paying RB27 for the memory of a 16-point 2024 after an RB41 collapse, in a Carolina committee built to shift toward Jonathon Brooks. A usage question.
Chuba Hubbard 2026 Season Preview — a career-year memory, a splitting backfield
Show notes & transcript▾
Chuba Hubbard ran for sixteen points a game two years ago and eight last year. The market is paying for the memory of the good season — in a backfield that's about to split. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was a collapse: a hundred thirty-four carries for five hundred eleven yards and a single rushing touchdown, plus thirty catches — eight-four a game, RB41 per game, a steep fall from the year before. The signature, such as it was, came in Week 13 against the Rams: eighty-three rushing yards, a score, twenty points. But the volume was down and the touchdowns were gone — one all season, a number so low it almost has to climb.
The arc is a spike surrounded by mediocrity: eight-six, six-four, ten-seven, then a career year at sixteen-one in 2024, and back to eight-four. The sixteen-point season is the outlier the price is anchored to; the rest of his career says complementary back.
What the data says: he's a career-year-five back now, the band where our aging rule starts to dock production, and his one fantasy-relevant bright spot — the lone rushing touchdown — is a positive-regression candidate, not a red flag. But no clean pattern makes this a confident call either way. It's a usage question.
And the situation, per the reports, is why it's a watch: Rico Dowdle left for Pittsburgh, clearing one competitor — but second-year back Jonathon Brooks is returning from injury, and Carolina has signaled a committee, with Hubbard the early-down lead to open the year and Brooks expected to grow into a featured role as the season goes, the same arc Dowdle followed last year. Hubbard could hold the job; he could also cede it by midseason.
The price: pick sixty-nine, the twenty-seventh back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — the 2024 ceiling and the early-down lead role argue up; the 2025 collapse, the age, and a committee built to shift toward Brooks argue down. The counter for him: if Brooks isn't fully back, Hubbard's the workhorse on a clear path, and one touchdown is nowhere to go but up. Against: you're paying RB27 for the early-down half of a backfield designed to move away from him.
September watch: the carry split with Jonathon Brooks — the whole question; and the touchdown rate, where one is the floor. Your guys, every week. Next preview's queued.
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2025: 511 rushing yards on 134 carries, 1 rushing TDs; 30 catches for 223 yards, 3 receiving TDs on 39 targets (15 games)
More episodes
2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026Chuba Hubbard 2025 Season in Review
RB38 on the season — 15 games, 8.4 PPR/game
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Chuba Hubbard 2025 Season in Review
RB38 on the season — 15 games, 8.4 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
Chuba Hubbard finished 2025 as the number 38 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 41 in PPR per game. That's the headline right there — Hubbard came into the season as Carolina's lead back, and instead of building on it, he watched Rico Dowdle take the job and run with it. Literally. By midseason, Hubbard was the change-of-pace and passing-down option in his own backfield: 134 carries, just one rushing touchdown, and a fantasy line propped up almost entirely by early-season receiving work. The Panthers won the NFC South as the four seed. Hubbard was a passenger on that run, not the engine.
Now let's dig into the numbers, because they tell a brutal story for a presumed bell cow. Hubbard averaged 8.4 PPR per game across 15 games — barely a flex floor — and the bottom didn't just wobble, it fell out. He ran for 511 yards on 134 carries, 3.8 a pop, with rushing yards over expected of minus 39.2 on the season and minus 0.3 per attempt, 44th among qualified runners. Compare that to backfield-mate Dowdle — plus 146.4 rushing yards over expected on 236 carries with six rushing scores — and the workload shift explains itself. The consistency profile is uglier still: Hubbard cleared 15 PPR exactly twice all year, and posted single-digit games in 11 of 15 appearances, including a Week 9 through Week 12 stretch of 1.7, 2.5, 3.8, and 8.3. Three receiving touchdowns and 30 catches on a 9 percent target share were the only things keeping the weekly scores from being even worse.
The defining play of Hubbard's fantasy year came in Week 1 at Jacksonville. Third and 8, Panthers down 7 in the first quarter — Bryce Young hit him on a short route and Hubbard turned it into a 35-yard touchdown with 40 yards after the catch. He posted 17.9 PPR that day and looked like a locked-in starter. He'd score one more rushing touchdown the rest of the season. Week 1 was the ceiling. Everything after was the slow erosion of a job he was supposed to own.
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