We used to fill stadiums.
It was back in 2017, a year after David Johnson posted the greatest Zero RB season of all time, we had U2 headline the Zero RB National Conference in Vegas, where hundreds of thousands gathered to discuss and celebrate the high-volatility, anti-fragile approach to building fantasy football teams. Coldplay asked to play the conference that year but we got wind their bassist had started his 2016 drafts with running backs in the first few rounds.
We said no. Springsteen was more in line with our values, we told the Coldplay fellas. Bruce would go on to be a James Robinson truther. Ask anyone.
Those Zero RB glory days are well in the rearview. No amount of squinting will reveal the days of high pass rates, heavy three-and four-receiver sets, and the rotational running backs who functioned as veritable PPR cheat codes and made the Zero RB approach not only workable, but in many fantasy formats, optimal.
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Today, we Zero RB zealots gather in the basements of churches and dimly lit alleyways after dark. We huddle together and we whisper — sometimes in secret ZRB code words — about the ways in which Zero RB roster builds might actually work this year. That it hasn’t worked for a while does not discourage us. We meet and we plot and we try to find ways to fade the game’s premiere running backs despite nine states banning the Zero RB draft strategy in recent years, with three more states primed to do the same this fall. We are struggling but not deterred. We are down but not out. We are scared but resolute.
We persist, convincing each other and ourselves that Javonte Williams can benefit from the Cowboys’ high-volume offense and function as an arbitrage option for the game’s elite running backs. This always sounds better in my head.
But maybe we should reconsider. Today’s NFL is nearly unrecognizable from what it was six or eight or 10 years ago. Teams, led by spreadsheet kings like Sean McVay and Kyle Shanahan, have shifted hard to heavier personnel over the past three years, as Sharp Football’s Rich Hribar showed in painstaking detail last month. There are fewer wide receivers on the field and fewer targets to go around because, to put it as plainly as possible, the NFL’s best and brightest defensive coordinators have figured out how to shut down the pass-heavy, wideout-heavy schemes that carved them up in the late 2010s and early 2020s.
We are left with a conservative, defense-first, run-first league in which game managers rule the day. We are left with a league in which Sam Darnold can win a Super Bowl. Even the game’s strongest-armed quarterbacks have been converted into checkdown merchants against defenses that have said with once voice: You are never again going to beat us deep.
NFL offenses have responded in kind. Last year, we saw just 12 offenses post neutral pass rates, which is when the game is within one score, of over 55 percent. In 2024 that number was 18. In 2023 there were 19 teams with a neutral pass rate north of 55 percent, a number that stayed stable from 2017 to 2023. Defenses are inviting opposing offenses to matriculate the ball down the field four yards at a time and offenses have obliged with more short passes and much more running.
The Zero RB bros have never been down quite so bad.
Every year I write about overarching strategies for those intent on using the Zero RB approach — in which you don’t spend any of your first handful of draft picks on running backs while stocking your bench with contingency backs — or the Hero RB approach, that thing where you hedge a bit and take a high-end running back in the first or second round before fading the position until the middle rounds or even the second half of your fantasy draft.
Editor’s Note: Rotoworld is headed to Draft Nation 2026 — the first National Fantasy Football Draft Day celebration, Aug 20–22 at Circa Las Vegas. Live drafts, analysts, celebrity guests. Code ROTOWORLD saves you 25% at DraftNation2026.com.
A disclaimer that I’ve included in every Zero RB strategy article: ZRB is not an ideal strategy for every league. If you’re in a 10-team fantasy league in which you start only two wideouts, there’s no viable reason to lean hard into the Zero RB thing. If you’re in a standard scoring league, sometimes known as Cavemen Leagues, hammering receivers and forgoing running backs in the first half of the draft makes precious little sense.
Conversely, if you’re in a hellish 14-teamer with multiple flex spots and PPR scoring, Zero or Hero RB can work just fine. Your roster will look gross by the end. Your league mates, loved ones and your therapist will ask if you skipped every other round of the draft. But you will have created a highly-volatile roster -- the overarching goal of Zero RB.
When it works, it really works. You’ll have top-end wideouts, maybe an elite tight end, and one or two, maybe even three running backs who have benefited from the known unknowns of the NFL season (injuries, suspensions, coaching changes, benchings, things of that nature).
And when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work. You’re trapped with a bunch of useless running backs who can’t get on the field, and even when they do they are not getting the sort of high value touches we so desperately crave as fantasy managers. ZRB is nothing if not a first-or-last strategy. But in the wisdom-rich words of Ricky Bobby -- played by Will Ferrell, who attended the 2018 Zero RB Conference -- if you’re not first, you’re last.
Below are, for now, eight running backs who can make the Zero or Hero RB thing work for you in 2026, if you’re so inclined. Things will change in the coming weeks. Players will be released, injuries will befall members of various backfields or the guys who block for them, and running backs will rise and fall up and down depth charts and fantasy draft boards. I’ll update the remaining Zero RB truthers as the regular season approaches, either online or in a church basement at midnight.
Zero RB Draft Targets in 2026
Blake Corum (LAR)
ADP: 98 (RB35)
Corum’s redraft ADP has ticked skyward of late because Sean McVay can’t stop saying nice things about the third-year back. As a Corum drafter I have petitioned the Fifth Circuit to stop McVay from saying any more nice things about his RB2.
Corum showed great improvement last season in the hyper-efficient LA offense. In 2024, Pro Football Focus graded Corum as the league’s 42nd best rusher out of 77 qualifying backs. In 2025, he finished sixth in PFF grading. Corum, naturally, was tied with his backfield mate, Kyren Williams.
Corum last year was excellent in breaking tackles and logging explosive rushes and all the stuff we look for in a late-round running back. Conservatively, he would be a top-10 fantasy option if Kyren were to miss time in 2026, and nothing but bad touchdown luck would stop Corum from being a weekly top-five guy. He’s the rare back who will have both weekly usefulness and extreme contingency value.
Kenneth Gainwell (TB)
ADP: 103 (RB36)
The apple of every remaining Zero RB drafter’s eye in 2025, Gainwell is set to operate as something between a change-of-pace back and a lead back in the Tampa offense. That, as you might have guessed, should make Gainwell a prime target for anyone forgoing Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, Christian McCaffrey, and all the rest.
Bucs offensive coordinator Zac Robinson said in June that Gainwell and Bucky Irving “can kind of match each other in certain ways with what they can do in the pass game.” That Robinson sees Irving and Gainwell as interchangeable is probably bad for Irving and good for Gainwell. I could be wrong. It would be the first time though.
This is not to say Irving is lacking as a pass catcher. He’s not. Last year, he ranked second in yards after the catch per reception and fifth among backs in yards per catch. Bucky is good. The way Robinson and other Tampa coaches have talked about Gainwell this offseason suggests that might not matter so much.
If checkdowns and screen passes are a quarterback stat, Gainwell might not see the sort of volume he saw last year in Pittsburgh with checkdown machine Aaron Rodgers. Last season, Baker Mayfield posted a checkdown rate of 7 percent, seventh lowest among 45 qualifying QBs. That was a marked shift from his 9 percent checkdown rate in 2024, a top-17 rate.
Jonathan Brooks (CAR)
ADP: 106 (RB38)
Coming off a catastrophic knee injury that cost him the entirety of 2025, Brooks is running and cutting and planting his foot in the ground and all that good stuff in Carolina training camp. By every indication Brooks is operating at full health somehow.
A couple reporters have made the less-than-stunning prediction that Brooks could start the season as the Panthers lead back over Plodding King Chuba Hubbard. That should be enough for Zero RB folks to pay attention to Brooks’ ADP in the coming weeks. He’s among the players whose ADP will likely depend on the sharpness of your league mates.
Jonah Coleman (DEN)
ADP: 146 (RB47)
Broncos head coach Sean Payton seems to be into Coleman and what he showed during the Broncos’ offseason program. That, I’m thinking, could go a long way if JK Dobbins struggles with injuries and/or RJ Harvey just flat-out struggles as he did in 2025.
Payton says Coleman “can play on third downs.” “Normally, you have to project that,” Payton said of Coleman, the 109th pick in the 2026 draft out of Washington. “A lot of these guys, in college, maybe the protection plan’s different or limited. So, you have to develop that, and that’s fine, but (Coleman’s) frame is such that, when you see him, he does a really good job in blocking pressure looks.”
Coleman’s tough running style — he produced a sky-high 71 percent of his college rushing production after first contact — could leave Denver coaches no choice but to get him involved early. With some luck, he could function as the team’s top back, if only here and there. That’s enough to stash Coleman, I think.
Keaton Mitchell (LAC)
ADP: 149 (RB49)
When Mitchell is not featured on the WANTED posters Mike McDaniel posted in Chargers headquarters this offseason, he’s catching over-the-shoulder bombs from Justin Herbert in training camp and making me feel a little bit faint.
McDaniel very much wanted Mitchell as a real part of the LA backfield alongside Omarion Hampton, who’s probably not all that good. Speedy backs like Mitchell are often underwhelming in the after-contact stats because they tend to gain a lot of yards before contact. Last season in Baltimore, Mitchell led all backs in yards before contact per rush (4.47), a hallmark of lightning fast rushers who regularly blow by the first wave of defenders.
In this way — gaining consistent yards before contact — Mitchell is not unlike De’Von Achane, who you may remember as the centerpiece of McDaniel’s Dolphins offense.
That the Bolts signed Mitchell for what one might call Real Money -- a two-year deal with $5 million guaranteed and incentives adding up to $9.2 million -- probably means something. There’s no universe in which Mitchell functions as a 20-touch back, but for big-play fast guys like him, a nice fantasy outing doesn’t usually require much in the way of touches. Mitchell needs to be on every Zero RB roster this summer.
Tank Bigsby (PHI)
ADP: 168 (RB54)
Top three in both missed tackles forced per rush and yards after contact per rush, Bigsby was quietly -- very quietly -- among the most efficient rushers in the game on an admittedly small sample size.
Last season, after being traded from Jacksonville to Philadelphia, Bigbsy had 104 yards on nine carries against the Giants in Week 8; he had 75 yards on 15 rushes in Week 18 against Washington. To use a nice normie stat, Bigsby ripped off runs at 5.7 yards per carry in 2025. Efficiency and explosiveness aren’t exactly new for Bigsby, who in 2024 ranked third among all running backs in yards after contact per carry and 22nd in missed tackles forced per rush. He might just be good.
If Saquon Barkley misses any time in 2026, Bigsby should be the Eagles’ lead back. That he might be good, is just a bonus.
Emmett Johnson (KC)
ADP: 182 (RB55)
Kansas City front office officials reportedly could not believe Johnson was still on the board in the fifth round of the 2026 draft. So, they took Johnson, and have nothing but good things to say about him ever since.
Johnson, 22, who had a 100th percentile college dominator rating at Nebraska along with a 99th percentile college target share, totaled nearly 1,900 yards in 2025. He’s one of these hyper-productive college runners who is somehow ignored by both NFL front offices and fantasy managers who think they are front office officials.
Johnson could be one Ken Walker injury away from seeing serious run as the lead back in Patrick Mahomes’ offense. Emari Demercado, who does not check any of the metrics boxes, could have something to say about that, however. Both Johnson and Demercado could be useful ZRB picks in 2026. Some involvement from pass-catching specialist Breshard Smith could blow up the whole backfield and make everyone unplayable.
Ollie Gordon (MIA)
ADP: N/A
Apparently Dolphins head coach Jeff Hafley believes Gordon is something more than a big-bodied banger. Hafley says Gordon, who averaged a miserable 2.8 yards per carry as a rookie in 2025, can be an every-down back in the NFL.
“Ollie has flashed and knows what he’s doing,” Hafley said. He has great speed, he has great size, and he can catch the ball out of the backfield too.”
Count me skeptical, but with running backs sometimes a coach’s support is all that matters in the end. Stats, efficiency, all that stuff we spend so much time analyzing -- it doesn’t matter. Jaylen Wright could also be a nice deep-league bench stash in what will certainly be a run-heavy Miami offense.
