Good morning, friends and enemies. In today's video, we're going to talk through eight running backs that are going to infect your fantasy teams in 2025.

And this is going to be a little bit different than you might have been anticipating based on the title.

While one or two of the guys I'm going to mention on this list are dudes that I just wouldn't draft at the running back position for one reason or another.

A lot of this list is actually going to be talking about players that you're probably not drafting, but are going to play a bigger role in their respective backfields that will ultimately hurt and infect the players that you did draft. So there's some high upside guys where you're like, these guys are good enough that they're going to take all of the work. But there are some dudes hanging around on depth charts.

There are some dudes in backfields that aren't very good, but will be annoying and will latch onto your player and infect the fantasy team and the ceiling and the floor of these players. So it's a little bit of a different style of video than I've done before. But I think you guys are going to enjoy this. And if you do, let me know, and I will do a wide receiver slash pass catcher, you know, tight-end version of this video.

And I want to go a little bit more under the hood like i'm not going to sit here and be like jimira gibbs is going to have to battle with dama microman like obviously demont's going to get fucking goal line work and carries and stuff like that and brian robinson's going to lose pass catching work to eclectic we know that right I'm trying to get a little bit deeper here and really talk about dudes that i think you're really just like kind of pushing aside and don't think they're going to be a factor but will have a role in their offense and valuable roles at that so yeah if you like the video hit this and let me know if you want a wide receiver version afterwards we will start at the very top of the list and this is the chief's backfield we have isaiah Isaiah Pacheco, who's gaining some steam. He's a top 30 back. The price is not outrageous whatsoever. We're questioned about whether or not he's going to be able to return to full form. And I think he'll be back to being a good running back. But Kareem Hunt is the player on this list that I'm actually worried about taking work from Isaiah Pacheco. right isaiah pacheco went down last year, missed a huge chunk of the middle of the season, and they went out and signed Kreme Hunt basically off the street, sitting on grandmother's dresser, dusted up, took him in. And honestly, Kareem Hunt, like, you're not going to look at any underlying metrics and be like he was a good running back. He was explosive. He was elusive, anything like that. He filled unadmir, though. He had some good games. He was like a real tough running back. He stayed healthy. He did what they needed him to do for the time that they needed him to do that. And even into the playoffs, they like they wrote him over Pacheco because Pacheco clearly wasn't healthy. But they re-signed him this offseason, which was a little bit surprising. But the reports at a camp are that like Pacheco and Cream Hunt are splitting snaps with the first team and operating in tandem and that Cream Hunt is the third down back right now. And I don't imagine that Cream Hunt's going to out touch Pacheco because I think Pacheco will be a lot healthier and I think he will be like the starter there. My concern is that cream hunt's going to be like heavily involved on the goal line. He was

legitimately like pretty good on the goal line last year. I think he's going to get short down yardage work. And then, you know, this video is not going to just dissect every single player and every backfield. But like Breschard Smith is a legit wide receiver converted running back. He's projected to make the team. And I think he'll take a lot of like the long down and distant and two and four minute drill stuff.

But Cream Hunt's really the infected player or the infector player on this list that I'm a little bit worried about with Pacheco because I think Pacheco could obviously succeed in this offense. They're a high scoring offense or projected to be. And he could get a lot of goal line opportunities. But I do genuinely think, and you can hear this quote from Andy Reid on the snap split for Isaiah Pacheco and Cream Hunt.

I don't know how they'll divvy up, but I would imagine it'll end up being the same as we've been doing with them. They'll both be in there battling. You know, there's not much to that. It ain't that deep, but I genuinely think there's a really good chance. Kareem Hunt is there short yardage back and takes a decent chunk of the goal line work in there.

And if Pacheco's not catching a ton of passes, that makes me question whether or not he's

worth. short yardage back and takes a decent chunk of the goal line work in there. And if Pacheco's not catching a ton of passes, that makes me question whether or not he's worth like a top 25 running back type of pick. And on top of that, the chiefs are just so, so pass heavy within the 10 and five yard line. That's just the way they run their offense through Patrick Mahomes. So like, I think there's a legitimate concern with Kareem Hunt as dusty as he is. This next one is a lot more obvious to the masses at this point, but it's Aaron Jones and Jordan Mason. So Jordan Mason is the infector at this point. His ADP is almost, I think he's like a single-digit round pick. But going into the offseason, they traded for Jordan Mason. It was like a pick swap in the sixth, seventh round, some stuff like that. So nothing like overly intense there. Aaron Jones coming off of a 1,500 yard from scrimmage season. But I think it's clear now that they want to keep him healthy for the entire year and don't just want to ram them up the middle throughout the regular season. And you bring a guy like Jordan Mason in who was really, really good at basically every underlying metric you look at last year in San Francisco, 223 pounds. Every report out of camp so far, every reliable source that I've looked into is basically like, yeah, this is going to be a 50-50 split between these two. And I don't know that I buy that to start the year. I think it's Aaron Jones's backfield, probably for the first few weeks. And Jordan Mason will continue to get more and more involved. The problem is Mason's probably going to be the goal line back there. They were already extremely pass heavy on the goal line. Aaron Jones did not score a lot of rushing touchdowns last year. Jordan Mason could completely take that rushing touchdown role. Now, I do expect the Vikings offense to be good.

They have a very good offensive line. They got good personnel. You could see a younger QB like

J.J. McCarthy kind of leaning on a running back in the passing game as well. So I don't think

Aaron Jones is one that like you need to completely fade. But I have moved him down my rankings

a little bit based on the reports coming out of the Vikings

camp of just how involved Mason has been. There have been no reports of like Aaron Jones is the

starter and Mason is the backup. It's pretty much everything out of there is a steady drumbeat about

them being a split backfield. Jones being the past catcher long down and distance kind of back and

Jordan Mason being the short yardage back and it makes sense given the size discrepancy. So Jordan Mason, second running back on this list. And I mentioned Aaron Jones moving down my running back rankings. That is available to anyone within our draft guide, which went live on August 1st. All right. It is live for you right now, no matter what kind of league type you are in, Superflex, full PPR, half PPR. We have all of our rankings, flex overall, positional, our must draft players, every player that we're fading this year, our favorite targets by round. And we'll be doing in-depth articles after each preseason week as well. It's probably my favorite part of the draft guide personally, where I break down all the different like snap counts, route alignments, who's playing on third down, who's playing in goal line situations throughout all of the preseason weeks. So that's a, that's a nice little added bonus for you guys in the draft guide. You can go get it at full price on BDGE.co, but it's heavily, heavily discounted if you qualify for one of our partner offers. If you go to BDGE.co, just look in the top right of the corner. You'll see a link that says partner offers. Just click on that. Read through. If you qualify, you're going to get it for a really, really, really discounted price. So if you want access to the draft guide, it's live right now. BDGE.com. Go check out the partner offers page. Get everything you need for your fantasy football draft. this yaw number three we'll just talk in general

about joe mixon who's a back that i think you just need to completely be off of right now all of the

pessimism around his foot injury and him being like super weak to week this close to the start of the

season we're like unsure about the injury it's nick chub it's woody marks there just like, Mixing's a little bit too old to be dealing with this many injuries at this point. The offensive line is also ranked dead last in our draft guide. Number 32 in the NFL should be no surprise. They were really bad last year and then they lost Laramie Tunsell. So I just think that's going to be a split if and when Joe Mixon is even ready for the start of the season. We don't have a word on that happening. But yeah, it's all it's all bad vibes out of out of Houston for Joe Mixing. He is currently, I think, ranked as my running back like 31, whereas he was, you know, a top 15 running back going into the summer before this weird injury news kind of broke. And that's another thing that we'll be tracking in the draft guide. Each player in the rankings has different tags, whether they're a must draft player, whether a sleeper, whether they're injured. We keep you updated with little injury notes in each player write-up. But yeah, mixing is someone I think you really got to be out on until we feel great about him being ready for week one. But let us continue down the list. And I will say the

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