Dynasty Stock Watch: David Montgomery, Chris Rodriguez among new Zero-RB heroes
Rivers McCown takes stock of how free agency and the offseason have changed the fantasy outlooks of a handful of running backs.
With free agency mostly over, it's time to let the takes begin to flow. In 2025, a very defined, usage-based tier of running backs took over the landscape. And of the top 20 non-PPR fantasy scorers, every single back that emerged as a winner was drafted high.
Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey, Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, James Cook, Derrick Henry, and De'Von Achane were essentially all top 30 picks. If you wanted to use PPR scoring and expand our range to "top 30 RB finishers" instead of "top 20," you would add Chase Brown, Kyren Williams, Travis Etienne, and Ashton Jeanty . That's ...
a total of one new back drafted outside of the top 30 — Etienne. The other major success story was, of course, Javonte Williams , who finished 31st in PPR scoring. A lot of people would use that list and tell you that the Zero-RB strategy is dead.
Not me, though. I've played fantasy football for decades and I've written "Lessons Learned" pieces for years. The only lesson to really learn is that entropy comes for us all.
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