One season after coming within a Week 18 loss to the Detroit Lions of having a bye in the 2025 NFL playoffs, the Minnesota Vikings are officially in last place in the NFC North. To be fair, it’s the most competitive division in football — every team is at or above .500 — but the Vikings are down to just +450 to make the playoffs at DraftKings Sportsbook. The one positive from Minnesota’s season so far is free agent acquisition Jordan Mason, who has emerged as a capable RB1 with Aaron Jones on Injured Reserve with the hamstring injury that he suffered in Week 2.
The team activated Jones yesterday and listed him as questionable for tomorrow’s Thursday Night Football clash against the Los Angeles Chargers. Prior to his injury, he had turned his 13 carries into 46 yards and caught an additional three passes for 44 yards and a score. Last season, he had 1,546 yards on 306 touches and seven total scores, finishing eighth league-wide in total scrimmage yards. All in all, Jones’ track record is more impressive than that of Mason, who was the San Francisco 49ers’ backup for the first three seasons of his career.
Mason wasn’t particularly fantasy-viable before Jones’ injury, contributing only 98 total yards and no scores, but not every running back produces immediately in his first two games with a team, and he should have earned himself a larger role in the Vikings offense. That’s especially true as long as Carson Wentz remains the starter over the more mobile J.J. McCarthy. Even before Jones went down, he had appeared in nearly 60% of the team’s snaps, a higher proportion in each game than Jones, and he also garnered more carries than Jones in each game. Jones wouldn’t have been fantasy-viable either if he hadn’t scored a 27-yard touchdown pass in Week 1, and scores from outside the red zone are fluky and unreliable as a predictor of future success.
Mason was utterly dominant in his first game as the primary back, doing what he needed to do against one of the league’s worst defenses by rushing for 116 yards and two touchdowns against the Cincinnati Bengals. He then played a trio of pretty difficult rushing defenses in the last three weeks and, while he averaged just 3.8 yards per carry across that span, he scored inside the red zone in each of the past two games. This season, he’s taken 72.2% of Minnesota’s carries inside the opponent’s 20, which is the third-highest share of any running back in the league. That’s not only a result of Jones’ injury; in his two games, Jones didn’t have a single red zone touch.
Mason should remain a fantasy starter against a Chargers defense that has allowed the seventh-most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs and allowed more rushing touchdowns than any team besides the Tennessee Titans. Los Angeles is slumping, having lost three of its past four games and only narrowly beating the woeful Miami Dolphins. Across those four games, the Chargers have allowed Cam Skattebo, Jacory Croskey-Merritt, De’Von Achane, and Jonathan Taylor to combine for 82 touches, 522 yards, and seven touchdowns. All four of those running backs are better than Mason by Pro Football Focus’ standards, but he’s still good enough to start against such an out-of-form front seven.
