2026 Fantasy Football RB Sleepers: Late-Round Running Backs to Target

The top part of drafts always hold incredibly intriguing names. The players that will make your fantasy football season go as engines of your roster, such as Ja’Marr Chase, Bijan Robinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, etc.

However, it’s the players later on down the board that are flying under the radar that can push your lineups over the top. The ones who no one else seemingly wanted to draft, but who were able to be inserted into your lineup week in and week out and provide solid production.

With that in mind, here are the top RB names to monitor as sleepers heading into this 2026 NFL season.

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Fantasy Football Sleeper Running Backs

Jacory Croskey-Merritt, RB, Washington Commanders

The hype train got a little bit too far out of control for Jacory Croskey-Merritt going into 2025. He was a 7th round NFL Draft pick that had other competition in his backfield, but that didn’t stop fantasy managers from drafting him at his absolute ceiling.

And yet, while it feels like a disappointment because of where he ended up going once fantasy drafts finally started happening, it was still a solid rookie campaign for the former Arizona Wildcat.

175 rush attempts for 805 yards and eight touchdowns on the ground is insanely impressive for a rookie season from a 7th round draft pick, but it wasn’t just the pure, raw stats.

In 2025, Jacory Croskey-Merritt posted a 53.7% rushing success rate. For comparison, Saquon Barkley posted a 42.1% success rate, Bijan Robinson posted a 51.6%, and Jahmyr Gibbs posted a 46.5% mark.

He was good, but fantasy managers are now completely disinterested in selecting the lead option for this Commanders backfield and he’s going off the board as the RB41 in the latest Consensus ADP update.

Rachaad White is on just a one-year, $2,000,000 deal and will play a very specific role as a pass-catching back, while rookie Kaytron Allen is nothing more than a short-yardage option that may or may not make the team.

Chris Rodriguez Jr. is out of town, which means that Croskey-Merritt could wind up seeing a substantial workload for a much-improved offense in 2026 with a healthy Jayden Daniels.

All of this lines up to scream that we should be drafting Croskey-Merritt well above where his ADP currently is. The second-year back lands at RB32 in my latest rankings update and he could rise up even further as the offseason moves along.

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Chris Rodriguez Jr., RB, Jacksonville Jaguars

The end of the year fantasy stats might not scream it from the mountaintops, but Chris Rodriguez Jr. was a very effective RB last season for the Commanders when he got his opportunities.

In 2025, Chris Rodriguez Jr. had a 3.5 Rushing EPA mark, which was 8th in the NFL for qualified rushers, according to NextGen Stats. He did this all while seeing a stacked box on 31.3% of his runs, which was the highest percentage for RBs in the top 10 of Rushing EPA.

For context, this was higher than players like Jonathan Taylor, Derrick Henry, Omarion Hampton, and Jahmyr Gibbs.

He’s not going to be a player that rips off large explosive runs routinely (only two runs of 20+ yards in 2025), but he is an incredibly smart and intuitive RB that knows how to pick up just an extra yard than what is needed.

He was handed a sizable contract in the offseason by the Jacksonville Jaguars to reunite with Liam Coen, who was his OC at Kentucky in college, and he’s not simply going to just sit on the bench.

There’s a very possible scenario where Rodriguez handles the majority of the touches in this backfield in 2026, while Bhayshul Tuten comes in to provide the spark on offense as a change-of-pace player. A recent example of this type of projected split would be David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs in Detroit before Gibbs completely took over the backfield…

This means Rodriguez Jr. would handle the goal-line work and be the lead option for an offense that is ascending. If I can get that as the RB42 off the board, 60 picks later than Tuten, I will do that every single day of the week.

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Isiah Pacheco, RB, Detroit Lions

There aren’t a ton of positive statistics you can point to for this selection of Isiah Pacheco as a sleeper in 2026.

It’s been two full seasons now since we saw him lead this Kansas City backfield and average 66.8 yards per game before suffering a leg injury and not looking the same since that point.

He lost the lead role last season to an aging veteran in Kareem Hunt and the Chiefs made no effort to re-sign him in free agency, but Detroit scooped him up early on to be the David Montgomery replacement after he was shipped off to the Houston Texans this offseason.

This is Gibbs’ backfield; no one’s disputing that. However, Detroit has always wanted to run a balanced offense and Gibbs can’t handle 25+ touches every single week.

That leaves some standalone work for Pacheco to be on the Flex radar in bye weeks, but he carries immense upside as a volume play in a good offense if Gibbs were to ever miss time.

You’re not drafting him to be a locked-in starter for your lineup – he’s going off the board as the RB45 – but a high-upside depth option for your roster is certainly intriguing at this acquisition cost.

The Latest RB Rankings Update