Kyle Monangai

Kyle Monangai finished 2025 as the number 29 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 37 running back in PPR per game. That gap tells you everything about his rookie year in Chicago — 17 games of volume cracked the top thirty, but per game he was a backend flex at best. This was a true committee behind D'Andre Swift, who carried the load with 223 totes for 1,087 yards and nine scores. Monangai was the change-up and short-yardage finisher on one of the league's most efficient rushing offenses — the Bears finished third at 4.8 yards per carry — and when Swift's workload dipped or game script opened up, Monangai flashed legitimate juice. The problem for fantasy managers? Knowing when those weeks were coming.

Now let's get into the numbers. Monangai handled 169 carries for 783 yards and five rushing touchdowns at 4.6 a pop, adding 18 catches on 30 targets for 164 yards on a thin 6 percent average target share. The efficiency was real but not elite — plus 47.5 rushing yards over expected, which works out to plus 0.29 per attempt and ranked 30th among qualified runners. Translation: slightly better than the blocking gave him, but not breaking the model open the way Swift was at plus 0.6 per carry. The bigger fantasy story is the variance. He averaged 8.6 PPR per game, but that average hides a brutal split — single digits in eleven of seventeen games, including five under 4 PPR, before erupting for 22.8, 19.0, and 17.4 in his three best outings. Textbook boom-or-bust. The booms required either a Swift-light workload or a blowout script that handed him 20-plus touches. When he got 22 carries against the Eagles or 26 against the Bengals, he smashed. When he got six or seven, he got muffed.

The single play that captures the year came in Cincinnati in Week 9, a 47-42 shootout where Monangai got a true workhorse share for the only time on the road. Fourth quarter, Bears up 34-27, first and ten from midfield — he bounced it outside right for 39 yards down to the Cincinnati 17, worth plus 2.5 expected points and the kind of explosive that capped a 26-carry, 176-yard masterpiece. That game alone produced 22.8 PPR and accounted for roughly one-sixth of his entire season's fantasy output. The 2025 portrait is simple: the talent showed up in flashes on a top-five rushing offense, but the role was a complement, not a feature, and the weekly scoring reflected exactly that.