The NFL season begins Wednesday night, but many of us still have fantasy football drafts before kickoff. Below, I have featured two of my favorite mid-round running backs to target in drafts.
Let’s break them down.
Top Mid-Round Running Back (RB) Fantasy Football Targets
RB Rico Dowdle, Pittsburgh Steelers
Dowdle currently carries an ADP of 86.5 on Yahoo, and he is one of the top running back targets in this range of drafts. Quietly, Dowdle has topped 1,300 scrimmage yards in back-to-back seasons, competing with the Cowboys and then the Panthers. He averaged a strong 4.6 YPC during both these campaigns. With Carolina this past season, the back finished 14th in rushing yards (1,076), 13th in YAC (744), 16th in rushes of 10+ yards (24) and 23rd in missed tackles forced (34).
Dowdle rushed for six touchdowns, and he also got it done as a pass catcher, hauling in 39-of-46 targets for 297 yards and a touchdown. He was a strong target earner out of the backfield, seeing a target on 18% of his routes. Dowdle didn’t miss a game, and he scored double-digit FPTS in 9-of-17 games, including three explosions over 30 FPTS, two of which came with Chuba Hubbard inactive, but one was with the fellow back active. Dowdle finished as the No.16 scoring back for fantasy and he ranked 19th in FPTS per snap at the position (0.39).
Now, he heads to the Steelers after inking a two-year, $12.25 million deal with the club this offseason. Jaylen Warren is still with Pittsburgh and is coming off a career-best season, in which he produced 1,291 scrimmage yards and six touchdowns, but the Steelers wouldn’t have paid Dowdle all that money if they didn’t plan on using the back heavily.
While both backs are efficient on the ground and through the air, Dowdle is the bigger body, standing two inches taller than Warren, and Dowdle leading the way for this backfield in early down touches and in red-zone usage makes sense. Dowdle should see 10-15 touches every week, and he would likely see a featured role if Warren ever was inactive.
As we saw last season, Dowdle can be a rock-solid fantasy player even when sharing a backfield, and he has the potential to finish as a top-15 running back in 2026.
RB Blake Corum, Los Angeles Rams
Corum was one of the NFL’s most effective rushers last season, and the Michigan product really saw his role grow in the later stages of the season. Corum averaged 5.1 YPC – which ranked sixth among the backs who saw 50+ carries – and after operating as the clear backup to Kyren Williams to begin the season, these two backs saw much closer workloads following the Rams’ bye in Week 8.
Williams out carried Corum 107-41 before the bye, but following the week off, Williams only out-carried Corum 152-104. With the expanded role, Corum produced 9.4 FPTS per game in the final 10 of the regular season, including four efforts of double-digit FPTS, most notably with a 29.1 FPTS outburst vs. the Cardinals in Week 14.
Corum continued to creep up on Williams in the Rams’ run to the NFC Championship, too, with Williams only out-carrying Corum 44-26 in the team’s three postseason games. Williams continued to be the Rams’ clear pass-catching back following the bye, seeing 20 targets on 198 routes, compared to six targets on 76 routes for Corum, but there is no denying that the team made a clear effort to get Corum more work as a rusher as the season progressed, even in high-stakes situations.
He now enters his third season in the NFL, after the Rams selected him in the third round in 2024, and the trend of the back seeing more rushing work for this high-powered offense should continue – Los Angeles led the NFL in PPG last season (30.0). Corum should see double-digit touches on a weekly basis, and him eventually becoming Los Angeles’ primary rusher over Williams definitely could happen. Furthermore, if Williams was ever to go down, Corum would become an elite fantasy asset as the Rams’ featured back.
Nonetheless, even if both these backs play in every single game again this season, Corum should have a strong campaign, and at an ADP of 99.5 on Yahoo, Corum is one of the best running back values on the board.
