As far back as January, there have been questions about the quality of the 2026 running back class. The two exceptions were supposed to be Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, but injuries and time-shares have kept them from fully showing their talents in the NFL. In Week 8, a couple of different rookie running backs took over their backfields and this seems like a good time to talk about what we can expect from them moving forward.
Jonah Coleman and Mike Washington both dominated the touches in Week 8, with different results. Coleman turned 15 touches into 16.4 PPR points while Washington's 25 touches produced just 8.3 points. There were two big differences: Efficiency and targets.
Washington continued the trend of inefficiency from the lead back in Las Vegas, and averaged 3.3 yards per carry. He also had zero targets. Coleman caught four passes in Week 8, which is one more catch than Washington has all season.
I don't think it is far-fetched to say that Washington could be a better rusher than Coleman, but the environment in Denver is so much better than the environment in Las Vegas. And the fact that Ashton Jeanty is still handling passing downs nukes Washington's PPR upside, while Coleman's backfield mate J.K. Dobbins is really only a threat on early downs.
For that reason, Coleman is inside my top 20 running backs this week and may be for the rest of the season. In full PPR, I would still start Jeanty over Washington and really only want to flex Washington in non-PPR leagues. It's not just the quantity of touches a running back gets, but also the quality.
And right now, Coleman is in the best situation of all the rookie running backs. Now let's get to the rest of the Week 8 RB preview: My full set of Week 9 Fantasy football projections for every position is now available here. Find out which of my favorite plays are projected to score higher than consensus rankings and which don't live up to their draft hype, at least in Week 9.
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