Our 7 Favorite Fantasy Football RB Sleepers

**Josh** (0:10)
There is no better feeling in Fantasy Football than drafting a running back late in your drafts. And it becomes a full time starter for you in your lineup. Yes, around week five, week six, he ranks as a top 20 running back in our rankings here on this channel. Plug and play for you the rest of the season. Hayden, let's name six of those potential names this year. Anything you want to say about Sleepers in general at the running back spot?

**Hayden** (0:36)
There's kind of like two different versions of it. There's kind of the committee back that I think has a chance to be like a flex RB2.
You're just going to get a positive win. You're not going to win your league because of these guys, but they're valuable. I have one named here at the very top. And then the second one is of the pure handcuffs. I want this guy to be automatically in my starting lineup, at least as the flex, hopefully as a fringe RB1 on my team. If something happens to the starters, interesting enough, I think this year, the clear backups to like the top 15 fantasy running backs, there's not that many clear cut ones. We're going to identify a couple of the ones that I know, the second the starter goes down, this guy's going to be at the top of our thumbnail list.

**Josh** (1:15)
Yeah, we've always suggested that we would do a running list of the best running back handcuffs in the NFL for Fantasy Football for the entire summer and for the entire season. Let us know in the comments down below if you actually want us to do that. Leave a thumbs up while you're down there too. All right, let's kick things off. Six names, these have to be either on Underdog or in your home leagues like Yahoo.
After the start of, end of round 10, I should say, 120 plus ADP. So Hayden, kick us off with the first name. Who is it?

**Hayden** (1:44)
This is Chris Rodriguez. This is definitely more of the committee backfield where I think he's got a chance to be a flex starter. He has a history with Liam Cohen. Liam Cohen, by the way, has been excellent for fantasy running backs every single time. He's been calling plays in the NFL.
Back at Kentucky, he had 1,400 yards, 12 total touchdowns. As the Bell Cow back, Liam Cohen describes Chris Rodriguez as a thumper, just picks up the hard yards. And that's exactly the type of running back that they did not have on the team this last season. They gave him more money than we were also expecting when we just saw Chris Rodriguez to the Jaguars. Like, wow, okay, he's actually going to be part of the game plan here. It's him versus Basial Tutin. I think Tutin is definitely more explosive, no doubt about that. I think Chris Rodriguez is probably more trusted right now. Laquint Allen is going to have his role. Who's going to get the gold line touches? I think it's going to be Chris Rodriguez. He's 5'11, 224, Tutin's 5'9, 209
We're not going to get a bunch of receptions out of Chris Rodriguez. That's totally fine. Travis Etienne, just on carries, was the RB 10 and expected half PPR points last year. If we get like 80 percent of that, Chris Rodriguez is going to be A-okay. There's definitely a cap ceiling here. But for somebody that could be like the fourth running back that you draft in your team, and then when bi-weeks come around, he's in your starting lineup, I'm okay with that.

**Josh** (3:02)
He goes in the 11th round over an underdog, 14th round over on Yahoo, just to lay the land here. He had a procedure on his left foot following an injury sustained early in off-season conditioning program, so we haven't seen him at all in these OTA activities. But he is expected, according to Liam Cohn, to be a full go at training camp. Zayn, who has been doing an incredible job aggregating news lately on Twitter, posted an interesting thought on Rodriguez vs. Basho-Tutton.
Is it just the 2026 version of Zack Moss vs. Chase Brown, which early season, C-Rod gets the majority of the work. They've been rehearsing Basho-Tutton, i.e. Chase Brown, all summer for a much larger role, both in passing situations and in a running room. At some point in the season, it flips either due to injury or just outperformance. Once it does, there's no looking back.
That really caught my attention and hit me deep when thinking about this back.

**Hayden** (4:00)
Sure. Yeah, I think that the flip side would be like the total upside case where Chris Rodriguez could have a good Jovante Williams type of range of outcomes. I think that's really low end, but this is the type of guy that I think could handle a bunch of the goal line carries and then churn yardage.