7 Fantasy Football Running Backs Primed to Break Out in 2025

Workhorse running backs are few and far between in today’s NFL, and the obvious ones are pretty easy to peg. Jonathan Taylor (73.7%) and Kyren Williams (73.7%) were the only two running backs in the league to top 70% of their respective teams’ rush attempt share in 2024, with Chuba Hubbard (68.1%) and Joe Mixon (66.9%) the only ones in the same ballpark. Those backs essentially comprised the entire “elite usage” tier of running backs who controlled the backfield throughout the season.
What we’re doing here today is looking for candidates who could either come out of nowhere to earn these sorts of usages or give us fantasy production in other, more niche ways, like catching the ball out of the backfield or controlling their team’s goal-line usage.
First, we’ll take a look back at some running backs who fit the criteria of breaking out in 2024 before our seven potential breakouts in the middle-to-late rounds for 2025 drafts.
A Look Back at 2024
A special-teamer who exploded after a veteran teammate went down, an incumbent who handled a massive workload when a high-Draft-capital rookie couldn’t find the field, and an oft-injured back who found his footing for much of the season top the list of 2024 breakouts. Many of the players listed below were part of ambiguous backfields, and each gives us at least one criterion of what to look for in future candidates.
Player | Team | 2023 ADP (Position Rank) | Half-PPR PPG Finish |
---|---|---|---|
Chuba Hubbard | CAR | RB42 | RB12 |
Chase Brown | CIN | RB37 | RB16 |
J.K. Dobbins | LAC | RB43 | RB17 |
Bucky Irving | TB | RB53 | RB19 |
Rico Dowdle | DAL | RB44 | RB23 |
Kareem Hunt | KC | RB75 | RB24 |
Zach Charbonnet | SEA | RB45 | RB29 |
Tyrone Tracy | NYG | RB58 | RB30 |
Jordan Mason | SF | RB54 | RB32 |
Alexander Mattison | LVR | RB60 | RB34 |
Tank Bigsby | JAX | RB59 | RB35 |
Justice Hill | BAL | RB68 | RB43 |
There were several breakouts at our disposal last season, but nearly as many top-flight options as the year prior. This could be for any number of reasons, but the key here is a lack of injuries to the top-flight options outside of Christian McCaffrey. Still, we got six different top-24 RBs who beat out their positional ADP by at least 20 slots, which is massive value.
Chuba Hubbard (293 touches) and Chase Brown (the RB5 from Weeks 9-on) exemplified what we’re looking for in ambiguous situations, which we will dig into throughout this article.
2025 Breakout Candidates
Let’s apply some of the scenarios we saw last year and in prior years to find some comparable situations in the middle-to-late rounds of your upcoming—or ongoing—drafts. Some of the frameworks for breakout production from above will be repeated in our coming season. If we pair positive scenarios with what has historically been the most predictable running back stats, we may be able to replicate top-end production from middle-of-the-road draft capital.
All referenced ADPs below will come from our Multi-Site ADP tool.

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