Travis Etienne

Travis Etienne finished the 2025 season as the number 10 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 14 running back in PPR per game. And honestly, that's a sentence that would've felt impossible to write in August, because Etienne was a forgotten man heading into the year — buried on a Saints depth chart behind Alvin Kamara on a team nobody expected to throw the ball well or run it efficiently. Instead, Etienne quietly took over the backfield, out-touched Kamara almost two-to-one, and turned a bottom-tier offense into a usable fantasy situation for himself. He played all 17 games, scored 13 total touchdowns, and delivered the kind of full-season workhorse profile that fantasy managers spend July chasing. The catch — and there's always a catch on a 6-and-11 team — is that the surrounding offense was as ugly as it looked.

Now let's dig into the numbers. Etienne carried it 260 times for 1,107 yards — a 4.3 yards per carry mark on a Saints rushing offense that averaged just 3.7 a pop as a team, which ranked 28th in the league. His rushing yards over expected came in at plus 43.9 on the season, or plus 0.17 per attempt, meaning he was creating yards the blocking didn't give him. Add 36 catches on 52 targets for 292 yards and a 10 percent target share, and you get a back used in every phase. The seven rushing touchdowns plus six receiving touchdowns is what pushed him into the top ten — and that's notable because New Orleans ranked dead last in the league in red zone touchdown rate at 50 percent. Etienne hoarded the scoring opportunities that did exist. The consistency profile is where it gets shakier: he posted 14.9 points per game on average, but the floor games were real — 4.8 at Atlanta, 5.1 at Miami, 6.5 at Chicago, 8.8 against the Giants. He cleared 20 PPR points just three times all year, meaning the top-ten finish was built on volume and touchdown variance, not weekly dominance.

The defining number isn't a single play — it's the gap between the player and the situation. Etienne posted plus 43.9 rushing yards over expected on a Saints offense that finished minus 50.2 in rushing expected points added, sixth percentile in the league. He was the productive piece on a unit that wasn't producing. The Week 15 win over Carolina — 31.5 PPR points on 12 carries and 3 catches for 73 yards and three touchdowns — was the ceiling game that reminded everyone what a healthy workload plus red zone work looks like for him. That's the 2025 Etienne story: a back who outran his blocking and stole touchdowns on a team that barely scored.