Bhayshul Tuten 2026 Season Preview — paying for a job he hasn't won | Muffed

Bhayshul Tuten finished his rookie year as the fifty-second running back in fantasy points per game. He's the twenty-fifth back off the board. That gap is one of the widest on the board — and it's built entirely on a job he hasn't won yet. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The rookie season was a deep-reserve role behind Travis Etienne: eighty-three carries, three hundred seven yards, five touchdowns, ten catches across fifteen games — five-six points a game, RB52 per game. The signature was a modest Week 2 against Cincinnati, fifteen points, his rookie high. He flashed the speed that made him a draft pick, but he never had the volume to qualify among the league's tracked runners — eighty-three carries isn't a workload, it's a rotation.

The arc is a single low-usage season, so the RB25 price isn't paying for what he did — it's a pure bet on a role increase. And here's the production flag: his touchdown share was forty-seven percent, the most touchdown-dependent profile of any back we cover. Five of his handful of scoring plays came on the ground in limited work, and that rate does not survive contact with a real sample. Strip it out and the rookie tape is a change-of-pace back, not a starter.

What the data can and can't say: we don't license year-two leaps for running backs — that pattern failed our testing — so the speculative upside isn't something we'll underwrite. What the price needs is a near-total transformation of his role, and the only evidence for that is off the field.

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The situation, per the reports, is the entire bull case — and this spring fed it: Travis Etienne signed with New Orleans, vacating the lead job, and Tuten took the first-team reps all offseason — but partly by forfeit, because Chris Rodriguez, the veteran Jacksonville signed to a two-year deal to split the work, had foot surgery and missed the whole program. Liam Coen says Rodriguez will be "full go come training camp," and the praise for Tuten is real — Coen likes "how Tuten has run it this spring... as opposed to last year at this time" — with LeQuint Allen holding the passing downs. So the job looks more his than it did in March, but it's still a committee he has to win in August, at a price that already assumes he won it.

The price: pick sixty, the twenty-fifth back. [pause] Verdict: LEAN — overpriced. His proven production is a deep reserve's, his one fantasy-relevant trait — touchdowns — is the least repeatable thing in the game, and the RB25 tag is paying for a featured role he's competing for, not holding. The counter, and it's legitimate: the lane is genuinely open with Etienne gone, the speed is real, and a spring of first-team reps is worth something. But you're paying for the job before training camp settles it — and the veteran he has to beat hasn't even been on the field yet.

September watch: the carry split with Chris Rodriguez once he's back — the whole bet; and whether the explosive runs translate to a real per-touch role. [[CLOSE]] He's one of your guys? This show covers your whole roster — every player, every week, all season.