There were 22 running backs selected in the 2022 NFL Draft. One of those guys was Breece Hall, the current dynasty RB2 according to KeepTradeCut. Another one of them was Kenneth Walker, the current dynasty RB8. Six more of them were Dameon Pierce, Rachaad White, Isiah Pacheco, James Cook, Brian Robinson, and Tyler Allgeier, all of whom are currently valued inside the top-50 running backs in dynasty leagues.

This article is about none of those guys. Instead, I want to look at the 14 runners who were drafted last offseason and are currently ranked in the RB5 range and beyond in dynasty. Are any of them slated to make an impact on their real life teams this season? Are any of them set up to make an impact in your fantasy lineups this season? Do any of them present hope for fantasy utility beyond this season? Or maybe they’re all completely droppable. I’m going to examine each of these players’ rookie season performances and also consider their prospect profiles, depth chart status, and any coach speak or beat reporter puff pieces we’ve been gifted with since the season ended in order to then categorize them based on how adamantly I’d be holding in a dynasty league.

This first group is made up of the 2022 class runners who you should absolutely not be wasting a roster spot on, almost regardless of league settings and circumstances. The first of these is Brittain Brown.

I’m not even sure why Brown got drafted last year. He posted solid Box-Adjusted Efficiency Rating and Relative Success Rate marks throughout his college career, but that career spanned six years, saw him start only five games in four seasons at Duke (prior to a transfer to UCLA), and ended with Brown posting a 4.75 Relative Athletic Score before somehow convincing the Las Vegas Raiders to select him in the seventh round. As a first-year NFL guy, he played 61 special teams snaps and touched the ball zero times (while also taking zero offensive snaps) on a team that fed Josh Jacobs as if he was the only running back on the roster. Brown -- who will turn 26 in October -- never should have been on dynasty rosters in the first place and certainly shouldn’t be on yours now.

You should also not be rostering Trestan Ebner. He entered the league after a five-year college career in which he posted first-percentile marks in both BAE Rating and RSR but also caught a million passes, and with 4.43 speed, you could tell yourself a story about how this guy might turn out to be a solid pass-catcher with sneaky PPR utility. Then he landed on the Chicago Bears, where receiving usage isn’t easy to come by for any running back given the presence of a big-time runner in Justin Fields at quarterback. Ebner caught just two of the eight targets thrown his way last season while also posting 3rd-, 10th-, and 0th-percentile marks in BAE Rating, RSR, and Rushing Yards Over Expected per Attempt, respectively, and he’s now part of a running back room that added two competent receivers in Roschon Johnson and Travis Homer during the offseason. I’d be surprised if Ebner makes the week one roster in Chicago, and I don’t see how his resume would entice other teams to give him the opportunity at an impact role.

This next group is made up of the 2022 backs who you should be willing to cut at a moment’s notice, either on the basis of negative news about them coming out of training camp or of beat reporter hype noises for pretty much anyone who might be available on your waiver wire.

The guy to keep an eye out for in the former regard is Hassan Haskins, who averaged 3.72 yards per carry and posted 12th, 22nd, and 6th-percentile marks in BAE Rating, RSR, and RYOE, respectively, as a rookie. It’s at least a positive that Haskins had a gameday role on offense last season, but he did little to earn himself increased opportunity as a second-year guy, will presumably be moving down the depth chart after the Titans drafted Tyjae Spears in the third round, and is currently awaiting the legal and disciplinary fallout from a strangulation accusation he picked up over the offseason. If nothing comes of that, there’s a possibility that Haskins serves as the primary two-down pounder during any potential Derrick Henry absence, but I don’t think that potential outweighs the opportunity to rinse-and-repeat with some other young runner or receiver getting hype in camp, and if those accusations do turn out to be credible, Haskins will probably never play in the NFL again.

The San Francisco 49ers have the top of their running back depth chart pretty much locked up: Christian McCaffrey is the league’s best dual-threat at the position, Elijah Mitchell is an athletic beast with a 1000-yard rushing season on his resume, and Jordan Mason produced BAE Rating and RSR marks each above the 90th percentile in spot rushing duty last season. Behind them, Tyrion Davis-Price is competing for the fourth spot -- and probably the last roster spot used on a running back -- with UDFAs Khalan Laborn and Ronald Awatt. My expectations for who wins that fourth spot probably goes that in that order, but Davis-Price was very bad in limited work as a rookie -- he averaged less than three yards per carry, was below the 10th percentile in both BAE Rating and RSR, and caught neither of his two targets. He was a surprise pick in the third round a year ago, didn’t play up to his draft slot, and is now on the roster bubble, which is exactly where he should be for your dynasty teams.

I love Kevin Harris, but he had a down final season at South Carolina after undergoing back surgery late in his sophomore year, fell to the sixth round, and then posted marks below the fifth percentile in each of Yards Per Carry+, BAE Rating, and RYOE (as well as a 24th-percentile mark in RSR) as a first-year pro last season. I imagine he’s entering training camp with a slight disadvantage to Pierre Strong in the RB2 competition given the disparity between their respective performances as rookies, and Harris is much more redundant with both Rhamondre Stevenson and any Leonard Fournette- or Ezekiel Elliott-type veteran the team might to decide to add in free agency than Strong is. Basically, even if we were guaranteed the healthy, more explosive version of Harris that we saw back in 2020, I think he’s facing an uphill battle to fantasy relevance in New England, and I would begrudgingly cut him from my dynasty roster if the opportunity arose to add a young player getting legitimate camp hype.

I anticipate Isaiah Spiller once again losing out to Joshua Kelley for the Chargers’ RB2 role, but the upside for whoever ends up in that spot in a hypothetical world in which Austin Ekeler misses any significant amount of time is enough to hold Spiller until we know for sure that he’s not the primary breather back. I don’t think he’s very good -- he averaged just 2.28 yards per carry on 18 attempts after entering the league with one of the least impressive efficiency profiles in his class -- but two major aspects of Spiller’s prospect profile were his youth and his pass-catching chops. The former makes him a candidate for substantial improvement early on in his NFL career and the latter makes him a candidate for three-down work if he were to ever get a chance at increased playing time, so we can’t write him off completely just yet.

The last three guys in this group can all be lumped together as players who need to hold off newly drafted competition in order to guarantee themselves gameday roles as NFL sophomores, with the first of them being Snoop Conner.

Conner wasn’t great as a rookie, posting numbers below the 20th percentile in each of YPC+, BAE Rating, RSR, and RYOE, but the degree of difficulty on his carries was ridiculously high: he saw more men in the box on average -- 8.17 -- than any other runner with at least ten carries in a season in the last two years. He also converted both of his short-yardage opportunities, one for a three-yard first down on second-and-one and the other for a touchdown on first-and-goal from the three-yard line. Tank Bigsby was drafted presumably to supplement Travis Etienne’s shortcomings at the goalline and on third downs, but it’s not impossible that Conner could beat him out for the short-yardage role in training camp and preseason. Still, it’s probably more likely that Jacksonville opts to give the more highly drafted rookie those snaps, in which case Conner is a redundant asset with a good chance to see the chopping block before regular season rosters are finalized.

Kyren Williams profiles as the most archetypical receiving back on the Los Angeles Rams roster, and he wasn’t terrible as a rookie (at least by the standards of this group of 14 backs who generally weren’t very good as first-year pros), as he produced nearly four yards per carry and posted BAE Rating, RSR, and RYOE marks each above the 30th percentile. Still, the Sean McVay offense has not been one to target running backs very heavily, so the utility for a satellite back like Williams is limited unless he can establish himself as the primary breather back behind Cam Akers. His rookie numbers combine with his collegiate efficiency profile to make that a longshot, especially with one of the best pure runners in this rookie class in Zach Evans now a part of this backfield. I don’t think Williams has much upside even if he were to win the RB2 job, so I’d be willing to cut him in favor of higher-ceiling lottery tickets.

The last guy in this category is Ty Chandler, who is also a receiving back in a McVay-tree offense that doesn’t throw the ball to running backs much. His upside is limited because of that (in addition to the fact that his collegiate rushing profile was not very impressive), but unlike Williams, Chandler is explosive and is currently on a much more ascendable depth chart given the JAGhood of Alexander Mattison and the uncertainty surrounding the direction Minnesota will go with their RB2 spot. I think rookie seventh-rounder DeWayne McBride is the best bet to be the primary breather-back behind Mattison, but it’s worth holding onto Chandler until we get more clarity on that front.

The most impressive player in this group in terms of instant impact as a rookie is easily Pierre Strong, who had runs of 44, 19, and 14 yards on just 10 carries that helped him to a ridiculous 22.7% RSR and a BAE Rating in the 100th percentile. I wasn’t a huge fan of Strong’s coming out of college, but explosiveness covers up a lot of sins and he’ll now get a shot to assert himself as the clear RB2 on a relatively wide open depth chart. I’d probably be holding Strong through the entirety of the 2023 season based on how he took advantage of his opportunity as a rookie, even if the Patriots end up adding a veteran in free agency.

Zamir White managed over four yards per carry as a rookie but contributed very little in total as Josh Jacobs operated as one of the few clear bellcow runners in the league, but with Jacobs’ current holdout, White will get an opportunity to run with the ones potentially through both training camp and preseason. There’s still not much incentive for the Raiders to not run Jacobs into the ground this season, but I’d be shocked if Las Vegas’ RB2 didn’t have more than the 17 carries that White and Brandon Bolden each managed in 2022. There also exists the possibility that Jacobs misses time this year, as the effects of a massive workload take their toll in combination with the impact of jumping right into game speed after sitting out team activities in August, at which point White would likely receive starter-level touches. That handcuff upside means you just can’t cut him.

Another obvious hold is Keaontay Ingram, who was very bad on limited work as a rookie, as he averaged 2.22 yards per carry and produced an RSR of -27.0%. Still, I’m willing to give Ingram a mulligan considering that I was pretty bought into his talent as a prospect, and with his strongest competition for the RB2 spot behind James Conner being a 28-year old Corey Clement who hasn’t posted a BAE Rating above the 100% mark since 2017, I imagine he’ll be able to secure the breather-back role that would also allow him to start the three or four games that Conner misses every season. Ingram is also one of the few guys in this group who had a legitimate three-down profile coming out of college, and his upside is much higher than for most two-down pounders or pure satellite backs as a result.

You also just can’t cut Jerome Ford, whose role this season will be somewhere on the only-touch-the-ball-when-Nick-Chubb-is-tired-or-operate-as-a-poor-man’s-Kareem-Hunt spectrum. He also was bad as a rookie, averaging just 1.50 yards per carry on eight rushing attempts while earning zero targets in the passing game, but he has explosive athleticism, was a big-play producer and high-efficiency tackle-breaker in college, and came into the league with sneaky signs of pass-catching utility from his time as the lead back at Cincinnati. If he’s going to be anything in the NFL, we’ll know it after this season.

Last but not least is Tyler Badie, who scored a go-ahead 24-yard touchdown on the first (and only) reception of his career in Denver’s season finale against the Chargers last January, and with Javonte Williams’ uncertain availability combined with Sean Payton’s history of utilizing multiple running backs -- especially in the passing game -- the Missouri product has some sneaky maybe-he’ll-be-the-RB2-behind-Samaje-Perine appeal. The only guys he has to beat out for that opportunity are Tony Jones and Jaleel McLaughlin, a certified JAG and a UDFA (who happens to be one of the most accomplished college runners of all time), so it’s not impossible that Badie puts together a double-digit fantasy-point outing here and there this season. He didn’t run the ball a single time as a rookie after entering the league with an underwhelming rushing profile, but I’d at least be holding until I get confirmation that someone other than Badie is the Broncos’ RB3.