53-man rosters are set, Jonathan Taylor is wasting away on the Colts’ PUP list, and with the dust of the offseason now settled, I wanted to make sure to lock down the final form of my preseason dynasty rankings and get off a take on each backfield around the league. I’ve made sweeping changes to those rankings (which went live yesterday), so we’re gonna go team-by-team here, outlining any adjustments to my 2023 projections in the aftermath of preseason games and addressing any yet-undiscussed happenings that are relevant to my expectations for this season and beyond, and thereby generally get rankings- and projections-related housekeeping taken care of before the weekly in-season content machine gets rolling. Without more ado:

The no-Kyler-Murray splits for James Conner sound nice but are harder to buy into the more this team leans into what appears to be a blatant tank for Caleb Williams. That said, nothing transpired this preseason that led me to modify my Conner projections much at all, and while I’ve moved him down a bit in my dynasty rankings (from RB24 to RB29), that’s just as much a result of other players moving up as it is a response to the Cardinals likely sucking very hard in 2023. What did change are my expectations for the backend of this depth chart, as Emari Demercado earned the RB3 role over the now-released Corey Clement.

Prediction: Keaontay Ingram adds value in a reserve role behind Conner after face-planting on limited opportunity as a rookie, setting himself up to be a sexy handcuff and zero-RB candidate in 2024 redraft leagues.

Preseason didn’t influence my expectations for the Falcons backfield much either, and Bijan Robinson remains my dynasty RB1 while also projecting out well enough to contend for overall RB1 status in seasonal leagues. Tyler Allgeier dropped four spots in my dynasty rankings, mostly through no fault of his own.

Prediction: Bijan catches 50+ passes as a rookie.

It also seems like more of the same for the runners in Baltimore, as Gus Edwards seems slated to spell JK Dobbins with Justice Hill sprinkling in on passing downs. There were no significant rankings changes from these players, though Hill is now in my top-100 dynasty runners after previously falling outside of my ranked purview.

Prediction: Dobbins runs for over 1000 yards (or at least paces for it) but doesn’t provide much more than a neutral return on value at top-20 running back prices in seasonal leagues.

I’ve officially been James Cook-pilled. I discussed the possibility that Cook could be the primary early-down rushing option for the Bills a couple weeks ago, and his usage in the preseason indicates that such an outcome might even be likely. I’ve since modified my seasonal projections to account for Cook and Damien Harris splitting between-the-20s rushing work close to 50/50 after I initially operated under the assumption that Cook would have to be a Chris Thompson-style super satellite back in order to produce like an RB2 in fantasy, and that bump in early-down playing time also comes with a slight increase in the second-year runner’s target-earning potential. I’ve moved Cook significantly up in my dynasty rankings as a result, and I’m now (*gulp*) above consensus on him relative to the valuations over at bulletproofff.com.

Prediction: Cook gains over 500 rushing yards and over 500 receiving yards this season.

Nothing exciting really happened here, and my seasonal projections and dynasty valuations for the relevant players are pretty much the same as they have been all offseason.

Prediction: As with Dobbins, Miles Sanders runs for over 1000 yards but isn’t a difference-maker in redraft leagues, and Chuba Hubbard proves to be the more effective runner on a per-carry basis.

I think I read this situation almost perfectly back in May, when I predicted “[Roschon] Johnson with a 45% snap share, [Khalil] Herbert around 40%, and [D’Onta] Foreman and [Travis] Homer sprinkled in here and there on running and passing downs, respectively”. The minutiae of that workload split might not hold exactly true, but the sentiment seems on the money: Herbert will be the backfield’s de facto 1A as the primary rushing option on early downs, Roschon will reach 1B status via roles on third-down and in short-yardage, and Foreman and Homer will supplement as needed. None of them moved much for me either in the dynasty rankings or 2023 projections based on what transpired in the preseason.

Prediction: This backfield is a fantasy mess in which no player is a reliable, weekly starter outside the context of an injury to either Herbert or Johnson.

Joe Mixon appears slated to play a full schedule of games after some offseason uncertainty, and he’s perhaps the most impactful Schrodinger’s cat running back in the entire redraft player pool: either he’s competent enough to ride 300 touches on a high-powered offense to another mid-RB1 finish despite low-end RB2 prices in best ball drafts, or age continues to crater his per-play effectiveness to the point that he turns in a 2022 Najee Harris-type albatross season. It’s also been hard to get a read on the #2 spot in this pecking order, as Chris Evans seems to be ahead of Chase Brown while Trayveon Williams -- who I’ve assumed would end up as the primary breather back -- missed the entire preseason with an ankle injury. I have Williams as a top-60 guy in dynasty based on that assumption (and by extension, based on the nice situation he’d step into in the event of a Mixon injury), but who really knows.

Prediction: Mixon is more frustrating than he’s worth for the second year in a row in fantasy.

I didn’t really like Jerome Ford or Pierre Strong during their shared pre-draft cycle back in 2022, but Strong showed more as a rookie and was just traded for by the Browns front office despite Ford already being on the team, so while we annoyingly don’t have any clean, same-team preseason snap count comparisons to make between them, I’m assuming that Strong is Cleveland’s RB2 and therefore have him just outside my top-50 dynasty runners and as part of a tier of decent handcuff options. Other than that, my expectations for this offense haven’t changed much, as Nick Chubb’s upside will largely be tied to the degree to which Deshaun Watson can return to the form he displayed during his prime years in Houston.

Prediction: Chubb flirts with career-highs in the major receiving statistics but isn’t able to break out of the mid-RB1 range that he’s occupied in PPR leagues for his entire career.

The Cowboys cut Malik Davis on Tuesday, making Rico Dowdle the presumptive RB2 behind Tony Pollard. I’ve walked back my sky-high expectations for Tony Pollard’s share of the backfield work just a bit in the last couple weeks, and I now have him slated for 70% of the running back carries rather than the 75% I had him pegged for during the initial draft of my seasonal projections, with a slight decrease in receiving volume resulting from that dip in playing time. Still, he remains a top-5 option in redraft and a top-8 option in dynasty for me, and it wouldn’t shock me to see him turn in a 20+ points-per-game season as a bellcow on a high-powered offense.

Prediction: Pollard touches the ball at least 300 times this season.

I’ve been assuming that Javonte Williams would miss the first three or so games of the season, experience a ramp-up period for another couple of weeks, and then produce as a fringe-RB1 in fantasy fueled by a 60-65% opportunity share alongside Samaje Perine once he gets his footing under him. It seems now that the first step of that process won’t happen and that the ramp-up period will start in week one, at which point Williams would presumably be fully unleashed multiple weeks before midseason. I’m not convinced that he’ll be back to 100% health even if he’s playing earlier than we anticipated, but he has re-entered my high-end RB2 tier in the dynasty rankings. Perine is probably still viable for early-season utility in your lineups as well, but I’m particularly excited about Jaleel McLaughlin, who beat out Tyler Badie for the third spot in this pecking order and now carries some of the same longshot upside that I thought Badie had as a speedy receiving back in a Sean Payton-led committee backfield.

Prediction: McLaughlin has at least one usable week in fantasy this season, even if it benefits DFS sickos more than redraft or dynasty players.

Nothing to see here. David Montgomery in the pounder role, Jahmyr Gibbs in the space role, a bit more crossover in situational duties than Jamaal Williams and D’Andre Swift had given greater versatility offered by the players currently in this backfield.

Prediction: Jahmyr Gibbs becomes the sixth rookie running back ever to post 600+ yards as both a runner and receiver.

Looks like (mostly) more of the same in Green Bay, as well. Aaron Jones and AJ Dillon should split things about as evenly as they have for the last couple of seasons, but the third guy in this backfield will be Emanuel Wilson. I know almost nothing about the UDFA, but he’s 226 pounds, decently athletic, ran for almost 1400 yards and caught 24 passes in his final season at Fort Valley State last season, and finished second (to Julius Chestnut) in the league in yards per carry among backs with at least 20 rushing attempts this preseason.

Prediction: Nothing notable happens with these running backs in 2023.

I’m on record as early as mid-June declaring that Dameon Pierce would be a three-down workhorse in 2023, and the evidence we have from preseason snap counts and situational usage indicates that such a proclamation may very well come to fruition. In that event, Pierce would flirt with RB1-quality numbers while Devin Singletary would serve as a quality breather back and plug-and-play handcuff, and I’m projecting exactly that outcome to transpire this season. I remain slightly above consensus on the second-year runner in terms of valuation in dynasty.

Prediction: Pierce is an offensive centerpiece who touches the ball 300 times in 2023.

All my homies hate the Colts. Jonathan Taylor can’t play until week five after the team didn’t trade him and didn’t activate him from the Physically Unable to Perform list, and now we’re left with a backfield presumably led by Deon Jackson until the Indy coaching staff figures out that Evan Hull is the better player, at which point Taylor (assuming he decides to show up and play for these stooges rather than letting the season slip by without a contract year accruing) will likely be back in the lineup anyway. From there, it’s anyone’s guess how motivated and in-game-shape Taylor will actually be, so other than taking late-round shots on Hull, this is not a backfield I’m particularly interested in from a seasonal standpoint. I’m not moving JT too far down in dynasty, though (at least I think I’m not, but who knows how the market will react to this situation in the coming days and weeks), as he feels like a running back who’ll actually have some luck in free agency next offseason (but famous last words and all that). What a mess.

Prediction: Hull supplants Jackson as the team’s primary backfield steward before Taylor returns to the lineup.

I wrote in May that it seemed like the Jaguars were going to attempt to fill in the holes in Travis Etienne’s 2022 performance -- pass-catching and short-yardage running -- with Tank Bigsby, and after apparently testing that strategy out in the first week of the preseason (but with JaMycal Hasty deployed in tandem with Bigsby), the team’s most recent backfield usage patterns suggest they’ve figured out what we’ve known for a while: Bigsby doesn’t actually represent an improvement over Etienne in either of those scenarios. As a result, we’re probably mostly running things back on Etienne’s role from last season, when his route participation rate was right around those of guys like Aaron Jones and D’Andre Swift, when he carried the ball just shy of 13 times per game, and when he was top-ten in the league in carries within the 10- and 5-yard lines. I’m currently projecting him to improve upon his 2022 PPR output by two points per game.

Prediction: Etienne leads the backfield in goal-line carries and routes run but doesn’t finish as a top-ten running back (on a per-game basis).

Another boring backfield. Some preseason “best receiver on the team” hype didn’t materialize for the now-cut Deneric Prince, so we’re left with an Isiah Pacheco-led pecking order that also includes Jerick McKinnon and Clyde Edwards-Helaire. Outside of McKinnon inevitably showing up to catch six touchdown passes in the last three weeks of the season, none of these guys are interesting to me in redraft, and I don’t particularly care about them in dynasty either.

Prediction: Pacheco finishes the season as a per-game RB3.

Josh Jacobs is one of this offseason’s disgruntled runners who will actually be playing in week one, and I see little reason to anticipate his role being substantially different in 2023 than it was in 2022. It would stand to reason that Zamir White would be more equipped to provide legitimate breather-back touches as a second-year guy than he was in year-one, but Jacobs is going to be near the league lead in touches regardless. I have him projected as a rock-solid RB1 in redraft and ranked as a rock-solid RB1 in dynasty.

Prediction: White carries the ball nearly twice as many times this season as all the non-Jacobs backs in Las Vegas did in 2022 combined (that mark was 38, so let’s say White averages at least four attempts per game and paces for a season-long total in the 70 range).

There’s not much to say about this backfield beyond what my mid-summer analysis already covered. Joshua Kelley once again beat out Isaiah Spiller for the RB2 role and Austin Ekeler will once again be one of the best running backs in fantasy, though I anticipate his numbers skewing slightly more toward the run than they have in the last couple years. He’s still an RB1 in dynasty based on the same logic that keeps Christian McCaffrey in the top-3. Sidenote: rookie UDFA Elijah Dotson was a beast in the preseason, averaging 8.1 yards per carry. Odds are long given that he’s 5’9 and 202 pounds, runs 4.58 in the forty, and went for just 4.5 yards per carry at Northern Colorado University last season, but the guy he’s gotta beat out for the RB3 spot is Spiller, so anything can happen.

Prediction: Ekeler beats his previous career-high in season-long rush attempts by at least 20.

With Kyren Williams seemingly locked into the RB2 spot behind Cam Akers, the most interesting aspect of this backfield from my perspective is the battle for the RB3 role (whatever that entails) between Ronnie Rivers and Zach Evans. You know where I stand on the raw talent disparity between those two guys, but I also think Evans’ skill-set overlap with the team’s RB1 means he’d be more in line for a boost in playing time with an Akers injury than Rivers (whose skill-set overlaps with Williams’) would. Either way, the most fantasy-relevant parts in this backfield have been set for some time, and this will be a make-or-break season for Akers.

Prediction: Akers runs for over 1000 yards.

Jeff Wilson, Raheem Mostert, and De’Von Achane managed to dodge both Dalvin Cook and Jonathan Taylor this offseason, so the pontificating I did over their workload split back in early August is still relevant (plus the added wrench of an Achane shoulder injury).

Prediction: Achane will lead this backfield in opportunity share across the eight games following the Dolphins’ week 10 bye.

The release of DeWayne McBride was a good wake-up call for me in terms of projecting narrow skill-set running backs to emerge from the day-three draft-capital depths and actually contribute on NFL offenses, and things elsewhere in this backfield were thrown out of whack when Minnesota signed former Dolphin Myles Gaskin, presumably to serve as their RB2 in place of the unimpressive Ty Chandler and Kene Nwangwu. Alexander Mattison remains a decent bet to receive close to 250 touches, but Gaskin -- JAG though he is -- could eat into that more than the other guys would have considering his history of actual on-field contributions in the NFL.

Prediction: Mattison doesn’t crack the 12 points-per-game threshold in PPR leagues.

Ezekiel Elliott will probably eat into Rhamondre Stevenson’s workload more than Pierre Strong or Kevin Harris would have, but considering he’s easily worse at this point in his career than Damien Harris was last season, I think we can still count on Stevenson to improve upon last season’s fantasy output. I have the Patriots’ RB1 as a fringe top-12 guy in both redraft and dynasty, and he occupies a tier in the latter format that also contains Travis Etienne, Javonte Williams, Dameon Pierce, and Najee Harris.

Prediction: Rhamondre earns over 80 targets and catches more than 60 passes for the second season in a row.

I’m so tired of these backfields with constantly changing injury and disciplinary situations impacting the availability of their players. I wrote about this backfield in July under the assumption that Alvin Kamara would miss the first six games of the season, and now that we know he’ll only miss the first three, my expectations for how the workload split will shake out are the same but different: I see Jamaal Williams taking 70% of the opportunities early on, Kendre Miller earning a 50% share of things by the time Kamara’s suspension is up, and then Williams settling in as the third wheel in a messy backfield that sees a washed-up Kamara produce RB2-level numbers largely by virtue of getting funneled low-calorie targets from Derek Carr.

Prediction: Kamara scores fewer PPR points per game than Rachaad White does.

Another uninteresting backfield. Jashaun Corbin and James Robinson ended up as the odd men out here, leaving Matt Breida, Eric Gray, and Gary Brightwell behind Saquon Barkley, apparently in that order. Saquon is a fringe top-five guy for me in both seasonal projections and dynasty rankings.

Prediction: Barkley eclipses 60 receptions for the first time since he was a rookie.

The signing of Dalvin Cook resulted in Zonovan Knight’s release, and the Jets opted for a four-man running back room with Michael Carter and Israel Abanikanda providing depth behind Cook and Breece Hall. Your guess is as good as mine in terms of the workload distribution early on in the season given how little we know about Hall’s health or the team’s plans for deploying Cook in the event that Hall is a full-go, but I would imagine the second-year back will settle into a 65-70% opportunity share at some point in the second half of the season, which will likely be enough to produce top-five fantasy numbers.

Prediction: Hall performs well enough in the latter part of the year that Bijan versus Breece is a legitimate debate in dynasty startups next spring.

The silly Trey Sermon > Rashaad Penny stuff is now behind us, leaving us with our regularly scheduled programming of having no idea what this backfield is going to look like when the regular season starts. I wrote a large piece on the respective fits of Penny and D’Andre Swift in this offense back in May, and while I concluded then that both backs were solid values in both redraft and dynasty (they still are), I neglected to consider the recently-trending possibility that Kenneth Gainwell would leverage his incumbency toward winning this RB1 job. I’m not sure I actually buy that read on the situation, but I've long been a Gainwell fan and think he would do a fine job in that role. I don’t have any special intel, but I’m excited to see how things look for these runners against the Patriots in week one.

Prediction: Swift produces like a fringe-RB1 in the second half of the season.

A wise man once said that “a George divided against itself cannot stand,” and while I’m not a short, stocky, bald man whose worlds are colliding (or at least not all of those things), I think my Jaylen Warren appreciation and Najee Harris apologism combine to give me some unique perspective on that particular truism. Basically, I get both sides here: Warren is clearly an underutilized stud who has done nothing but produce efficiently at every stop of his career (from Snow College to Utah State to Oklahoma State to the Steelers), and while Harris hasn’t been effective on a per-touch basis thus far in the NFL, I think external circumstances (injury, poor offensive line play, poor quarterback play, etc., all compounded by an unforgivingly heavy workload) have hamstrung his ability to the point that we haven’t actually seen a true representation of his talents at the pro level. Warren’s presence means that such a representation might not manifest itself as high-end fantasy production, but things are setting up for a make-or-break season in which Najee will have no excuse but to ball out in 2023.

Prediction: Harris averages over four yards per carry and catches close to 50 balls (45+) this season.

Not sure there’s much to say on this one. Christian McCaffrey will eat, Elijah Mitchell will spell him, Jordan Mason will be the preferred third-option until he forgets to laugh at one of Kyle Shanahan’s jokes and subsequently gets dog-housed in favor of Tyrion Davis-Price, and the world will continue spinning as normal.

Prediction: McCaffrey gains 700+ yards both on the ground and through the air.

Kenneth Walker figures to be the starter and primary early-down rushing option in Seattle, but preseason utilization indicates that DeeJay Dallas -- not Zach Charbonnet -- may be in play as the team’s third-down back. I have no idea if that actually happens, but this is a backfield I’m not particularly interested in regardless. Walker projects out as an RB3 in redraft leagues for me, Charbonnet would be hypothetically interesting if he was getting passing-down work and was looking like a clear Walker handcuff, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, and neither Dallas nor Kenny McIntosh (who, along with Walker, has been hurt) profile as having enough juice to crack fantasy lineups as pure satellite backs.

Prediction: Walker pulls a JK Dobbins by not providing value on top-20 prices in seasonal leagues despite rushing for over 1000 yards.

Unless Chase Edmonds, Sean Tucker, or Ke’Shawn Vaughn are going to prove worthy of receiving something close to 40% of the backfield work in Tampa Bay, I don’t see how we get around Rachaad White producing like a fringe-RB1 in PPR this season. He’s like the unproven and bad team version of Joe Mixon, which sounds terrible because it is, but that’s also likely to provide value at RB28 prices in redraft because how could it not? I’m also holding out some hope that White’s awful per-carry performance in 2022 was the result of a rookie adjustment period, in which case there’s also some juice to squeeze out of his RB20 price in dynasty. I don’t really like it, but the alternatives all seem just as gross and unlikely, so here we are (but if any of those alternatives hit, it’ll be Tucker).

Prediction: White slogs his way to more PPR points per game than JK Dobbins, Miles Sanders, Cam Akers, and Kenneth Walker.

Tyjae Spears has been stupid good this preseason, averaging the fifth-highest per-carry average (5.3) among all runners with at least 20 carries and gaining an average of 4.73 of those yards after contact, easily the highest mark among the same group of preseason backs (nobody else is above 4.0). Derrick Henry is still going to be the centerpiece of this offense, but Spears has probably shown enough to warrant supplementing the nearly 30-year old workhorse in a legitimate way, and I’m currently projecting the Tulane alum for more carries and targets than any non-Henry runner has had on this team since Dion Lewis back in Henry’s first year as a starter (not counting the nine-game stretch that D’Onta Foreman had as Tennessee’s lead back in Henry’s absence in 2021). 300 carries, over 1300 rushing yards, and a near repeat of last season’s career-high receiving marks turns into just over 15 PPR points per game in my projections, but that also means I’m below consensus on Henry at RB7 prices in redraft.

Prediction: Henry finishes outside the top ten running backs in PPR points per game for the first time since 2018 (famous last words, don’t fade historical outliers, you’ll eventually be right if you say this every year, blah blah blah, got it).

It’s hard to make definitive judgments based on limited preseason action, but the evidence we have points to a pretty tight split in backfield work between Brian Robinson and Antonio Gibson here in Washington. I recently updated my projections to reflect a 55% carry share for Robinson and a 35% share for Gibson, which gives the latter enough rushing work to leverage his place in what has been described as the “JD McKissic role” in this offense toward some RB3-level fantasy utility (McKissic’s 17-game receiving pace on this team from 2020-2022 was 99 targets for 73 receptions and 563 yards). Robinson is a good player who doesn’t seem set up to produce like a fantasy starter while Gibson is also in the backfield.

Prediction: Gibson is the anti-Kenneth Walker, catching over 60 passes but not cracking the top-24 running backs in PPR points per game.