Is Quinshon Judkins an RB2 or Just a Volume Play in Cleveland?

With the 36th pick of the 2025 NFL Draft, the Cleveland Browns selected running back Quinshon Judkins. The former Ole Miss and Ohio State running back will have a chance to fill the Nick Chubb role in his new home after three straight collegiate seasons with over 1,000 yards rushing. Along with Jerome Ford and fellow rookie Dylan Sampson, they’ll attempt to revitalize a rushing attack that finished top-10 league-wide as recently as the 2022 season.

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Quinshon Judkins’ Prospect Profile

Coming out of high school in the Montgomery, Alabama area, Quinshon Judkins was a three-star recruit and the number 25 recruit in the state. Scholarship offers poured in across the Big Ten and SEC for the prolific high school rusher, but Judkins decided on Ole Miss, which immediately featured him as an 18-year-old true freshman. Despite sharing the backfield with then-Junior Zach Evans, the fresh face commanded 302 opportunities for 1,699 total yards. Again, as an 18-year-old.

This netted him both a First Team All-SEC nod, as well as becoming the SEC Freshman of the Year.

Things didn’t slow down much in Year 2, as he garnered an even higher rate of backfield rushes (59.7% to 71.5%), though the raw numbers didn’t entirely match up with a much more efficient passing attack in Jaxson Dart’s second year in the program. With that said, his minuscule 4.4% target rate did see a slight increase to 6.6% in this heavier passing attack, and his role in pass protection jumped from 40 snaps in ‘22 to 111 in ‘23.

Though that was a positive sign of growth in an important aspect of fantasy scoring, where Judkins really made his money (both figuratively and literally) was his hard-nosed rushing style that saw him bowling over defenders throughout his three year college career, culminating in a three-touchdown performance (two rushing, one receiving) in Ohio State’s National Championship win last season. Despite his 5’11”, 221-pound frame, Judkins flashed plenty of athleticism (9.90 RAS) to shake away defenders, and was adept at staving away negative runs, making something from nothing.

5'11/221 Quinshon Judkins as a sophomore



phone booth pic.twitter.com/Im9pKQ0RIZ

— Josh Norris (@JoshNorris) March 17, 2025

The Quinshon Judkins Film Room is in the works and sometimes it's just worth sharing the gems you find along the way. pic.twitter.com/vgnSC9rMpA

— Browns Film Breakdown (@BrownsFilmBDN) May 2, 2025

Ultimately, Judkins’ decision to transfer to Ohio State — and split the backfield with TreVeyon Henderson — kept him from reclaiming a true bellcow role or pushing for another 1,500-yard season. But it’s hard to argue the move hurt his NFL Draft stock. If anything, the Buckeyes’ deep playoff run helped solidify him as one of the best pure runners in this year’s class.

How Quinshon Judkins Fits With the Browns

In a historically athletic NFL Combine for running backs, Judkins made a strong case that his bruising style will translate to the next level. Most notably, he became the first 220+ pound back ever to post an 11-foot broad jump — a rare blend of power and explosiveness that should fit nicely in Cleveland’s physical ground game. This is, after all, the same Kevin Stefanski offense that pushed Nick Chubb to 1,700+ scrimmage yards on a 7-10 team back in 2022.

Judkins isn’t quite the freak athlete Chubb was during his prime, but it’s easy to envision the rookie taking a very similar early-down role. It’s not as if the Joe Flacco/Dillon Gabriel/Shedeur Sanders passing attack is somehow going to be far more potent than the Jacoby Brissett/Deshaun Watson iteration from a couple of years ago.

With that said, the rookie will take some incredibly optimistic projections to get him fully into the Prime Chubb role, as the former Georgia Bulldog was eventually sitting on the cusp of the top-20 running backs in pass protection and snaps as a receiver during his most productive seasons. It seems unlikely that Cleveland will keep him on the field quite that much, with incumbent Jerome Ford and fourth-rounder Dylan Sampson sharing the RB room.

Projecting the Browns' Backfield in Fantasy Football

The Browns had an interesting NFL Draft. Where you land on the spectrum of whether it was “good” or “bad” likely comes down to your individual player takes, but between passing up on Travis Hunter to acquire a nice amount of future capital, selecting two quarterbacks, two running backs, and a pass-catching tight end despite David Njoku still being in town, it is at the very least “interesting”.

Cleveland’s Draft “grade” among pundits hit a lot of letters of the alphabet, from ‘D’ to ‘C+’ to ‘A+’, depending on which outlet you like the most, and range in terms of pure value and 2025 impact. For our purposes, we’re obviously most interested in how the offense did or did not improve, and it’s hard to say that it’s significantly better than the 2024 version. Defensive lineman Mason Graham is universally heralded as an improvement to that side of the ball, but it still wasn’t enough to move the Browns off of their current 5.5 win total, tying Tennessee and the two New York teams for the lowest mark in the league.

With no marked improvements to their offensive line or QB room, it’s going to take some lucky breaks for the offense to dig out of a scoring hole that just saw them finish dead last with 15.2 points per game. This is terrible news for Judkins, whose fantasy relevance looks like it could be predicated on volume and potential goal-line work. Fifteen-plus opportunities per game just doesn’t look as sexy when you’re expected to grind out production so far away from the end zone (see: Rhamondre Stevenson, Tony Pollard, Travis Etienne).

There’s an inherent fantasy floor with Judkins’ projected role —even in a bad offense— but with Ford taking a good chunk of the third-down role, and Sampson rotating in behind both of them, the second-round selection has a more-than-questionable ceiling, particularly earlier in the year. This pushes Judkins down in the fringe RB2/3 area, despite his great Draft capital and clear early-down engine of the offense. As for his backfield mates, they can safely be ignored in typical redraft leagues.

Bottom Line

• Quinshon Judkins is in line for early-down work right out of the gate, but the Browns’ bottom-tier offense and a likely third-down role for Jerome Ford limit his ceiling. He’s a volume-based RB2/3 whose weekly value could be dragged down by inefficient touches and limited scoring chances.
• Judkins’ second-round draft capital and physical rushing style make him a long-term piece worth investing in, especially if Cleveland stabilizes its offense in 2026 and beyond.
• According to current Underdog ADP, Judkins is coming off the boards as the RB22, sandwiched between Alvin Kamara and James Conner. The rookie will need things to break his way to beat out that ADP, but there’s a non-zero chance he earns more of the passing-down work than I’ve given him credit for. I’d like him to drop a little further than his mid-sixth-round status, but for RB-needy teams, he creates a floor for your squad.