With more NFL teams using committee backfields every year, consistent running back fantasy football production is a very rare commodity. Goal-line backs will score two touchdowns one week and finish with 4.8 points the next. Third-down backs rack up targets in trailing game scripts, then turn up on milk cartons when their teams are ahead.
Can fantasy managers trust any running backs to provide consistent scoring in this post-workhorse world? That’s what we’re here to find out. This article will look back at 2024’s data to find the most consistent fantasy football running backs. Let’s get right into it.
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Fantasy Football Consistency: Running Backs
Methodology
Compared to our previous article on the most consistent fantasy quarterbacks, running backs immediately present a new conundrum. Since quarterbacks essentially always either play all or none of their team’s snaps, I filtered my sample for each signal-caller to only games where they played at least 70% of team snaps. That won’t work here, as the whole issue with running back consistency is that plenty of fantasy-relevant backs play only part-time roles.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to simply do away with any minimum snap rate for these calculations. This has the downside of including games in which backs exited very early due to injury, which does feel harsh. But those games impact a player’s consistency, too, so I don’t feel too bad about including them. Plus, simply including every game gives us the largest sample to work with.
With that out of the way, I want to calculate the variance for each running back who had at least 10 qualifying games in 2024. Variance isn’t a perfect metric, but it’s a solid single-number representation of how consistent each back’s scoring was (a lower variance means more consistency).
Of course, consistency on its own isn’t valuable — we want consistent points. With that in mind, I’ve added a few extra columns to the upcoming table. The first is simple: Good old-fashioned half-PPR points per game.
For the remaining three columns, I wanted to see how often each back provided a truly elite score, an RB1-level score and an RB2-level score. To set thresholds for each category, I calculated the average score of the player who finished as the RB6, the RB12 and the RB24 in every given week of the regular season.
That provided thresholds of 20.6, 16.1 and 10.2 half-PPR points. Then, I found the rate at which every back cleared each of those thresholds. This shows how often each back provided an elite week, an RB1-level week and an RB2-level week.
If you’re not following, don’t worry, this should get clearer once we look at the table. Without further ado, here it is:
| Rank | Player | Games Played | Variance | PPG (Rank) | Elite Game Rate | RB1 Game Rate | RB2 Game Rate |
| 1 | Travis Etienne Jr. | 15 | 11.5 | 7.4 (38) | 0% | 0% | 27% |
| 2 | Jaylen Warren | 15 | 17.4 | 7 (40) | 0% | 0% | 20% |
| 3 | Alexander Mattison | 14 | 19.9 | 8.5 (33) | 0% | 0% | 36% |
| 4 | Austin Ekeler | 12 | 22.8 | 9.6 (30) | 0% | 8% | 42% |
| 5 | David Montgomery | 14 | 23.5 | 14.6 (13) | 7% | 29% | 86% |
| 6 | Najee Harris | 17 | 25.1 | 11 (25) | 6% | 18% | 53% |
| 7 | Aaron Jones Sr. | 17 | 27.9 | 12.7 (20) | 6% | 29% | 65% |
| 8 | Rico Dowdle | 16 | 28.0 | 11.1 (23) | 0% | 19% | 44% |
| 9 | Tony Pollard | 16 | 28.1 | 11.3 (22) | 0% | 31% | 50% |
| 10 | Justice Hill | 15 | 29.9 | 7.1 (39) | 0% | 7% | 27% |
| 11 | Brian Robinson Jr. | 14 | 32.4 | 10.7 (27) | 0% | 21% | 64% |
| 12 | Kyren Williams | 16 | 34.0 | 15.9 (8) | 13% | 44% | 81% |
| 13 | Kareem Hunt | 13 | 36.1 | 11.1 (23) | 8% | 23% | 54% |
| 14 | J.K. Dobbins | 13 | 37.2 | 13.5 (17) | 15% | 38% | 54% |
| 15 | Javonte Williams | 17 | 38.1 | 7.8 (36) | 6% | 12% | 18% |
| 16 | Jerome Ford | 14 | 39.3 | 8.3 (34) | 7% | 14% | 29% |
| 17 | D’Andre Swift | 17 | 39.8 | 11.4 (21) | 6% | 24% | 41% |
| 18 | Josh Jacobs | 17 | 41.2 | 16.2 (7) | 24% | 47% | 88% |
| 19 | Tyrone Tracy Jr. | 17 | 43.5 | 9.6 (30) | 6% | 18% | 41% |
| 20 | Bijan Robinson | 17 | 44.3 | 18.3 (4) | 41% | 59% | 82% |
| 21 | Chase Brown | 16 | 48.0 | 14.3 (16) | 25% | 44% | 75% |
| 22 | Rachaad White | 16 | 48.6 | 10.9 (26) | 13% | 13% | 50% |
| 23 | Breece Hall | 16 | 50.1 | 13.3 (18) | 19% | 38% | 63% |
| 24 | Bucky Irving | 17 | 50.8 | 13 (19) | 18% | 35% | 65% |
| 25 | Rhamondre Stevenson | 15 | 52.1 | 10.6 (28) | 7% | 27% | 53% |
| 26 | Tyjae Spears | 12 | 55.4 | 8.2 (35) | 8% | 17% | 33% |
| 27 | Kenneth Walker III | 11 | 56.4 | 14.4 (14) | 18% | 36% | 73% |
| 28 | James Conner | 16 | 57.8 | 14.4 (14) | 13% | 50% | 69% |
| 29 | Tank Bigsby | 16 | 58.5 | 7.8 (36) | 13% | 13% | 25% |
| 30 | Jordan Mason | 12 | 59.9 | 9.1 (32) | 17% | 25% | 25% |
| 31 | James Cook | 16 | 60.6 | 15.7 (10) | 25% | 50% | 69% |
| 32 | Derrick Henry | 17 | 64.0 | 19.2 (3) | 41% | 59% | 94% |
| 33 | Jahmyr Gibbs | 17 | 69.7 | 19.8 (2) | 35% | 65% | 94% |
| 34 | Chuba Hubbard | 15 | 70.3 | 14.7 (12) | 20% | 40% | 67% |
| 35 | De’Von Achane | 17 | 71.1 | 15.3 (11) | 24% | 53% | 65% |
| 36 | Zach Charbonnet | 17 | 76.8 | 9.8 (29) | 12% | 12% | 35% |
| 37 | Alvin Kamara | 14 | 82.1 | 16.5 (6) | 21% | 29% | 86% |
| 38 | Joe Mixon | 14 | 95.9 | 15.9 (8) | 36% | 50% | 57% |
| 39 | Jonathan Taylor | 14 | 96.2 | 16.8 (5) | 29% | 50% | 71% |
| 40 | Saquon Barkley | 16 | 124.1 | 21.2 (1) | 44% | 56% | 81% |
Most Consistent Fantasy Football Running Backs
Immediately, this table shows the flaw with using variance as the only measure of consistency. The names at the top of this list (with the least variance) are uninspiring, while the bottom of the list includes some of the season’s best backs.
Luckily, we’re not using variance as our only measure of consistency. This is where those extra columns come in. We can see that, while they were consistent, backs like Travis Etienne, Jaylen Warren and Alexander Mattison were consistently bad (or at least mediocre). Each of those three backs provided RB2-level production at least 20% of the time, but they combined for exactly zero RB1-level weeks. Austin Ekeler ranks fourth-lowest in variance and did provide an RB1 week, but it came while Brian Robinson Jr. was sidelined by an injury.
The most consistent running back who was a truly reliable fantasy asset was David Montgomery. With just one outing above the 20.6-point threshold in his 14 games, Montgomery has by far the lowest elite game rate of the top 19 backs in points per game. But he provided RB2-level production at an excellent 86% rate, a number that would be at home among the top five backs in points per game. This consistent, solid-but-not-elite production was likely a function of how Montgomery split work in the Lions’ backfield with Jahmyr Gibbs, so it will be interesting to see if he can replicate this result under a new offensive coordinator in 2025.
While no other top-20 scoring backs can touch Montgomery for pure consistency, Josh Jacobs and Kyren Williams both also stand out as backs with impressive floors but fewer elite games than you would expect given their overall productivity. Outside the top 20, Brian Robinson looks like Montgomery-lite. He finished above the RB2 threshold an impressive 64% of the time, by far the most of any non-top-20 back, but provided zero elite spike weeks.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter and Bluesky @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.
