Fantasy Football: How Do Running Backs Perform After Serious Injuries?

• Don’t panic about seasonal injuries: In dynasty formats, your rostered running back after a season-ending injury has a decent chance of producing well the following year.

• Some players are never the same: While many players are able to return to strong numbers, Nick Chubb is an example of a player who may not be able to serve as a fantasy football asset again after a serious injury.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Running back is perhaps the most volatile position in the NFL and therefore in fantasy football. Adding to this volatility is the specter of brutal, season-ending injuries that could rock any team and any fantasy roster.

The 2025 injury bug started way back in Week 2 when the Washington Commanders lost Austin Ekeler to an Achilles injury. Arizona Cardinals lead back James Conner suffered a foot injury in Week 3 that ruled him out for the remainder of the campaign, and New York Giants bruiser Cam Skattebo suffered a grim lower leg injury in Week 8.

While Skattebo will likely inherit a significant workload upon his return to the field, the ages of both Ekeler and Conner, intertwined with their injuries, mean their workloads could decrease, making them unstable fantasy assets.

Like the previous piece on quarterbacks, we look at 10 running backs from the past decade: Le’Veon Bell (injured in 2015), Marshawn Lynch (retired, counting because he missed a year of action), Dalvin Cook (2017, rookie season), Saquon Barkley (injured in 2020), Christian McCaffrey (2024 season), Devonta Freeman (2018), JK Dobbins (missed 2021), Raheem Mostert (2021), Breece Hall (2022, rookie season) and Nick Chubb (2023).

Jamaal Charles and Arian Foster are honorable mentions. The pair suffered serious knee injuries during the 2015 season and never fully recovered. Charles has only played 19 games in his career and Foster has only played two. That in itself is a testament to how quickly a running back’s career can be derailed.

Here’s how the above running backs were doing before their injury (or Lynch’s retirement; we’re using his 2015 numbers). We will also list their fantasy football position rankings based on the week of their injury and not at the end of the year, because that would not be a fair reflection of their production:

When we average the 10 players, this comes out to a truly grim 72 attempts for 359 yards, 4.71 yards per carry and just over two rushing scores.

That average drops further if Dobbins and Mostert are removed from the dataset, because we use the production from their previous season. With that rating it comes to 61 rushing attempts for 283 yards and one score at 4.51 yards per carry.

Of course, that’s not the interesting part, as the numbers for all of the above are expected to be low as we track the seasons in which they were injured.

The interesting bit is below. Here are the numbers for the same 10 players the year after that injury (in Lynch’s case, a year out of the league due to retirement):

If we average these numbers, we get a much healthier look of 186 attempts for 796 yards and four touchdowns at 4.34 yards per carry. All of that translates into 103.3 fantasy points just from rushing production in standard scoring PPR formats (RB47 in 2025).

That receiving value matters. Just looking at rushing production, McCaffrey would have finished as the RB25 had he not caught a single ball this season. But he did. In fact, he caught 102 for 924 yards and seven touchdowns. Fun fact: McCaffrey’s receiving production alone yielded 236.4 fantasy points, which would have been good for the RB14.

The most notable data point from the average is yards per carry, which saw a slight decline from 4.71 to 4.34. However, volume has skyrocketed, so we can forgive the drop.

But what about the explosiveness of a back? Those missed tackles, breakaway runs and yards after contact? These are much better indicators of how a back is performing than their simple yards per carry numbers and rushing totals.

Le’Veon Bell

Marshawn Lynch

Dalvin Cook

Devonta Vrijman

Saquon Barkley

J. K. Dobbins

Raheem Mostert

Breece Hall

Nick Chubb

Christian McCaffrey

Mostert’s efficiency made the biggest jump, with his yards after contact per attempt increasing a full yard and his PFF Elusive Rating increasing by a whopping 56.0 points.

It helped that the former San Francisco 49er went to the Miami Dolphins when former head coach Mike McDaniel shined with his run scheme (not that Mostert’s other head coach, Kyle Shanahan, was any slouch).

However, some players are never the same after an injury. Chubb’s yards after contact per attempt dropped by 1.36 yards, and he had fewer explosive runs in eight games in 2024 (five) than he did in two games in 2023 (six) with 74 additional carries in the 2024 season. His PFF Elusive Rating also dropped by 23.2 points, the biggest drop among the 10 names mentioned.

For the most part, though, the 10 backs listed averaged more yards after contact per attempt (six did so), and some returned even more elusive than the previous season (four managed this mark).

If you’re the fantasy owner of a running back who suffered a serious injury, now might not be the time to panic.

That is, unless you own James Conner or Austin Ekeler, or maybe even Quinshon Judkins, who suffered a gruesome leg injury from which he is expected to make a full recovery, but only time will tell how he looks on the field.

It can be difficult to have confidence in a running back who returns from a season-ending injury and goes on to put up respectable numbers, but that is often the case.

In dynasties you have to resist the urge to sell at a bargain price, and if you are looking for a good price and an owner is concerned that he is now sitting on a declining asset, see if he will opt for a lower priced asset.

In restatement formats, take advantage of the value of the ADP fallers who get injured. They could even start the season on injured reserve, but if they can be back and work their way into the rotation by Thanksgiving, you could have a potential weekly or league winner down the road.