Chase Brown
Bengals · RBPPR ADP #14
Get a weekly show about your whole roster →NO CALL — RB7 finish, priced RB8, through a QB carousel. A locked three-down role, fairly priced.
Show notes & transcript▾
Chase Brown was the number seven running back in fantasy last season — on a six-and-eleven team, catching passes from a quarterback carousel. He's priced eighth. There is no scandal here, no hidden edge. There's a good back at a fair price who held a backfield together through chaos, and that's the episode. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The season: top-seven, total and per game, which is genuinely impressive given the wreckage around him. Two hundred thirty-two carries for ten nineteen at four-point-four, plus sixty-nine catches on eighty-eight targets — a fourteen percent target share, a real passing-game role for a back. Eleven total touchdowns on a team that, despite going six-and-eleven, converted red-zone trips into touchdowns at the best rate in the league. The signature: Week 16 at Miami, a short walk-in touchdown, one of three scores he was involved in, a thirty-three point day. And the consistency is the quiet sell — from Week 8 on, he cleared fifteen points in nine of his last ten games while Cincinnati cycled from Joe Burrow to Joe Flacco.
The arc is short and stable: Brown emerged into a featured, three-down role and held it. No spike season inflating the price, no collapse lurking — just a back who earned the job and kept it.
What repeats: the receiving role is the anchor — sixty-nine catches is real, sticky, every-down usage, and it's what makes his floor trustworthy. The touchdown share, at twenty-three percent, is clean — no fade flag fires, no luck to give back. The efficiency, plus 0.34 over expected, is solidly average-plus, neither a red flag nor a selling point. The whole profile is "fine, repeatedly," which at this price is exactly what you want.
The situation, per the reports, is the bull case nobody's pricing: Joe Burrow is healthy at team activities after the turf-toe injury that wrecked Cincinnati's 2025. Brown just finished RB7 with Flacco and Browning throwing for half the year. Give him a functioning Burrow offense — more red-zone trips, more efficient game scripts — and the touchdown environment improves around a back whose role is already locked. The honest flip: a healthier offense could also mean more pass-game neutral scripts and slightly fewer carries. Net, it's a wash-to-positive that the RB8 price doesn't account for.
The price: pick fourteen and a half, RB8. Verdict: NO CALL — he finished RB7, he's priced RB8, and that's a compliment, not a knock. The counter, briefly: he's never done it with a full season of elite quarterback play, so there's mild role uncertainty if Cincinnati's offense reshapes around a healthy Burrow. But back-to-back productive seasons and a locked three-down role at RB8 is a pick you make without anxiety. Boring wins leagues.
September watch: the carry count with Burrow back — if it holds near 230 with the Bengals scoring more, RB7 has a little more in it; the receiving role is already bankable. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
Show notes
Chase Brown finished 2025 as the number 7 running back in total PPR scoring AND number 7 in PPR per game — a top-ten finish in a year the Bengals went 6 and 11 and missed the playoffs entirely. This was a true workhorse breakout. Brown carried the ground game, stayed on the field as a meaningful pass-catcher, and found the end zone in both phases. He did it while the offense around him was a mess — cycling from Joe Burrow to Joe Flacco under center, ranking 19th in total offensive expected points added. That's the headline: a top-seven fantasy season on a losing team. If you've drafted before, you know that's one of the more durable signals you can find.
Now let's dig into the numbers. Brown ran it 232 times for 1,019 yards and 6 scores at 4.4 a carry — but the receiving line is what pushes this into top-seven territory: 69 catches on 88 targets for 437 yards and 5 more touchdowns. A 14 percent target share is a serious passing-game role for a running back. On efficiency, his rushing yards over expected came in at plus 78.3 on the year, plus 0.34 per attempt — 27th among qualified runners. Translation: the per-carry creation was below average, and the fantasy value was driven by volume and touchdown equity, not breakaway running. The floor, though, was genuinely steady down the stretch. From week 8 on, he cleared 15 PPR in nine of his last ten games, with two finishes above 29, after a choppier opening that included three single-digit outings in the first six weeks. Eleven total touchdowns did a lot of the heavy lifting on a 16.6 PPR weekly average.
The play that captures the season comes from week 16 in Miami. Third quarter, first and ten at the Dolphins' 12, Bengals up 24 to 14. Brown takes the handoff through the right guard and walks it in — one of three scores he was involved in that day, on the way to a 32.9 PPR game, his best of the year. That's the Chase Brown 2025 portrait in one snap: not a jaw-dropping run, but a back trusted near the goal line, finishing drives on a team that smashed red-zone trips into touchdowns at the best rate in the league.
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