an RB17 career year on a clean touchdown rate, priced RB28, but the Rico Dowdle signing turns a lead role into a genuine timeshare. The receiving role is the floor.
Jaylen Warren 2026 Season Preview — a career year, then the Steelers signed a back
Show notes & transcript▾
Jaylen Warren just posted a career year as Pittsburgh's lead back — and the Steelers immediately went and signed another one. He finished RB17; he's the twenty-eighth back off the board. The gap is the value; the new signing is the catch. The Muffed 2026 preview.
The 2025 season was the best of his career: two hundred eleven carries for nine hundred fifty-eight yards, six touchdowns, plus forty catches — thirteen-six a game, RB19 per game, RB17 in total, on a clean touchdown rate. The signature was a Week 16 against Detroit: a hundred forty-three rushing yards, two scores, twenty-nine points. After three years behind Najee Harris, he finally got the lead role and produced with it.
The arc shows the breakout in context: five-eight, eleven-six, eight-three, and now thirteen-six — a backup who took a step up every time his snaps did, and posted a career high the year he led the backfield.
What the data says: the production is real and the touchdown rate is clean — at twenty-two percent there's no luck to give back, and the receiving role, forty catches, is the sticky kind that travels. On his 2025 usage, RB28 is too cheap. The problem isn't the player; it's whether he keeps the workload.
Because the situation, per the reports, is the whole catch: Najee Harris left, which opened the job — but Pittsburgh signed Rico Dowdle, coming off back-to-back thousand-yard seasons, to a two-year deal, and the early read is a committee in which Dowdle may lead the touches. Warren has never been a true bell-cow, and the Steelers just paid for a reason he might not become one now.
The price: pick seventy, the twenty-eighth back. Verdict: WATCHLIST — his 2025 production says he's underpriced at RB28, but the Dowdle signing turns a clear lead role into a genuine timeshare, and that's exactly why the market discounted him. The counter for him: he's the incumbent who just finished RB17, with a secure passing-down role that floors his value even in a split. Against: teams don't pay a free-agent back to sit, and Warren's never won a workload outright.
September watch: the carry split with Rico Dowdle — the entire bet; and the receiving usage, the part of his role that survives a committee. Your guys, every week. That closes batch two of the next fifty — the countdown rolls on.
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2025: 958 rushing yards on 211 carries, 6 rushing TDs; 40 catches for 333 yards, 2 receiving TDs on 45 targets (16 games)
More episodes
2025 ReviewMay 11, 2026Jaylen Warren 2025 Season in Review
RB17 on the season — 16 games, 13.6 PPR/game
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Jaylen Warren 2025 Season in Review
RB17 on the season — 16 games, 13.6 PPR/game
Show notes & transcript
Jaylen Warren finished 2025 as the number 17 running back in total PPR scoring and the number 19 running back in PPR per game — solidly inside the back-end-of-RB2 conversation, but not the every-week anchor drafters paid for last summer. His year is the story of a committee that never tipped his way. Kenneth Gainwell ate 114 carries all season, and that ceiling cap is the single biggest reason Warren's per-game number landed where it did. Sixteen games, efficient on contact, a usable line almost every week — but Pittsburgh never handed him the bell-cow workload that would've pushed him into the top twelve.
Now let's dig into the numbers, because the efficiency case is genuinely strong. He ran 211 times for 958 yards, 4.5 a pop, with 6 rushing scores, and added 40 catches on 45 targets for 333 yards and 2 more touchdowns through the air — a 10 percent target share, real passing-down value for a back. The headline: plus 180.6 rushing yards over expected, eighth among qualified runners, and plus 0.9 yards over expected per carry. He was creating roughly a yard per attempt beyond what the blocking and box count predicted — against stacked fronts, with 32 percent of his carries coming against eight or more defenders in the box. And he was steady. He averaged 13.6 PPR a game and lived in a tight band, with fourteen of sixteen games landing between 6 and 20 points. Steady floor, not boom-or-bust, with exactly one true spike: 29.1 against Detroit in Week 16 on 143 rushing yards and two scores.
That Detroit game crystallizes the season. Fourth quarter, Steelers up 15 to 10, second and five from the Lions' 45 — Warren took it left end, untouched, 45 yards to the house. Later in the same quarter, up 22 to 17, first and ten from the same spot — 45 yards again, left tackle, touchdown. Two explosive runs from identical field position in one quarter, both finishing in the end zone. It was the only game all year Pittsburgh truly let Warren cook, and he answered with the kind of line that hints at what a full workload could look like. The rest of the season was the honest version: efficient touches inside a committee, capped by Gainwell's role and by an offense that ranked just 26th in yards per carry as a team.
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