Tyrone Tracy Jr. wound up being a really solid late-round selection last season. It’s rare for fifth-round rookies to make an impact, but Tracy took over the New York Giants RB1 role from Devin Singletary. This year, Tracy is the incumbent facing a challenge from another rookie. Is Tracy someone fantasy football managers should be avoiding?
Tyrone Tracy Jr. Fantasy Outlook
Every year, I mostly dismiss any hype about Day 3 rookies, especially guys who went in Round 5 and later. The fantasy community loves to hype up college darlings who rarely pan out. Remember DeWayne McBride, Evan Hull, Zach Evans, and Jermar Jefferson? No? Exactly.
That’s not to say every later Day 3 running back is useless. Isiah Pacheco, Elijah Mitchell, Aaron Jones, and Chris Carson do exist. It’s more that the hits should all be considered outliers. No one should ever expect anything from later Day 3 running backs.
Last year, Tracy joined a Giants roster featuring Devin Singletary and Eric Gray as primary competition. It was a wide-open backfield. But even with the favorable situation, it took a Singletary injury to truly open the door for Tracy to take over.
To his credit, though, Tracy would not have been able to hold the job even after Singletary returned if he weren’t good at football. Tracy averaged 4.9 yards per touch, 23rd in the league, and 3.59 yards created per touch, 24th. Both are very solid numbers for a fifth-round rookie.
Follow Tyrone Tracy Jr step for step on all six of his 20 yard runs from 2024 pic.twitter.com/z1jrYyzK9C
— Talkin’ Giants (@TalkinGiants) June 30, 2025
Where Tracy offered the most upside was as a pass catcher. A former wide receiver, Tracy earned a 9.6% target share and wound up 12th in the league in routes run. This was despite playing fewer than 30% of the snaps and averaging single-digit routes run per game for the first month of the season.
Tracy wound up averaging 10.7Â fantasy points per game on the season. However, if you remove the first four games of the season when he was a seldom-used backup, we get 13.1 PPG, which would have put him at RB21 over a full season.
Fantasy managers should naturally expect improvement for Tracy in his second season. Yet, the excitement has waned due to the Giants selecting Cam Skattebo in the early fourth round. While Skattebo is also a Day 3 pick, he has earlier draft capital than Tracy. Plus, Singletary is still there. Suddenly, there’s a whole lot more competition for touches in this backfield.
With both Skattebo and Tracy present, fantasy managers are understandably not particularly confident in who will be the lead back. Therefore, both running backs have ADPs in the 30s, with Tracy slightly ahead of the rookie at RB31 vs. RB37.
Tracy had fumbling issues last season, but head coach Brian Daboll always went back to him. It would be a major surprise if Tracy didn’t start and operate as the primary pass-catching back. The concern is if Skattebo eats too much into Tracy’s rushing role, plus steals goal line work.
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If Tracy were some boring veteran, I would be more excited about Skattebo. However, Tracy, being just a sophomore, I don’t see him losing his job that easily. Even if he’s not quite the 13 PPG player he was as the lead back last season, a drop outside of RB3 territory seems unlikely.
I have Tracy ranked at RB32, but I am a bit more bullish on him than that ranking would suggest. I believe Tracy is being undervalued due to the excitement about a rookie who I don’t think is anything special. If these ADPs hold, I will be targeting Tracy a lot as my RB3 or RB4.
Dan Fornek’s Tyrone Tracy Jr. Projection
Tracy emerged as a valuable rookie in fantasy drafts late last summer after being drafted in the fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft. That move looked to be a bad one through the first four weeks (17 touches), but it ended up turning a corner after a Devin Singletary injury let Tracy earn an expanded role.
From Weeks 5 to 18, Tracy handled 68.3% of the Giants’ offensive snaps, carrying the ball 180 times for 810 yards and five touchdowns. He also added 34 receptions (on 47 targets) for 243 yards and a touchdown. Tracy finished as the RB31 in PPR points per game with a minimum of eight games played (10.7) but was the RB22 (13.2 PPG) after Week 5.
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Tracy looked to have minimal competition in the backfield through free agency, but didn’t survive the draft after the Giants took Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo in the fourth round. Scattebo was the driving force in the Sun Devils’ offense, carrying the ball 293 yards for 1,711 yards and 21 touchdowns while adding 45 receptions for 605 yards and three touchdowns. He will be an excellent early down back due to his size and contact balance, but can also earn targets in the passing game.
At best, Tracy is trapped in a true backfield split with a back who can dominate and thrive in the early down and goal-line role. He can still have value (especially in PPR leagues) as the pass catcher on a team with a bad defense that will be in shootouts, but it will be hard for him to be a top 20 fantasy running back consistently.
