Week 12 Fantasy Football Backfield Report

The last week of the fantasy regular season is upon us, and fantasy owners are fighting for playoff positioning. We had an exciting Week 12 and are now officially done with byes.

This is the crazy part of the season where teams start firing coaches as well giving more run to their younger players.

For Week 12, there were no changes to the data tables besides the removal of the teams that had byes ( Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Rams).

There was some big news on Monday, that Melvin Gordon is week-to-week with a MCL injury and that Leonard Fournette has been suspended for one game.

As a reminder this weekly piece is here to help fantasy owners sort through NFL backfields and understand how coaches are using their backs. The data only breaks down the backfields that do not heavily favor one back as a bell-cow.

Let’s dive into the Week 12 data, and, as always, snap counts and red zone data come from Pro Football Reference.

Volume Metrics

The table below is sorted by total season touches for each backfield.

Situational Usage

The Chubb Show Continues for the Browns

When Carlos Hyde was shipped out of town, it was expected that Nick Chubb would replace him and handle the early down work, while Duke Johnson continued to be the primary receiving back moving forward.

While Chubb has absolutely dominated the early down work, averaging 21.2 carries in the five games since the Hyde trade, he has been way more involved in the pass game than expected.

Chubb has scored a receiving touchdown in each of the last two games and has ran more pass routes than Johnson over that span. Chubb has been the RB12 in point-per-reception (PPR) scoring from Week 6 on.

Chubb has become an absolute league-winner across the fantasy industry and should continue to eat for the rest of the season.

Chargers Risk Gordon's Health and now Will Rely on Ekeler and Jackson

Coming into Week 12, Melvin Gordon popped up on the injury report for a hamstring & knee injury. It was reported that Gordon was able to convince coaches that he was ready to roll, and they made him active against the Arizona Cardinals. Gordon was chugging right along until the third quarter where he exited with a knee injury, only to find out on Monday that he suffered an MCL injury that now makes him week-to-week.

With the in-game injury to Gordon, we saw the revival of Austin Ekeler who had been taking a major backseat to Gordon over the last few games. While he didn’t handle many carries (5), Ekeler saw 11 targets and was able to haul in 10 of them.

Justin Jackson also saw some action against Arizona, handling 7 carries and averaging 8.1 yards per carry.

Moving forward without Gordon, Ekeler stands to benefit the most, but there is a case where Jackson could handle some early down work, while Ekeler keeps a similar yet expanded role that features extended work in the passing game.

Patriots Happy to Force-Feed Michel Again

The New England Patriots were happy to get back to some smash mouth football against the New York Jets and so was Sony Michel. He handled 23 touches and found the end zone for his fifth touchdown of the year.

Michel has battled injuries all season long, but in games where he is healthy, and the Patriots have won, he has averaged 22.8 touches, 115.5 yards and 1.3 touchdowns.

He is the definition of a game flow dependent back, and in games in which New England is poised to play with a lead he has been a lock for big games.

Rex Burkhead is being activated off of IR, so it will be interesting to see how that effects Michel going forward, but with Burkhead’s injury history and the way Michel is playing it’s hard to imagine Michel's workload taking much of a hit.