With the 2025-26 NFL season approaching, most teams are vying to have a chance at lifting the Lombardi Trophy, no matter how small. The Cleveland Browns’ focus may well be on the top of next year’s NFL Draft board. With a quarterback room consisting of 40-year-old Joe Flacco and rookies Dillon Gabriel and Shedeur Sanders and a pair of relatively untested running backs, the Browns’ offense is arguably the worst in football.
Still, somebody has to run the football, and Flacco is completely immobile at this stage in his career, so Ford and Sampson are both potential fantasy options entering the team’s Week 1 matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals. Both will have big shoes to fill; Nick Chubb was a four-time Pro Bowler in his seven seasons with the team, though he’s coming off of back-to-back season-ending leg injuries.
Ford has been solid in his limited action. As a second-year pro in 2023, he appeared in all 17 games (12 starts) and took 204 carries for 813 yards and four scores, adding 319 yards through the air. Then, last season, he was one of the most efficient backs in football, turning 141 touches into 790 yards and three total scores. That 5.4-YPC average would’ve ranked sixth league-wide if he’d recorded enough carries to qualify, and he received the 32nd-best running back grade from Pro Football Focus. He received only two carries in the preseason but turned them into 14 yards and caught two passes for an additional five yards.
But Cleveland evidently wasn’t satisfied with Ford, drafting Quinshon Judkins in the second round and Sampson in the fourth round to bolster that unit. Judkins is unlikely to play on Sunday, since he still hasn’t been signed to a contract and could still face league discipline over a since-dropped battery charge during the offseason. Sampson, meanwhile, played only sparingly in the preseason, turning four carries into nine yards and hauling in one of his two targets for 14 yards — 10 of which came after the catch. Sampson led the SEC with 258 carries, 1,491 yards, and 22 scores as a junior at Tennessee last season.
I’m not particularly confident in either running back against the Bengals, who had a roughly league-average run defense last season. Though they lost cornerback Mike Hilton, who had their best run defense grade in 2024, they should get a full season out of middle linebacker Logan Wilson, who had the second-best run defense grade of any linebacker last season, and B.J. Hill is one of the better run-stuffing defensive tackles. Plus, the Browns operated the least run-friendly offense in football last season.
Switching play-callers from offensive coordinator Ken Dorsey back to Kevin Stefanski should help: Stefanski’s teams ranked fourth in run frequency in 2020, sixth in 2021, and eighth in 2022, but dropped to 17th in 2023 without Chubb. With no Chubb and a weak Cincinnati secondary, Cleveland will allow Flacco to throw, limiting the ceiling for both Ford and Sampson.
Start or Sit: Sit Jerome Ford, Sit Dylan Sampson.
