Travis Etienne

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• Week 2Sep 21, 2026

  Travis Etienne — Week 2: Eight Carries and the Tying Two Points

  Etienne carried 8 times for 25 yards and caught both targets for 6, and his biggest play is not in that line: the two-point run around right end that tied the game at 17 with 9:42 left. Alvin Kamara, back after missing Week 1, had 9 carries and 6 targets to Etienne's 8 and 2, in a 24–17 win over the Ravens.

• Week 1Sep 14, 2026

  Travis Etienne — Week 1: Nine and Nine, and Miller Got the Touchdown

  Etienne carried nine times for forty-six yards and caught seven of nine targets for thirty-two more, sixteen touches in all, on a day Kendre Miller also carried nine times and scored the Saints' only rushing touchdown from the eight. His longest run, eighteen yards up the middle with twenty-seven seconds left in regulation, started the drive that ran out the clock at 24–24, and in overtime he recovered Tyler Shough's fumbled snap on third down to keep alive the drive that got the Saints within one, in a 31–30 loss to the Lions.

• Camp · Aug 31, 2026Aug 31, 2026

  Travis Etienne Camp Update — August 31: The Backfield Sorted to Four

  The cut to fifty-three sorted the Saints backfield: Etienne, Alvin Kamara, Kendre Miller and Audric Estimé stay, while Devin Neal went to season-ending injured reserve, Zamir White was released and CJ Donaldson was waived. Etienne himself finishes August with zero preseason snaps of record.

• Camp · Aug 23, 2026Aug 23, 2026

  Travis Etienne Camp Update — August 23: Kamara's Knee Remakes September

  Travis Etienne sat out again with the starters, but his week changed anyway: Alvin Kamara sprained his knee and is expected to miss about a month, and the rest of the backfield spent the week getting hurt. The committee question may not exist in September.

• Camp · Aug 16, 2026Aug 17, 2026

  Travis Etienne Camp Update — August 16: A Homecoming Postponed, a Lead Job Still Unsettled

  Travis Etienne sat out the preseason opener against his old Jacksonville team, so the backfield split with Alvin Kamara remains untested. The June read said the split was the whole bet, and it still is.

• 2026 PreviewJun 13, 2026

  Travis Etienne 2026 Season Preview — a bounce-back, a new home, a TD flag

  WATCHLIST — a touchdown-flagged rebound, now in New Orleans in an offense he's never played. Buying the situation.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Travis Etienne went from RB40 in 2024 to a top-13 back in 2025 — and then signed with New Orleans, his hometown team, in free agency. So you're betting on a bounce that just happened, in an offense he's never played in. That's a watch, not a buy. The Muffed 2026 preview.

  The 2025 season was a genuine rebound: 260 carries for 1107, 13 total touchdowns, RB13 per game — and he did it outrunning his blocking, +44 rushing yards over expected on a Jacksonville run game that graded near the bottom of the league. The ceiling game was Week 15 against the Jets: 31 points on three touchdowns. He out-touched the rest of the backfield nearly two to one.

  The arc is a roller coaster: a strong 2023, a collapse to seven-four a game in 2024, and now the rebound to 13-nine. Which Etienne is real is the entire question — and the data says the 2025 version came with a flag.

  That flag: his touchdown share is 30.7 percent, just over our RB fade line. 13 touchdowns drove the rebound, and touchdowns are the least repeatable thing in football. The volume is real and sticky; the scoring rate that turned it into RB13 is the part that regresses. Strip a few touchdowns and the rebound is softer than the rank suggests.

  The situation is all change, per the reports: Etienne signed a four-year, 48-million-dollar deal with New Orleans as a free agent — not a trade — landing in a Saints offense building around young quarterback Tyler Shough, now the confirmed starter. Alvin Kamara is still on the roster; his agent has said he plans to play for New Orleans in 2026. But the reporting is that Etienne, not Kamara, projects as the lead back — the first time since Kamara's rookie year that role hasn't belonged to him. New scheme, new line, new quarterback, and a legacy teammate still in the room. The volume opportunity could be real if Etienne wins the lead role outright; the efficiency and touchdown environment are total unknowns.

  The price: pick 35, the seventeenth back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — a touchdown-flagged bounce-back changing teams, into a backfield that still has Kamara in it, is the definition of can't-model. The counter in his favor: if he locks the New Orleans lead role as reported, the volume alone supports this price. The counter against: he's a one-good-year-in-two back, on a new team, sharing a room with a future Hall of Famer, whose RB13 finish leaned on touchdowns that don't repeat. Know you're buying the situation.

  September watch: the backfield split with Kamara — that's the whole bet; and the touchdown rate, where 13 scores has real give. Your whole roster gets this treatment every week — that's the show.

• 2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026

  Travis Etienne 2025 Season in Review

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  Show notes & transcript

  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 +6 receiving touchdowns is what pushed him into the top 10 — 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-10 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.