5 Running Backs to Target (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

Let’s dive into players Andrew Erickson likes more or less than the expert consensus rankings.

Players to Target

Running Backs

Andrew Erickson’s Rank	Player	ECR	Diff.
22	Kaleb Johnson PIT – RB	28	6
25	Travis Etienne Jr. JAC – RB	31	6
29	Jordan Mason MIN – RB	39	10
31	J.K. Dobbins DEN – RB	42	11
35	Rachaad White TB – RB	40	5

Travis 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 we love targeting ambiguous backfields for upside. And 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).

The Minnesota Vikings traded for Jordan Mason this offseason, and he is one Aaron Jones injury away from a full workload. The Vikings didn’t draft any backs in this year’s draft, and Ty Chandler fell out of favor on the depth chart last season. This is going to be a two-headed monster in Minnesota behind a revamped interior offensive line that has done nothing but upgrade with the acquisitions of Ryan Kelly, Will Fries, and Donovan Jackson. In addition to finishing fourth in yards over expected per attempt and seventh in rushing yards after contact last season, Mason ranked second in total rushing yards (667) before his injury in Week 8. I fully expect Mason to take on a larger role near the goal line, given that Jones struggled immensely in this area in 2024 (-14.4 EPA generated in goal-to-goal situations last season).