2026 RB Fantasy Football ADP: Analyzing Historical Trends

As part of our 2026 Fantasy Football Draft Kit, let's take a look at running back ADP using a historical lens to identify any trends that can help in 2026 fantasy football drafts.

Every year, we have nearly eight full months to prepare for the draft, but just how good are we at setting the market for the season?

That is the goal we are out to hash out to carve out some signals.

Be sure to check out my running back rankings and tiers for more player-specific analysis:

• 2026 Running Back Rankings
• 2026 Running Back Tiers

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Running Back Fantasy Football ADP: Historical Data

We have continued to get better at setting the market for running backs, with the positional ADP having more than double the relationship to fantasy output per game than at quarterback.

Top-48 RB in ADP & Correlation to PPR Points per Game Since 2010

Last season was the best that gamers have done in terms of setting the future market at the running back position.

Outside of 2023 (a heat check for us as a reminder that there is no skeleton key), gamers have been increasingly better at selecting running backs.

Out of the top seven seasons in the relationship between ADP and scoring since 2010, five of those have come since 2020.

Running Back Tiers & Rate of Players Matching/Exceeding Draft Position & High-Scoring Rates

Here is where things get interesting.

The majority of the success at the position was front-loaded.

The way to read the table above is that the rates next to 2025 are the full hit rates for each running back subset since 2010.

And then we are comparing that to what happened last year.

So, since 2010, 36.5% of all RB1 picks (RB1-RB12) have matched and bested their average draft position within the position.

If a back was the RB7 and finished as the RB5, he was a hit.

Last year, that rate was 50%.

Since 2010, 75% of the RB1 picks have delivered at least a top-24 scoring finish.

Last year, that was 11 of the 12 picks, with Bucky Irving as the one failed pick in that price range.

Since 2010, 52.6% of all RB1 picks have delivered a top-12 scoring season.

In 2025, that rate was 75%.

And a few guys such as Josh Jacobs and Saquon Barkley just missed.

Of the top 12 picks at the position last season, all but Irving were the RB14 or higher in seasonal scoring.

Since 2010, 29.7% of all RB1 picks have produced a top-six scoring season.

In 2025, that rate was 41.7%.

The top three scorers last year were Christian McCaffrey (RB4 in ADP), Bijan Robinson (RB1), and Jahmyr Gibbs (RB3).

Of the top-nine scorers at the position last year, all were selected within the top-13 picks at the position.

You have to get to RB10 in Travis Etienne (RB30 in ADP) to find the first supreme value hit.

If you are new here, I always refer to the running back position as “pay to play.”

This table is the primary reason for that.

Since 2010, 55.8% of all RB1 scoring seasons have come from running backs being selected as top 12 backs in drafts.

65.6% of all top six scorers over that period have been picked as top 12 backs.

A staggering 79.2% of all top three scorers in a season have been RB1 selections.

Looking to land the RB1 overall in a season?

Well, 13 of the past 16 RB1 scorers were selected as top 12 picks at the position.

If you combine this data with the per-game graph at the top of the article, it further reinforces where the backs who have averaged 20-plus points per game come from in terms of ADP.

Of the 52 backs who have averaged 20-plus points per game over this sample, 45 of them were RB1 selections.

All of this is the largest reason that we have seen such a shift to gamers attempting to corral their top two backs as early as possible this offseason.

The best backs last season not only largely delivered on production but did so by running extremely fortunate on the injury front.

Games Played & Missed from Top 12 RB Picks Since 2010

The top 12 picks last year at running back combined to miss 11 total games.

Out of the top 12 picks last year, only Irving (10 games played) missed significant time.

The other 11 guys all played in 15 or more games, while eight of them played in all 17 games.

That is the fewest number of collective missed games and the most complete seasons with zero games missed that gamers have gotten out of RB1 selections since 2010.

I said that I would get to this in the wide receiver trends article.

Because of the current relationship between offensive and defensive meta approaches, I do not believe that wide receivers will bounce back because they are scoring tons of points again like they were during the 11-personnel boom in the early 2010s.

But early running backs can still fail and allow the top of the wide receiver position to creep back in based solely on not running as hot as they did on the injury front last season.

If you scope the table above, you can see that the running back dead zone was, in fact, dead again last year.

Of the RB2 picks (RB13-RB24) last year, only James Cook, D’Andre Swift, and RJ Harvey matched or beat their ADP in terms of seasonal scoring, which is well below the base rate.

Cook was the only RB1 scorer selected in that range last year, which was below the base rate.

There were colossal misses again in this range.

Chuba Hubbard, Alvin Kamara, Isiah Pacheco, James Conner, and Omarion Hampton all were 18 spots or worse within the running back position as failed picks.

Based on the opening two sections here, a top-down bet on natural regression would be that the RB1 bucket this season takes a step back while the RB2 group has some better fortune.

Running backs selected as RB2 options plummet in their rate of delivering top-12, top-six, and top-three scoring seasons.

We still have not seen a player with RB2 ADP average 20-plus PPR points per game in this sample since 2010.

RB2 output (per ADP) can be better than it was in 2025, but gamers should still be wary of the dead zone in relation to raw upside at the position.

This is where the current landscape for 2026 can still get gamers in trouble.

As of now, we are seeing the RB24 going on average at pick 55 in PPR formats.

That would be the highest ADP for RB24 since 2020.

We had two RB1 hits in the RB3 range in Travis Etienne and Javonte Williams.

But after that, we did not even get a top-24 scorer beyond the RB3 range in ADP last year.

The largest positional values for late-round picks were Kyle Monangai (RB70 in ADP), Rico Dowdle (RB57), Woody Marks (RB66), and Blake Corum (RB62).

Running Back Dead Zone

If you are selecting players from the RB2 dead zone, you want to target younger options and players who have a pipeline to catching the football.

61% of the backs from the dead zone who matched or exceeded ADP since 2010 have been on their rookie contract.

47.5% have been in Years 1, 2, or 3 in the league.

In that same sample, there have been 38 picks from the dead zone that have finished with RB1 seasons.

25 of those players were on their rookie contracts while 21 of them (55.2%) were in Years 1, 2, or 3 of their careers.

This summer, Jeremiyah Love, Cam Skattebo, Bucky Irving, Quinshon Judkins, and TreVeyon Henderson fit that bill.

If you are selecting a veteran, that player needs access to receptions, an area that is drying up for running backs.

22 of those 38 backs caught at least 3.0 more passes per game, while just six of them caught fewer than 2.0 passes per game.

If we are paring down that initial list with overlap as pass catchers, Love, Skattebo, and Henderson are the best bets.

If looking at veteran backs currently going in the RB2/dead-zone range, Breece Hall and D’Andre Swift are the guys with a viable pass-catching resume to this point.

The backs who closest resemble historic dead zone traps are Travis Etienne, Javonte Williams, and David Montgomery.

Avoid Cheap, Older RB1 Options

We mentioned someone such as Isiah Pacheco being a tough pick last season, and he ended up as a classic “dead-zone” selection.

That song that gamers sing to themselves about is the volume potential of a player who has yet to be productive.

We all have some red on our ledgers in that department.

Since 2010, only 37.7% of the running backs that were the first running backs selected from their team and outside of the RB1 range in ADP met their expected draft cost.

If you are drafting someone under this umbrella, you also want to make sure they are discounted because they are unproven.

Since 2010, 61.2% of all hits from the discounted RB1 criteria have been on their rookie contract.

35.5% have been in their first or second season in the league.

Jeremiyah Love, Cam Skattebo, Bucky Irving, Quinshon Judkins, and TreVeyon Henderson all once again fit into this criteria, while Bhayshul Tuten, Jadarian Price, and RJ Harvey join them.

That makes it tougher to bet on landing a big hit from team RB1 picks (per ADP) going later in Tony Pollard, Jaylen Warren, Chuba Hubbard, Rachaad White, and Aaron Jones, but we are coming off a 2025 season that featured Travis Etienne and Javonte Williams as the best picks outside of the top-24.

Identify Better RB2 Options

The past three seasons have provided some late-round gems in Raheem Mostert, Kyren Williams, and Bucky Irving.

This section is going to help guide you in making better bench picks so that you can land those types of players.

This is often where gamers get handcuffing the position wrong.

When drafting reserve running backs, you should not be looking for running backs specifically attached to front-end options, but ones that are attached to that fragile group of discounted RB1 options that we highlighted earlier.

Since 2010, there have been 98 running backs selected as the second or later running back on their roster to end the season as a top-24 scorer.

Last year, we had Jaylen Warren, Rico Dowdle, and Zach Charbonnet.

75 of those running backs (76.5%) were attached to RB1 players on their roster who were being selected outside of the top 12 of the position.

Remember from the open, we have been at our best at selecting RB1 options.

They not only fail at a lower rate than the other tiers, but they are also a rare archetype.

When these players typically end up missing time, one player does not fill their void in the offense because they are too talented to replace with a lone backup completely.

This is something gamers often get wrong when handcuffing.

A micro-edge is that 43 of those players (43.9%) were attached to RB1 picks coming specifically from the “dead zone.”

Last year, Charbonnet and Dowdle fit that criteria.

Since 2010, there have been 32 players selected as the second or later running back on their roster to finish as RB1 scorers.

25 of them were attached to RB1 options being selected outside of the top 12, with 15 of them attached to backs specifically in the “dead zone.”

When grabbing bench backs and throwing darts at the position, use the “dead zone” and those discounted RB1 picks to your advantage by taking backs attached to those players.

Especially the ones who are not younger backs or pass catchers.

Gamers will be pushing up players such as Isiah Pacheco, Brian Robinson, and Tank Bigsby as bench targets attached to early-pick running backs, but exploiting the dead zone and ambiguous backfields (with discounted RB1 picks) are your best bets.

Putting everything together to this point, you should also consider Jaydon Blue, Dylan Sampson, Woody Marks, Rico Dowdle, Jonathon Brooks, Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Jordan Mason, Tyjae Spears, and (what feels weird to say) Alvin Kamara as darts that fit what we are looking for when selecting bench running backs.

What to Know:

• We have been at our strongest setting the running back market in recent seasons. Out of the top seven seasons in the relationship between ADP and scoring, five of those have come since 2020.
• 2025 was the highest-correlated season between ADP and per-game scoring since 2010.
• That was driven by extreme hit rates from the RB1 portion of the position.
• RB1 picks had their healthiest season in the sample.
• While expecting regression in injury fortune at the top, running back remains a “pay to play” position. Your best odds at finding a front-end scorer and player who provides weekly leverage most often come with RB1 pricing.
• RB1 backs have carried the highest floors and ceilings, but things immediately become sketchy afterward.
• The RB2 dead zone was prevalent again in 2025.
• Avoid spending a lot of time in the RB2 range of drafts unless that player is a young pass catcher.
• When selecting a team RB1 who is discounted, also make sure that the player is a young pass catcher.
• When selecting team RB2 and bench options, target the dead-zone backs and discounted team RB1 options.