How do we approach RBs in 2025?
Running backs scored, draft structures were key, and fantasy is evolving
Undoubtedly, the question I’ve been asked most as the 2024 season has wound down and we’ve started the transition into 2025 thinking is some version of, “What was the deal with the RB scoring?” Often, it takes this form: “Are we going to be drafting RBs high in 2025?”
The first place to start is with an understanding of why RB production was up in 2024. We talked a lot about it throughout the year, but make no mistake, things have changed on a macro level with how the sport is played to benefit RB fantasy production. I’m constantly talking about these types of trends, and my biggest regret with the 2024 season — and my pre-2024 analysis — is missing this. I’ve been ahead of the game with the fantasy impact from these league-level evolutions for the past half decade or so, and it has been very lucrative, but I completely missed this shift in 2024 in a way that didn’t mean I crashed out or anything, but made it a pretty frustrating year for my own results because I had a good year when conditions with rookie performances and the production from breakouts like Bucky Irving and Chase Brown and Brock Bowers I had a ton of exposure to could have made it truly a special one.
But that has also made it a massively reinvigorating year analytically. I’m not going to lie: Coming into 2024, I was starting to get a little bored with fantasy, and I think some of my content last summer showed that, as I was regurgitating concepts a little more, rather than feeling the inspiration for new posts I was excited to work through. That’s not happening after 2024. I enter this offseason with enough deep dive type content I want to explore to probably get me through the entire offseason and I haven’t even begun the offseason research that inspires so much more thought. It really is exciting.
It also means I don’t really know where to start. I typically wrap up each season with my three biggest takeaways from the year, but I started taking notes about ideas that could fit in as those three this year earlier than ever — maybe midseason — and I finish the year with six solid ideas for that piece, and then I have two other larger concepts I want to dig into that I branched off into their own little section of my notes as independent article ideas. The most important thing for me is to just work through all of it, and I haven’t been sure what format it’ll all take, but I started writing today’s piece without a title. That said, I knew I needed to start with the RB discussion.
The “why” isn’t a long discussion, because we’ve been talking about the shift in defensive focus for literally years now, and how that’s impacted everything. But the more subtle thing I missed was the discussion of lighter defenders, and how the overall focus on stopping the pass was going to create big rushing opportunities.
While I’ve mostly just waved at the general concepts as I can understand them — without much deep expertise — I love when the sharp Xs and Os people dig in and their findings overlap with what I’ve been trying to get at. That’s what I ran into this week when I saw The Athletic’s Ted Nguyen diving into these trends in a much more comprehensible way than I can. Among his notes:
Two years ago, I spoke with two members of NFL analytics departments who weren’t authorized to speak publicly, and they predicted that running back value could increase because …
• edge defenders and linebackers have gotten faster but smaller over the years.
• there’s less emphasis on developing run-stopping techniques.
• the increased split-safety looks and light boxes make it harder to pass the ball efficiently and create explosive pass plays.
Those trends have continued two years later:
• From 2016 to 2021, defenses lined up in nickel (five defensive backs) on 57 percent of snaps. From 2022 to 2024, defenses lined up in nickel on 64 percent of snaps.
• I spoke with an NFL front-office member who said that not only have linebackers gotten smaller, but overall, linebacker play has also gotten worse.
• We only have a two-high rate (percentage of plays defenses play with two deep safeties) available dating back to 2019, but it has increased every year and is the highest it’s ever been this season. The main reason for the increase in two-high usage is the popularity of Vic Fangio’s and Mike Macdonald’s defensive systems.
Nickel defenses of course refer to having five defensive backs on the field, which takes a linebacker off the field. So not only do we have lighter and potentially worse linebackers around the NFL, we also have fewer of them on the average defensive snap. And the ones that are out there better be able to switch onto an athletic tight end or a running back split out wide and play man coverage when the opposing team uses motion to create a specific look the defense can’t necessarily get out of. Those are little things the league’s offenses are increasingly looking to do to manufacture explosive pass plays, and as it’s the defense’s current focus to stop that stuff, and pass defense is one of those weak-link systems (like offensive line play) where one really bad matchup can just be exploited relentlessly, you’re not going to see defenses sacrifice what they are set up to do well with, say, nine defensive players, to get two good run-defending linebackers on the field. They probably can’t even hide one. It just creates too much of a liability to the larger goal of stopping the explosive passes.
When done correctly, with the right personnel, you can have this type of defense and still defend the run pretty well, and that’s the goal, and that’s what the best defenses of the future will look like. You’ll have these pass-defending and versatility points as the focuses, but then these players will be dynamic enough to also stop the less-important rushing attack, creating an elite defensive unit. If they are less successful at one thing, it will be defending the run, because that’s the more “success rate” side of things than “explosive play” side so you can get away with allowing some short gains and longer drives and still potentially force field goals on drives, or generate turnovers when you ask defenses to convert multiple third downs in a series, or just run 10 or 11 plays to get all the way down the field, which increases fumble risk, etc. So fundamentally, you’re without question more willing to allow the rushing stuff to be a little more successful, because quite simply it doesn’t hurt your chances of winning the football game as much.
What we increasingly saw in 2024, though, and what I wrote about at times in Stealing Signals — including I remember a long discussion of the Dallas secondary more or less just allowing Joe Mixon to run right through the second level with only the 150-pound Tank Dell as a lead blocker and no one showing any semblance of a desire to attack the football and make a stop — is that on the bad side of this type of defensive system, you wind up with a group of defenders that just don’t want to tackle. You prioritize stopping the pass with the idea you can stop the run through numbers even if you don’t have a whole lot of standout run defenders, as Ted mentioned when he noted there’s less emphasis on developing run-stopping techniques, which could also arguably be teams just selecting the players who have those run-stopping skills for playing time, as they instead prioritize coverage skills.
But again, the problem becomes when your numbers aren’t good enough, or say you have four really poor run defenders and seven guys who can help in that area, and those dudes get blocked up well on a play, or how injuries threaten depth for any unit in the NFL, and being thin on run stoppers can make you increasingly susceptible to a few injuries making you catastrophically bad in that area as you swap out a really key player for a replacement-level reserve. There are a variety of ways that not making something a focus can turn it into a disaster, and maybe not even on every play, but that Mixon rep is burned into my mind as something I just absolutely do not remember seeing at the NFL level for a really long time. It felt like when a future D-1 collegiate defensive end rushed for five touchdowns against my high school football team, except when you see that stuff in high school you understand why the guys are making business decisions when they are asked to tackle another kid that’s twice their size and is physically more like a grown man, while they are still hoping to finally bench their body weight. Joe Mixon isn’t causing nightmares for NFL defensive backs; these dudes just don’t want to defend the run.