Brian Robinson Jr. was highlighted on every draft sheet I held this time a year ago. He showed flashes of versatility in 2023 (83.7% catch rate with five games of three-plus receptions) and ran hard down the stretch (74.5% of his yards came after contact from Week 10-18, a rate that ranked ahead of Josh Jacobs).
Antonio Gibson’s 654 yards and 59 targets were replaced by a veteran in Austin Ekeler, who appeared to be on his last legs while the team was working with a rookie QB.
RB28 wasn’t what I had in mind.
Fantasy Football Ace: Brian Robinson, RB, Washington Commanders
He didn’t have a bad season (4.3 yards per carry was better than what he averaged the year prior, and eight scores on the ground was one more than he had total through two seasons). Still, Ekeler having gas left in the tank (RB34) and Jayden Daniels taking the league by storm left us underwhelmed.
Stay the course.
Ekeler is another year older, and the surprisingly productive Zach Ertz (six scores in seven games to end the regular season after scoring eight times in his three years in Arizona) is 34 years old and unlikely to recreate his late-season surge over the course of a 17-game season.
This was a condensed offense in the first place (Terry McLaurin and Ertz accounted for 40.5% of this offense’s receptions while Daniels and Robinson accounted for 21.6 carries per game), and I expect that to again be the case in 2025.
Hmm. A franchise-altering quarterback with the ability to threaten defenses in unique ways with limited receiver help.
Sound familiar?
Could that sentence not have been pulled from a Josh Allen profile following the departures of Stefon Diggs and Gabe Davis?
James Cook was a rather ordinary fantasy option prior to his breakout 2024 (RB8 in total points, RB11 per game), and I think there is an interesting thread to pull when comparing him to Robinson.
- Cook, Year 1 with Allen: 69.7% of his carries saw him gain a yard or less before contact
- Robinson, Year 1 with Daniels: 68.4% of his carries saw him gain a yard or less before contact
My working theory is that these uniquely gifted signal callers require a bit of a learning curve. Maybe not in terms of wins and losses (Allen has had plenty of success, and the Commanders obviously overachieved in 2024), but for the pieces around him in response to how defenses line up.
Priority number one is to slow down the dynamic athlete who starts every snap with the ball. However, the line of scrimmage is crowded, and spies are aplenty, making traditional handoffs a bit of a struggle.
Short-term.
The best play-calling minds and the most crafty quarterbacks find a way to carve out running lanes by leveraging their specific strengths.
- Cook, Years 2-3 with Allen: 53.4% of his carries saw him gain a yard or less before contact
That’s a significant change, and I don’t think it happened accidentally. Combining creative schemes with increased confidence when it comes to navigating defenses is a natural evolution for these teams that are positioned to contend at a high level, something we all believe Washington is in a position to do.
Brian Robinson Jr. goes 39 yards for the TD!
📺: #TENvsWAS on CBS/Paramount+
📱: https://t.co/waVpO8ZBqG pic.twitter.com/JND4tTb6ka— NFL (@NFL) December 1, 2024
It should go without saying that these carries, the ones where the running back is picking up more than a yard before a hand is laid on him, hold tremendous value, but I’m nothing if not a sharer of information, so let’s look at the specifics.
- 2024 Robinson, when gaining over a yard before contact: 47.7% over expectation
- 2024 Robinson, when not gaining over a yard before contact: 36.9% under expectation
Understand where I’m going with this? If we simply give Robinson the same rate of carries gaining no more than a yard before contact in 2025 that Cook has had since his introductory season with Allen and kept his production rates stable, we are adding roughly 40 PPR points to his profile and moving him up from PPG RB28 (behind Rhamondre Stevenson) to RB20 (ahead of Aaron Jones).
Never mind if we project growth in the pass-catching department. Robinson’s target rate dropped from 19.7% to 13.5% a season ago, and his value added per target also ranked (+0.46 EPA per target in 2023 and -0.23 in 2024). It’s very possible that what we saw last year was something of a floor outcome, and with opportunities more likely to be added to his plate than subtracted, there’s expected to be plenty of room for profit this draft season.
