play0:33Browns’ offensive woes continue in Week 5 lossDaniel Oyefusi breaks down the Browns’ offensive struggles in Week 5 loss.
play1:05How confident should fantasy managers be starting Jacory Croskey-Merritt?Field Yates breaks down rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt’s breakout game with the Commanders and his potential in fantasy.
RC: Jeanty might not have been the right pick for Raiders (1:10)Ryan Clark says the Raiders need to get Ashton Jeanty more touches to see his full potential in Week 3. (1:10)
Browns’ offensive woes continue in Week 5 lossDaniel Oyefusi breaks down the Browns’ offensive struggles in Week 5 loss.
How confident should fantasy managers be starting Jacory Croskey-Merritt?Field Yates breaks down rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt’s breakout game with the Commanders and his potential in fantasy.
Field Yates breaks down rookie Jacory Croskey-Merritt’s breakout game with the Commanders and his potential in fantasy.
Drafted: Round 1, No. 6 Stats: 82 carries, 349 yards (4.3 per attempt), two rushing TDs EPA per rush: minus-0.18 (26th of 34 backs with 40-plus carries) Success rate: 41.5% (20th of 34)
Every team can have a bad rep. But Jeanty has a league-high 26 carries for no gain or a loss, four more than any other player. And overwhelmingly, those failures are on the players around him.
Chip Kelly dialed up a gap scheme run with right tackle DJ Glaze pulling across the formation to block a defensive tackle, but with eight against seven and no penetration to the second level, Kevin Byard III was left totally unblocked to make an easy tackle for no gain. Vegas’ ensuing 54-yard field goal was blocked, and the Bears came away with the victory. Again: This was the best game of the season for the Vegas run game, as Jeanty went for 138 yards.
There’s a confluence of problems for the Raiders running the ball. They make too many mental mistakes. Their offensive line isn’t very good, so while there are occasional bright spots, they lose too many one-on-one blocks, preventing Jeanty from hitting a hole at the speed he wants and often asking him to make somebody miss before he has even accelerated. The execution is often sloppy; for instance, there’s no excuse for Jack Bech running directly into Jeanty on another split-flow snap.
For a guy they drafted in the top 10, the Raiders also seem curiously disinterested in using Jeanty as a receiver. Sunday was the first time Jeanty topped 20 receiving yards in a game, and over the first month of the season, Kelly was leaning on Dylan Laube and Zamir White in passing situations and during the two-minute drill. Jeanty’s not Christian McCaffrey, but he’s an explosive playmaker and the team’s highest draft pick. It’s an odd time to take him off the field.
Drafted: Round 2, No. 36 Stats: 72 carries, 347 yards (4.8 per attempt), two rushing TDs EPA per rush: 0.05 (fifth of 34) Success rate: 38.9% (23rd of 34)
Judkins has very good vision for creating extra yardage on successful plays. When he does make it through clean to the second level, you can see him quickly recognize the leverage and potential angles of defenders and run away to the open field. That seems simple, but it isn’t always guaranteed; some runners are too indecisive and don’t bounce runs quickly, while others just don’t have vision and run into or near defenders along their existing path.
There’s one play from Judkins this season that invokes a very promising comparison for Browns fans. Watch the end zone view of Judkins’ 32-yard run against the Vikings last week and you’ll see him set up Vikings safety Theo Jackson (No. 26) for a potential collision before using his quickness and the presence of a blocked defender to the outside to cut Jackson out of the play, escaping past the safety without ever needing to break a tackle attempt.
He’s not the only one who does it, but that’s a move I saw Barkley excel with last season in Philly. Here’s an example from the Eagles’ Week 17 win over the Cowboys, with Barkley setting up Andrew Booth and taking advantage of Jourdan Lewis peeking inside on a block to cut outside for extra yardage.
Judkins has also been able to move the chains. His 20 first downs as a runner lead all rookie backs, and he has generated five first downs over expectation (FDOE), which are second in the NFL behind Javonte Williams (Next Gen Stats). Judkins already has nine carries on third or fourth down with 1 yard to go, and he has picked up six of those attempts.
To get better, Judkins needs to be a more consistent runner on first-and-10, where he has too many 1- or 2-yard runs that take the offense off schedule. So far, I like him better on zone concepts, where he can make his one cut and accelerate, than I do on gap runs, where Judkins can end up dancing a little too much at the line of scrimmage. He had a rough time finding those lanes in the Week 4 loss to the Lions, his least efficient start of the season so far.
Daniel Oyefusi breaks down the Browns’ offensive struggles in Week 5 loss.
Drafted: Round 1, No. 22 Stats: 66 carries, 314 yards (4.8 per attempt), two rushing TDs EPA per rush: 0.05 (seventh of 34) Success rate: 43.9% (15th of 34)
Drafted: Round 7, No. 245 Stats: 43 carries, 283 yards (6.6 per attempt), four rushing TDs EPA per rush: 0.18 (first of 34) Success rate: 60.5% (first of 34)
Everybody would love to gain 30-plus yards on their runs and keep hitting explosives game after game, but unless you’re Barkley in 2024, that’s not going to happen. There’s real value in being a guy who can consistently gain steady chunks of yardage, either picking up first downs or opening up the entire playbook on second- or third-and-short.
There’s not the same sort of highlight-reel speed or tackle-breaking ability from other players in this class, but Croskey-Merritt isn’t some one-speed zone runner, either. Watch his longest run against the Chargers last week and you see “Bill” shrug off a tackle around the neck from star safety Derwin James Jr., shrug off another tackle attempt, change fields and then run all the way to the opposite sideline for a big gain.
How confident should fantasy managers be starting Jacory Croskey-Merritt?
Drafted: Round 4, No. 105 Stats: 63 carries, 240 yards (3.8 per attempt), two rushing TDs EPA per rush: minus-0.28 (33rd of 34) Success rate: 41.3% (21st of 34)
College football fans fell in love with Skattebo in 2024, when the 5-foot-9 back seemed to will Arizona State into the College Football Playoff with his physicality. He led the nation in carries (293) and rushing yards (1,711), scoring 24 times for a Sun Devils team that surprised everyone by winning 11 games.
When Skattebo does get the second level with some burst, he looks fine. I’d also say it has been a little too easy for defensive linemen to slow down or tackle him with outstretched arms or ankle tackles near the line of scrimmage. Those are tackles that guys like Hampton have been able to run through or backs like Croskey-Merritt have been able to run away from so far this season.
It’s still early in Skattebo’s tenure, and I want to see how he looks over an extended period of time with Dart under center, especially given the early impact Dart has had as a runner and what that can do to create lanes for running backs. I’m not sure he’s a three-down starter in the NFL based on what I’ve seen so far, but there’s still plenty of time to see more.
So, among the backs who aren’t getting a lot of work so far this season, who could emerge as an impact contributor down the line? Let’s quickly run through a few:
Through five weeks, those backs have been off to a wildly impressive start. In my quarter-season awards column last week, I mentioned that rookie running backs combined to rack up 737 rushing yards in Week 4, the most by any set of rookie backs in any week of September football since the 1970 merger. Week 3 ranked sixth by that same measure, and Week 5 wasn’t far behind. It’s rare to see so many rookie backs impacting games this early in the season. Overall, rookie runners have racked up 2,542 rushing yards through Week 5, good for the 10th most of any class since the merger.
Teams leaned more into the run in the past, of course, and so a more realistic measure of their impact might be the percentage of RB rush yards from rookies as opposed to veterans. Well, rookies have 18.1% of running back yardage so far, the fourth-highest rate for any rookie class through five weeks since the merger. (And two of the three years ahead of them are anomalies: The 1987 season was hit by a September strike — meaning many of the “rookie” backs who stepped in and racked up yardage were short-term replacement players — and the 1993 season was the only one in NFL history with two bye weeks, leading to a stretch where some of the league’s leading veteran rushers had early weeks off. Emmitt Smith, who had won the rushing crown the year before, also held out for the first two games of the year.)
The only rookie class that got off to a hotter start than this year’s bunch was the class of 2017, which delivered a group of superstar backs to the league. It’s probably no surprise that eighth pick Christian McCaffrey emerged as a franchise player, but there were significant difference-makers coming off the board all throughout that draft. Dalvin Cook and Joe Mixon were second-rounders. Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt and James Conner were off the board in Round 3. Aaron Jones Sr. fell to the Packers in the fifth round. The Chargers even found Austin Ekeler after the proceedings as an undrafted free agent. And that list doesn’t include Leonard Fournette, Chris Carson, Marlon Mack and Jamaal Williams, each of whom managed 1,000-yard seasons during their time in the league.
It’s not always good to be the first back off the board. In that fateful 2017 class, the first RB selected was Fournette, who went to the Jaguars with the fourth-overall pick. He struggled during his three seasons in Jacksonville before getting cut and catching on with Tampa Bay, where he became a more efficient back in a much more robust offensive infrastructure. Playing with Tom Brady, Mike Evans and Tristan Wirfs is a lot easier than suiting up with Blake Bortles, Keelan Cole Sr. and Cam Robinson.