Chuba Hubbard 2026 Season Preview — a career-year memory, a splitting backfield | Muffed

Chuba Hubbard ran for sixteen points a game two years ago and eight last year. The market is paying for the memory of the good season — in a backfield that's about to split. The Muffed 2026 preview.

The 2025 season was a collapse: a hundred thirty-four carries for five hundred eleven yards and a single rushing touchdown, plus thirty catches — eight-four a game, RB41 per game, a steep fall from the year before. The signature, such as it was, came in Week 13 against the Rams: eighty-three rushing yards, a score, twenty points. But the volume was down and the touchdowns were gone — one all season, a number so low it almost has to climb.

The arc is a spike surrounded by mediocrity: eight-six, six-four, ten-seven, then a career year at sixteen-one in 2024, and back to eight-four. The sixteen-point season is the outlier the price is anchored to; the rest of his career says complementary back.

What the data says: he's a career-year-five back now, the band where our aging rule starts to dock production, and his one fantasy-relevant bright spot — the lone rushing touchdown — is a positive-regression candidate, not a red flag. But no clean pattern makes this a confident call either way. It's a usage question.

[[SITUATION]]

And the situation, per the reports, is why it's a watch: Rico Dowdle left for Pittsburgh, clearing one competitor — but second-year back Jonathon Brooks is returning from injury, and Carolina has signaled a committee, with Hubbard the early-down lead to open the year and Brooks expected to grow into a featured role as the season goes, the same arc Dowdle followed last year. Hubbard could hold the job; he could also cede it by midseason.

The price: pick sixty-nine, the twenty-seventh back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — the 2024 ceiling and the early-down lead role argue up; the 2025 collapse, the age, and a committee built to shift toward Brooks argue down. The counter for him: if Brooks isn't fully back, Hubbard's the workhorse on a clear path, and one touchdown is nowhere to go but up. Against: you're paying RB27 for the early-down half of a backfield designed to move away from him.

September watch: the carry split with Jonathon Brooks — the whole question; and the touchdown rate, where one is the floor. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.