Tampa Bay BuccaneersOur read
Written Oct 17, from his facts through last season
Whatever we liked about him in the preseason has not traveled with him to Tampa. He went from a 50.1% snap share and a 16.3% target share in Pittsburgh's offense to second on the TB depth chart behind Bucky Irving, and the early numbers back the pecking order up. Five games, 17 carries, 44 rushing yards, and 5.4 points a game. The only week that cleared 10 was week 4 of 2026, and 16 targets in five games says the passing-game role we counted on is thinner than we thought.
The scoring-range usage is the real problem. He has touched the ball on 10% of his team's red-zone carries and targets in his games, 4 of 40, and that ranks 52nd among the 65 running backs with 20 or more touches. Last year he took 20.1% of his own touches inside the red zone and scored as RB16. Among backs in that spot, that profile has cost 1.6 points a game on average the following season, and the inside-ten pattern carries a 1.4-point cost of its own.
He stays healthy, with no injury designation all season and 17 of 17 played in each of the last two years. But health only preserves the bad weeks, it does not fix them. We put 140 points on him for the full season, and the 9.3-a-game pace behind that needs a role change, and nothing in the first five weeks suggests one is coming with Zac Robinson calling plays. Bench him and hold the roster spot only if your league counts depth at running back, because the receiving numbers from 2025 are the one thing that could come back.