A high average draft position in fantasy football doesn’t guarantee a strong season. Far from it. Busts can range from No. 1 down to the last pick on your draft board. Parity is the nature of the NFL. One year, a team is up and the next year? It can all come crashing down. The same applies to its players.
Some running backs get picked for their touches and their team’s depth chart. Not for what the numbers actually show underneath. Cleveland Browns running back Quinshon Judkins fits that description. Heading into 2026, the former Ohio State back is my choice for fantasy football bust of the year. The underlying data explains why.
Quinshon Judkins’ rookie season numbers hide real problemsCleveland Browns running back Quinshon Judkins (10) runs with the ball.Judkins finished his rookie year with 827 rushing yards and 7 touchdowns on 3.6 yards per carry across 14 games. He added 171 receiving yards on 26 catches. Those totals were enough for a finish as fantasy’s RB26 in PPR points per game. That sounds usable on the surface. Maybe even downright promising considering Judkins was a rookie and this is the Browns we’re talking about after all.
The advanced numbers tell a different story. Among 49 qualifying running backs, Judkins ranked 40th in explosive run rate, 33rd in missed tackle rate and 26th in yards after contact per attempt, according to Fantasy Points Data. He also averaged just 1.4 yards before contact per carry, the lowest mark among those 49 backs. His offensive line gave him almost no room to work before defenders arrived.
Cleveland spent the offseason rebuilding that line, adding four new starters around left tackle Teven Jenkins. Better blocking should help. It doesn’t fix Judkins’ limited role in the passing game, which remains the bigger issue for his fantasy value.
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He ran a route on just 28% of Cleveland’s pass plays last season, a mark that ranked 50th among running backs. Judkins did not draw a single target on third or fourth down all year. That says a lot. Fellow Browns running back Dylan Sampson took on that work instead, posting a 1.90 yards per route run mark that tied Bijan Robinson for the position lead among backs with enough routes to qualify.
Cleveland let Jerome Ford leave in free agency without drafting a replacement, so that passing-down job now belongs to Sampson alone in 2026.
The quarterback decision raises more questions than it answersBrowns quarterback Deshaun Watson (4) warms up before the game between the Browns and the Buffalo Bills at Huntington Bank Field.Cleveland named Deshaun Watson the Week 1 starter over Shedeur Sanders, but the preseason numbers ran the other way. Sanders completed 68.2% of his passes for 153 yards, a touchdown and an interception. Watson completed 16 of 27 passes for 162 yards with an interception and no touchdowns, and he struggled badly against Buffalo’s reserves with a 5-of-12 outing.
Head coach Todd Monken said the decision came down to Watson’s overall body of work and experience rather than one preseason performance, but Sanders closed the gap enough that the choice was not a landslide.
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That matters for Judkins because game tempo and game script drive a running back’s workload. Watson has gone 9-10 as Cleveland’s starter with 19 touchdowns and 12 interceptions in that stretch, and the Browns ranked 31st in points scored a year ago. A team that trails often has to pass more and run less, and Judkins was already a non-factor once Cleveland fell behind, averaging just 3.7 fourth-quarter touches per game last season.
If Watson struggles again and the offense keeps trailing, Judkins loses touches in exactly the situations where Sampson gains them. A running back who cannot catch passes and cannot be trusted late in games has a low ceiling on a team built to play from behind, no matter what the offensive line looks like up front.
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