Travis Etienne — Week 2: Eight Carries and the Tying Two Points
2026 NFL Season · Half-PPR Scoring · Monday, Sep 21
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.
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17 to 15, Ravens, nine 42 left in the fourth quarter, just after Chris Olave's touchdown. The first two-point try was a sack of Tyler Shough, and a defensive holding flag on Jaylinn Hawkins wiped it out and moved the ball to the one. On the second try Travis Etienne ran around right end and scored. 8.2 points of win probability — the chance of winning the game after the play against before it — and a tie at 17. A two-point try is not a carry in the book, so the biggest thing he did Sunday sits outside his stat line.
The line: eight carries, 25 yards, no touchdown, one first down, and two targets, two catches, six yards. The carries went three, six, eight, −4, two, six, nothing and four. Four of the eight were successful, meaning they came out above zero in expected points added — expected points added is what a play was worth given down, distance and field position — and the eight together were worth −0.7. Two carries came on the opening drive, three and six, and then he did not get another carry or target until the first snap of the third quarter, an eight-yard run up the middle. Six of the eight carries came after halftime for 16 yards. The six-yarder in the fourth was first and 10 at the Baltimore 27, the snap before Olave's touchdown. The two catches were consecutive snaps in the third quarter, six yards and then no gain. He also shows up once without a handoff: on the first play of the second quarter Shough fumbled an aborted snap at the New Orleans 47, and Etienne recovered it for no gain. That is two weeks running he has fallen on a Shough snap.
The split: Alvin Kamara nine carries, Etienne eight, C.J. Donaldson one, and Shough five designed runs plus the aborted snap. Kamara had six targets to Etienne's two. Kendre Miller, who matched Etienne's nine carries in Week 1, does not appear in this play-by-play. Etienne's eight carries gained 25 yards and Kamara's nine gained 15, so the yardage went one way and the volume the other.
Back in June the preview kept Etienne on the watchlist — a touchdown-flagged rebound season moving to a new offense — and leaned on reporting that he, not Kamara, projected as the lead back. Sunday contradicts that, and it should be said first: with Kamara active, Kamara had more carries and three times the targets. Week 1 was nine carries and nine targets with Kamara out and the carries split evenly with Miller. Week 2 was eight carries and two targets. In neither game has Etienne had the backfield to himself, and the nine targets of Week 1 came with Kamara out. Two games settle little, but the shape so far is a committee. New Orleans is home to the Raiders on Sunday the 20-seventh.
_Data via nflverse._
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