5 Running Backs to Draft (2025 Fantasy Football)

When preparing for your fantasy football drafts, knowing which players to target and others to avoid is important. The amount of information available can be overwhelming, so a great way to condense the data and determine players to draft and others to leave for your leaguemates is to use our expert consensus fantasy football rankings compared to fantasy football average draft position (ADP). In this way, you can identify players the experts are willing to reach for at ADP and others they are not drafting until much later than average. Let’s dive into a few notable fantasy football players below. And you can check out which experts are higher or lower than our expert consensus rankings using our Fantasy Football Rankings Comparison Tools.

Fantasy Football Draft Advice

Players to Target

Running Backs I Like More Than ECR

Andrew Erickson’s Rank	Player	ECR	Diff.
16	Omarion Hampton LAC – RB	20	4
23	Kaleb Johnson PIT – RB	28	5
25	Travis Etienne Jr. JAC – RB	31	6
29	Jordan Mason MIN – RB	39	10
33	J.K. Dobbins DEN – RB	44	11

Travis Etienne (JAC)

Etienne was a borderline disaster in 2024. He carried over his sluggish finish in 2023 losing work to Tank Bigsby playing in a bad offense heralded by a backup quarterback for the majority of the season. He was a flat-out bust after being a star in 2023. Although to be fair, Etienne still had a higher rushing success rate than Bigbsy, who flashed more as a boom-or-bust rusher. Etienne also battled through several different injuries.

But Trevor Lawrence will be back and healthy for 2024, and the Jaguars have hired former Buccaneers OC Liam Coen as their head coach to bring this offense back to expectations.

There will be no allegiance to either Etienne or Bigsby as the team’s starting RB and the new coaching staff could easily deploy a committee in a similar fashion to last season. In his opening presser, Coen stated that the Jaguars had two running backs who they could do many good things with. They also drafted two RBs in this year’s draft (albeit on Day 3).

But in totality, this running game is going to improve dramatically. Coen’s rushing attacks have been prolific at each stop, coming from the Sean McVay-style run game. This guy got Rachaad White over 4 yards per carry. Wizardry.

Even if the 26-year-old doesn’t get back to top 3 RB status, his one-down season hardly warrants such a drastically low ADP in a situation that looks favorable for his outlook in 2025. And so far, early offseason reports suggest he is going to stay in DUVAL county despite all the offseason trade rumors swirling around the Jaguars’ backfield.

He’s done everything the new coaching staff has asked of him, and his connection with starting QB dates back to their time spent at Clemson together. It’s too early to write off Etienne entirely after an injury-riddled 2024 season, with him going outside the top 100 in back-end RB3 territory in early best ball drafts. Bigsby and Tuten still need to prove themselves to this new coaching staff as well, given their ball security issues. I love Tuten as a rookie sleeper (keep reading), but I can acknowledge it’s not his backfield from the jump.

And if ETN gets traded to the Bears, Cowboys or some other RB-needy team, that might also be a WIN for his fantasy value.

We love targeting ambiguous backfields for upside. That is Jacksonville’s backfield. If Etienne wins the starting job, he has easy top-15 upside in this Coen offense. Etienne has an RB3 and RB17 finish on his resume after falling off in 2024 (RB36).