4 Fantasy Football Must-Draft Backup Running Backs: Grab Jonah Coleman And Chris Brooks In Every Draft

While everyone wants to draft a starting bell-cow back, fantasy football owners can also find plenty of value in backup running backs. We won't be focusing on handcuffs here, but backups we feel can have value even with the starter healthy. With that said, that's not to say that they wouldn't benefit from a potential injury.

Every year we see backups step up and carve out a role in their offense to become league-winners. These are our must-draft backup running backs for the 2026 fantasy football season.

Kyle Monangai, Chicago Bears

Monangai has been someone we've been high on all offseason. He has been dealing with a minor injury, but it isn't expected to have a significant impact on his fantasy season.

We expect the Bears to have one of the top rushing attacks in the and we've seen that Ben Johnson loves to deploy two backs. Monagai should be the David Montgomery to D'Andre Swift's Jahmyr Gibbs.

Kenny Gainwell, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Gainwell was a tremendous surprise last season. He established himself as potentially one of the best pass-catching backs in the league. He's an outstanding player who you can get as an RB3 or even RB4 in some cases.

It appears that the plan is to keep Bucky Irving as the primary rusher, but utilize Gainwell heavily in the passing attack. This could turn into a 60/40 split situation, which gives Gainwell a ton of value.

Jonah Coleman, Denver Broncos

Coleman is a player I've been drafting in almost every important league this season. Not only do we expect him to carve out a role in that offense, but if JK Dobbins gets injured this season, which he has in 100% of his NFL seasons, Coleman will take over as the lead back.

By the end of this season, we fully expect Coleman to be the lead back in a rising offense. At his current price, you should be drafting him at every opportunity you get.

Chris Brooks, Green Bay Packers

With Jacobs being placed on the commissioner's exempt list, the MarShawn Lloyd hype train has gone off the rails. Some people are drafting him as an RB2, which is absurd for a number of reasons that I will get into.

First, we have never seen Lloyd be any good in the pros. Our only sample size is his 2.5 yards per carry on six NFL carries or his 2.8 yards per carry this preseason. This is because he has managed to play one game in two seasons because he's always injured.

Even in college, the most carries he ever handled were 116; it is not safe to assume that he's suddenly going to become an every-down back just because Jacobs is out. We have no reason to believe that is going to be the case.

Yesterday, I drafted Brooks in the 14th round. He's a reliable and durable power-back who is listed ahead of Lloyd on the Packers' depth chart on their official website, and he's averaged 4.8 yards per carry throughout his career. We aren't saying he's a world beater, but drafting him near the end of your draft is a much better pick than reaching for Lloyd at peak hype.

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