13, however, our sample of runners touched the ball 7.5% more often on a per-game basis than would be expected, with three-quarters of them exceeding touch expectations during that late-season stretch. In other words: regardless of how productive we expect Achane to ultimately be in year one, the fact that he’ll be a rookie competing with established incumbents atop the depth chart means we should anticipate his role starting small before growing throughout the season.

Compared to many of those historical players, I think Achane does have an advantage in that he’s a quality pass-catcher on a team that doesn’t have a lot of other quality pass-catching running backs. A quick perusal of the best receivers among our 17-player sample reveals that several of them earned roles earlier on than the rest of the group largely did: Rachaad White was exceeding touch expectations as of midseason of his rookie year, Alvin Kamara was doing so as of the second quarter of the season, Duke Johnson, Charles Sims, and Kenyan Drake were doing so nearly immediately, and David Johnson -- while stuck in Bruce Arians’ rookie doghouse until late in the year -- completely took over as the Cardinals’ RB1 while earning targets at a triple-digit full-season pace during the last month of the season.

I don’t want to assume that Achane will have a Kamara- or David Johnson-like rookie season just because he’s a slick receiver who so happens to also be one of the best pure runners in this running back class, but that three-down ability should give him a leg up on seeing the field in September, especially because Mostert and Wilson aren’t anything special on third downs themselves. Mostert has a career catch rate of just 74.4% (for reference, running backs league-wide combined for just under a 77% catch rate last season) and posted his single-season career-high of just 31 receptions last year, a season in which he averaged just 4.8 yards per target (placing him 55th among 89 backs with at least 10 targets). Wilson has a career catch rate of 61.3% and has never hauled in more than 22 passes in a season. I would be surprised if Achane didn’t lead this backfield in receptions in 2023, and I think he has an outside chance at ending up with more than Mostert and Wilson combined.

I believe that receiving ability -- which I so far haven’t justified with evidence, though his 89th-percentile Target Share and above-average marks in aDOT, catch rate and yards per target along with impressive skill shown on film speak to it well -- will, perhaps paradoxically, serve mostly to raise Achane’s floor by boosting his rushing volume. While I believe Achane has the tools to be a great runner in the NFL, the advantage I anticipate him having over Mostert and Wilson is most pronounced in the receiving game, and the playing time he earns by adding value in that area will result in his absorbing more rushing attempts simply by being on the field. On the other hand, his overall receiving productivity -- in terms of targets, receptions, and receiving yards -- could be subdued by the nature of McDaniel’s offense. Going back to his time in Washington starting in 2011, teams with McDaniel on the coaching staff have produced running backs with even 50 targets in a single season just four times: Roy Helu in 2011, Devonta Freeman in 2016 and 2017, and Carlos Hyde in 2018. There’s some chicken-or-the-egg effect going on there with a lack of pass-catching talent in the 49er and Dolphins backfields that McDaniel has overseen, but the presence of Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle on the outside means that the target distribution will be pretty consolidated with the wide receivers in Miami regardless.

Roy Helu is one of just three Mike McDaniel-coached running backs to ever earn more than 50 targets in a single season.

Ultimately, I have the touches in this backfield ending up very even, with Wilson finishing the season (assuming 17 games played for all involved) with 126 carries, Mostert at 114, and Achane at 100, with the rookie starting out as a clear third option and eventually earning himself RB1 touches by the second half of the year. As receivers, I have Achane earning 58 targets, Mostert 32, and Wilson 19, giving them a combined target share just over the 17% mark (the team was at 20.1% last season, but Tua Tagovailoa targeted backs on less than 15% of his pass attempts) and a combined target total right near the league median. Achane projects out as my RB34 in terms of PPR points per game, which would make him a slight value relative to his current RB38 ADP on Underdog, but his late-season upside -- as well as the possibility that he’s just too good to keep off the field early on -- makes him an even more attractive target than that disparity would indicate. As Underdog’s current RB52 and RB56, respectively, I also don’t hate targeting Mostert or Wilson in the late rounds. If either of them gets hurt in the preseason, the other will likely enjoy a 60-70% carry share on a high-octane offense until Achane gets his footing, providing you with startable weeks along the way.