Woody Marks

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• 2026 PreviewJul 3, 2026

  Woody Marks 2026 Season Preview — what repeats, what doesn't

  Marks posted 133.1 half-PPR points across all 16 games, finishing RB32 on the strength of consistent opportunity rather than any efficiency spike. Whether that workload holds depends on how Houston's backfield role is distributed in 2025, and role-driven production is exactly the kind that tends to carry forward.

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  Show notes & transcript

  Woody Marks finished his rookie year as the 30-fifth running back in football per game. Houston's response was to trade for David Montgomery. The market's response is RB44, pick one-40 — pricing the trade, not the tape. Both of them might be right, which is exactly the problem.

  The season: 16 games, a hundred 96 carries for 703 yards — 3.6 a carry, and we'll come back to that number — +24 catches on 36 targets for 208 yards, and five total touchdowns — three of them through the air, which is the shape of his value in this scoring format. 8.3 Half-PPR points a game, 30-fifth among backs per game, 30-second in total. 220 touches for a fourth-round rookie on a 12-five wild-card team is a real season; among his rookie class, only five backs out-rushed him. The three-six a carry is the asterisk the market holds against him — volume arrived, explosion didn't — and one ankle-sprained game in December was the only absence.

  One season, no arc. The draft slot carries a footnote with predictive juice, though: Houston traded up to take him at pick one-16, per the team site — backs cost staffs something to acquire, and this staff paid twice now.

  The pattern beat has to start with a confession: our library has nothing licensed for him. We tested a year-two running back pattern; it failed replication; it lives on our public kill list, and we don't resurrect killed patterns because a situation is interesting. His touchdown share is modest — point-two-one, under the fade line — so there's no luck to unwind. What's left is composition: 24 catches at half a point each gave him a floor his yards-per-carry couldn't, and receiving work is the skill that travels between committee roles.

  The committee, dated. Houston sent a package built around offensive lineman Juice Scruggs and day-three picks to Detroit for Montgomery in early March, per NFL.com and SI — a veteran the beat immediately installed as the lead, and one who arrived wanting work: he'd sought the trade as his Detroit touches shrank from 221 to one 82, per ESPN's Jeremy Fowler. Marks took it with a shrug and a scouting report, per Click2Houston: love him as a back, we've already reached out, time to get to work. The rest of the room cleared out — Nick Chubb remains unsigned, Joe Mixon was released in March after missing all of last season, per PFT — so this is a two-man job now. SI's June framing gives Marks the passing downs and change-of-pace work under returning play-caller Nick Caley, in an offense that just rebuilt its line with Braden Smith and Wyatt Teller, per ESPN.

  The price: RB44 at pick one-40 for the 30-fifth back by rate — a nine-slot discount that is entirely a bet on Montgomery's gravity. Our verdict: watchlist. We can't underwrite a touch split that hasn't been rehearsed, and we won't fade 220 rookie touches on a playoff team either. The caveat cuts both ways, and here it is out loud: Montgomery arrives with a proven lead-back résumé and a trade request that says he expects the job, so the downside case is real — and if the split lands even 60-40, Marks' receiving role means RB44 bought the more valuable Half-PPR half of a wild-card backfield.

  Watch the preseason two-minute and third-down packages — the passing-down job is the fantasy job — and whether the efficiency ticks up behind the rebuilt line, because three-six a carry is the number that keeps this price down and it's also the number new guards fix. He's one of your guys? Every player on your roster gets this treatment — every week, all season.