Few running backs have been more frustrating for fantasy football this season than Chase Brown. The Bengals star was coming off a stellar second half of the 2025-26 season that had him seemingly locked and loaded as an RB1 for this year, but he’s absolutely failed to deliver on those expectations thus far. With the fantasy season now headed into Week 8, is he primed to bounce back, or are managers better off looking elsewhere?
Can Chase Brown bounce back in Week 8?
Brown racked up over 1,400 scrimmage yards with 11 total touchdowns last season, looking like a true stud in fantasy football. He averaged 16.6 FPPG during that campaign, the best per-game average of his career, seemingly setting the stage for a big 2026. However, he’s failed to deliver on those expectations and is producing only 12.5 FPPG as things currently stand, slotting him in as the RB21 on a per-game basis rather than the top-12 option fantasy managers hoped for. What’s the deal here?
Well, the issue starts with his own play. This season, Brown is producing only 3.48 YPC, a pretty major downtick from the 4.39 YPC he averaged last season. He’s also seen his average yards after contact tick down very slightly to 2.10 from 2.42, though that’s not nearly as large of a difference. One could argue that the play of his offensive line does have something to do with his overall number – he’s down to 1.38 yards before contact after averaging 1.97 last year – but the problem is primarily that he’s not hitting explosive runs. He’s at 7.9% when it comes to his explosive run rate, which was 11.2% last season. If those are a lot of numbers, just look at it this way instead. Brown has been less effective both before and after contact, and he’s not breaking chunk gains as often as he did last year despite having a very similar success rate and stuff rate.
The interesting part is that his volume is practically identical, which means the drop in efficiency isn’t a result of additional work as we sometimes see with halfbacks. There’s been talk about how his role has actually been reduced, but look under the surface and you’ll find that’s not entirely true. Brown is currently averaging 13.7 rush attempts and 5.5 targets per game this season. He has a 71.3% snap share with a 61.2% share of team rush attempts and a 14.2% target share. Last season’s marks came in at 66.1%, 60.9% and 13.6%, so his workload hasn’t really changed in terms of raw usage. Chatter about Brown’s role change may be more accurately attributed to the fact that Samaje Perine saw 14 carries back in Week 5 prior to the bye, but in Week 7, the veteran logged just four carries on the day.
What is a problem, though, is the scoring, or rather the lack thereof. Brown totaled 11 touchdowns last season but has scored just one in six games this year. Just last week, Perine did vulture a short-yardage touchdown in the red zone, which does raise an eyebrow after Brown would’ve typically gotten that chance in the past. However, that’s not a reason to panic, though managers should probably be looking to pivot elsewhere for an upgrade at running back if they can turn Brown into a more steady contributor.
The bear case is that he’ll continue to underwhelm moving forward, which is a possible outcome. It’s also quite possible that he does improve down the second half of the fantasy season as he did last year. During that campaign, Brown scored no more than 13.1 PPR points through the first seven weeks with just one touchdown to his name. After that point, he eclipsed that mark in every single game and scored the other 10 of his touchdowns. There’s an eerie similarity there, and while he probably won’t replicate that kind of output, the Bengals’ schedule does get a bit softer from here. They get the Titans this week before playing the Falcons, Steelers, Commanders and Saints over the next four games to follow. In the fantasy playoffs, they’ll also face soft run defenses in the Panthers and Colts prior to a Week 17 date against the Ravens.
Will Brown return to last season’s form? Probably not, but he may get a little better as the second half of the fantasy regular season begins. Just don’t set expectations too high; pencil him in as a mid-range RB2 moving forward.
