Fantasy Upside
When healthy, Nick Chubb absolutely terrorizes defenses with the ball in his hands. Over 1,269 career rushes, he holds a 5.2 YPC and 3.93 yards created after contact mark, regularly finishing at or near the top of the position annually. His role in the receiving game is decent, if not quite spectacular, but it has historically offered us a nice floor, ala Derrick Henry. Offseason fluff pieces have shown Chubb lifting enormous amounts of weight, which should be a good sign that his knee injury is progressing in the right direction. The best case scenario sees the veteran back easing into the offense in the beginning of the season before returning to form in the pivotal second half of the year.
Fantasy Downside
There's absolutely nothing guaranteeing that Chubb completely recovers from his second devastating knee injury. Hints from the team place him on the sidelines for at least the first month of the season, which means an IR trip would be quite likely, and heading into his Age 29 campaign, the running back may have been slowing down simply due to his hefty career workload. There's a chance that Chubb returns by the end of the year and is firmly planted into a committee approach with Jerome Ford, D'Onta Foreman, and others.
2024 Bottom Line
Unlike teammate Jerome Ford, there is a decent chance that Nick Chubb will return fully healthy in 2024 and put up consistent RB1 numbers by the end of the year, but that might come too late in the calendar for comfort. The most likely scenario feels like Chubb returning around mid-season, making all of his backfield mates marginal or useless fantasy pieces, while he finds himself in a full-fledged committee in which we'll need to bet on which weeks he can pop up for high-end RB2 numbers. It's a gamble, but if his ADP is low enough, it's not a bad gamble to make.
