Auction Fantasy Football RB Strategy: Bid Up On Jahmyr Gibbs And Bijan Robinson

The running back position is arguably the most important in fantasy football. It was true in the early 2000s, and after a brief decline over the past decade, it’s true once again. The top players at the position give you a massive advantage over the rest of the league, with guys like Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor, Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs all racking up more than 325 fantasy points in 0.5-PPR leagues last year.

In traditional leagues, your draft spot is often going to determine how you attack the RB position. After all, you have no real shot at one of the top guys unless you’re picking near the top of the draft. But in an auction? You have the luxury of being able to grab whatever RBs you’d like.

How best to handle the position is the bigger question mark, and we’ll look to answer it in this piece. We can do so by using our fantasy football auction values for each tier of players and how that compares to the average auction values on both Yahoo and in high-stakes NFFC leagues. That will give us a good idea of which tiers of backs stand out as strong values and which are better to potentially avoid.

Running Back Strategy For 2026 Fantasy Football Auctions

Tier 1

These are the clear top-2 RBs in fantasy this season, and injury is seemingly the only thing stopping each from a monster season. There’s simply nothing that these guys can’t do on a football field. They’re both elite runners, each averaging at least 5.0 yards per carry last season, and they’re among the best pass-catching RBs in football. Both guys also seemed poised for larger roles: the Falcons let Tyler Allgeier walk this offseason, while the Lions moved on from David Montgomery.

Of course, these players are going to come with enormous price tags. Both are going for more than $72, on average, in Yahoo leagues, which is well above their suggested value on Fantasy Life. They’re a bit more affordable in the high-stakes format, but they’ll still set you back roughly $58 on average.

Still, if you’re going to overpay at the position, these are the guys to do it on. Getting both of them is not really doable, but I have no problem spending $60-$70 to add one of these players to your squad. There are plenty of strong value options to pair them with later on, so adding a “hero RB” with Robinson or Gibbs is definitely a viable strategy.

Tier 2

This tier is filled with big-name players, and a couple of them could challenge Robinson and Gibbs for the top spot at the position. After all, McCaffrey and Taylor just outscored both players in 0.5-PPR leagues last season.

That said, each of these players has at least one red flag that could prevent them from doing so. McCaffrey is aging and coming off a massive workload, making him a significant injury risk. Taylor doesn’t catch passes, while Cook loses goal-line carries to Josh Allen. Achane and Jeanty both feature for subpar offenses, while Walker’s role with the Chiefs has yet to be seen.

With that in mind, there should be a much larger gap in pricing between the top tier and this tier than exists in reality. These six guys have an average salary of more than $50 on Yahoo and $39 in the NFFC. That far exceeds our projected value for each player.

Ultimately, the biggest mistake that real sports franchises make is overpaying middling stars like franchise-altering ones. The same mistake can certainly be made in fantasy football, and this tier stands out as a clear trap at their current price tags. If you’re going to go big at RB, make sure you’re landing one of the premier options.

Tier 3

This tier can almost be split into two mini-tiers. The first four guys—Barkley, Henry, Hampton and Brown—all suffer from the same issues as the guys in Tier 2. There are some clear limitations to their fantasy upside, yet all four are being priced like high-end options. They check in with an average salary of roughly $42 on Yahoo, which far exceeds our projected value of roughly $28. The gap isn’t quite as steep in the high-stakes formats, but it’s still there ($36 average). That makes this another group to be wary of.

That said, the second half of this tier looks more promising. Love, Williams, Jacobs, Hall and Williams aren’t experiencing the same price gouging as the other options in this price range. All five stand out as positive values in the NFFC compared to their projected salaries on Fantasy Life, and all but Love and Jacobs do on Yahoo as well. Even those two are only moderate overpays—+$4.50 for Love, +2.20 for Jacobs—which makes them much more reasonable options than the guys in Tier 2 and the top half of Tier 3.

You could certainly consider pairing someone from the bottom half of this tier with one of Robinson or Gibbs, which would give you an elite duo at the position. You could also grab a couple of these players if the top duo gets too expensive, which would keep you competitive without having to sacrifice too much salary.

Tier 4

Tier 5

I’m lumping these two tiers together because they stand out as the best pure values using our auction values. Because most people are overspending on the Tier 2 and 3 options, the next two tiers look severely underpriced. We have the average value of the Tier 4 running backs checking in at exactly $20, yet they have an average price tag of just $11.46 on Yahoo. They aren’t quite as free in NFFC auctions, yet all but Etienne are available at a discount compared to their expected value. The same is true for the Tier 5 options, who are all going below their expected salaries.

That makes these two tiers the clear sweet spot to target from a depth standpoint. You can target a few of these guys to fill your flex spots, cover bye weeks, serve as injury fill-ins, and provide trade bait when possible. It’s also possible that one of them pops and becomes a top-flight option, even if it’s less likely than with the guys in the earlier tiers.

Tier 6 and Below

Like with Tiers 4 and 5, the players in these price ranges are all going for less than we think they should be. That said, this is where the value starts to shrink. In general, getting a potential $20 player for $10 is more valuable than getting a potential $12 player for $5.

There are still plenty of options that you could consider adding in this price range. There is nothing wrong with rounding out your bench with a couple of fliers. That said, this is more the “luxury” range than anything else; you shouldn’t really be counting on any of these players to be regular contributors, at least at the start of the year.