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Should you draft TreVeyon Henderson, RJ Harvey, and Kaleb Johnson in fantasy football in 2025? John breaks down the fantasy outlooks for these rookies.
Three rookie running backs, New England Patriots RB TreVeyon Henderson, Denver Broncos RB RJ Harvey, and Pittsburgh Steelers tailback Kaleb Johnson, have all been looked at by fantasy managers at some point before the 2025 season as great running back prospects.
Though Johnson's ADP has fallen drastically, especially in redraft leagues, both Henderson and Harvey are routinely being selected with picks inside the first five rounds of PPR leagues. Both are talented athletes, and both are in offenses that most fantasy managers have high hopes for.
Johnson tested poorly at the combine and hasn't shown the athleticism the other two have, but he had high hopes nonetheless due to his college production in the Big 10. So let's break down these three rookies' fantasy football outlooks and which you should draft in fantasy football!
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TreVeyon Henderson Fantasy Football Outlook
The hype for Henderson has reached astronomical levels. It's easy to see why. His raw athleticism is very impressive, and his top speed is among the best of all the rookie running backs. In his 40-yard dash, only Los Angeles Chargers running back Raheim Sanders ran faster.
Top speeds from the 40-yard dash can be found in real time on Combine IQ available exclusively at https://t.co/wrO9IlFLxv.
Led by @GamecockFB’s Raheim Sanders (23.55 mph) & @OhioStateFB’s TreVeyon Henderson (23.38 mph), here’s a look at the fastest 40s among running backs. pic.twitter.com/HYFxSz6uti
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) March 1, 2025
So when Henderson, who had already been shooting up draft boards due to the big play he had in the National Championship, returned a kickoff for a touchdown in the preseason, the hype went into overdrive. He shot up draft boards in redraft leagues and is now routinely a fourth and fifth-round pick.
My analysis has indicated that he's not worth being picked here. The athleticism is excellent, that can't be denied, but the statistics and film show that he's just not good at playing through contact. Ideally, he's not meaningfully contacted on plays if you want him to create explosive runs.
Bhayshul Tuten is elusive all around but was notably productive up the middle at VT pic.twitter.com/Urax9F1lfV
— Football Insights 📊 (@fball_insights) May 14, 2025
It's true that he broke some arm tackles on a preseason touchdown run. It's probably not a great idea to ignore his entire history as a college running back and assume that he's an elite tackle-breaker. When he's meaningfully contacted, he tends not to do much.
Look at our guy TreVeyon Henderson!
Cannot believe he fell to the 2nd round! pic.twitter.com/gKTavayGcR
— Jon Gruden (@BarstoolGruden) August 16, 2025
Pay attention to the above play. The tackle attempts he breaks are just arm and hand tackles. His missed tackle per touch rate in college was abysmal on inside runs. Henderson seems to be being drafted as if he'll be a workhorse, but he struggles to shrug off strong tackle attempts.
His 0.1 MTF/Att rate on inside runs is miserable, and only better than Woody Marks' rate of any back drafted in the first four rounds. Despite his athleticism, he only generated explosive plays on just over 12 percent of his A-gap runs, a middling rate. His yards per rush and yards after contact were similarly bad.
On outside runs, including those in the B, C, and D gaps, he fared better, but was still a poor tackle avoider. So the Patriots have reason to have a bigger, more physical running back take care of the short-yardage work. Henderson's play was very weak at the goal line, too. That's why RB Quinshon Judkins took those touches.
'Through contact skillset'
Henderson’s capabilities as a through contact back are neither impressive nor wide-ranging.
Can’t create explosives with consistency once direct contact or a wrap attempt is initiated.
His pad angle is too flat when initiating most of the time -… pic.twitter.com/MYNijf9jcU
— AngeloFF (@angelo_fantasy) April 12, 2025
Henderson is a player who needs to be put in space. Space can be hard to come by in the NFL, where teams are better at setting the edge, choking off rushing lanes, and hitting running backs at the line of scrimmage, especially on teams with poor offensive lines. The Patriots had the league's worst offensive line last season by a mile.
This was apparent both on film and by every analytical system that exists to grade offensive line units. All were in agreement that New England was horrible at opening up lanes in the running game and protecting the quarterback. That's a tough thing to change in one season.
Henderson is intriguing in best ball, and to the degree that the team can get him open lanes to run through, he has plenty of upside. But he's being drafted ahead of several workhorse running backs with more complete skill sets, and that's not worth his ADP, according to my analysis.
RJ Harvey Fantasy Football Outlook
Harvey was a surprise pick for many in the second round of the NFL Draft. I've been a staunch proponent of his since before the draft, and have claimed that he has league-winning potential before the Broncos selected him. This may be one of my takes that ages the best of all.
Elite prospect, league winner.
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) February 27, 2025
It felt like screaming into the void at a time when Harvey was ranked outside the top-15 at RBs, before he was drafted by the Broncos, of course. But Denver is an absolutely insane landing spot for the rookie. They had one of the best offensive lines in football last season.
The Broncos had the No. 1 offensive line in run-block AND pass-block win rate last year, per ESPN Analytics. But as Mike McGlinchey said, "I really don't care where we're ranked. I care about how we play. And I think we played well ... but at the same time, there's a ton of room… pic.twitter.com/PwiBgUb2oE
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) July 23, 2025
Harvey is a fantastic athlete. He's highly elusive, runs a 4.41-second 40-yard dash, is a great accelerator and has great top speed, has elite contact balance, and is a legitimately good pass-catcher. He was massively underrated coming out of college, bafflingly so.
Harvey crushed it in college in his final three seasons. He averaged over 6.0 yards per carry in each despite being the only great offensive player on his team. Defenses never found an answer for him. His final season was his biggest masterpiece.
Unlike Quinshon Judkins, who often had very poor games at Ohio State against good competition, even with great run blocking, RJ Harvey just smashed every P4 team he played against in 2024. Not a bad game in his game log here, and he didn't have Treveyon Henderson to spell him. pic.twitter.com/W5coQxT70V
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) June 3, 2025
The area of Harvey's game that's most lacking is his pass-protection. Running backs like De'Von Achane and Bucky Irving were awful pass-protectors, though, and that didn't stop them from earning huge roles in their backfields. Good offensive-minded coaches can find a way to scheme their plays to minimize the drawbacks of this.
13 minutes of RJ Harvey balling out to cleanse your Thursday feed 💯 pic.twitter.com/MT9SwkEdqD
— Karsen 🐎 (@Broncos4six) July 17, 2025
Harvey's film is otherworldly. He's a nightmare in the open field due to his combination of elusiveness and contact balance. He's also wildly underrated, from what I've seen on social media, at finding gaps from behind the offensive line and quickly laterally bounding to where he needs to be.
He has great agility and can accelerate quickly from awkward leg plant angles, which helps with his bend around corners and to change direction while picking up speed. He's not a plodder, but that's not typically what you want, anyway. It's better for a player's health and for his production to make defenders miss.
RJ Harvey showed off perfect execution in a goal-to-go rushing scenario against Arizona
Squeezes through the hole, finds the opening and gets in for the TD. I think he could be Denver’s true RB1 relatively quickly this year. pic.twitter.com/Ic0HbB0CI4
— Andy (@AndyyNFL) August 17, 2025
Broncos head coach Sean Payton hasn't selected a running back this high in an NFL Draft in a long time. Specifically not since 2006, when the New Orleans Saints picked Reggie Bush. Payton has huge plans for Harvey, more so than the RB that wasn't signed until June.
J.K. Dobbins was a good signing by the Broncos because he's a good pass-protector. And his just over $5 million per year salary is a drop in the bucket, salary cap-wise. After analyzing the film and advanced stats, I strongly believe Harvey is the far more talented back and is set to have a monster season.
You're likely to have to use a fourth-round pick to draft him in redraft leagues now, but it's worth it. The upside is Alvin Kamara-esque, and that's absolutely worth it. You might have to wait a few weeks for the production to ramp up, though, as is often the case with rookie players.
Kaleb Johnson Fantasy Football Outlook
Back in April, I wrote an article detailing everything I didn't like about Johnson as a prospect. My mind hasn't changed since then. Johnson was one of the slowest running backs at the 2025 NFL Combine, and his lack of speed is evident on tape. He's also not elusive and doesn't have great contact balance.
Much to my lack of surprise, he hasn't impressed in the preseason. I specifically noted that he hardly makes positive gains on plays in which he's meaningfully contacted in the backfield, and like clockwork, the only big plays we saw from him in the preseason were where he was minimally contacted, or just not at all.
Kaleb Johnson - every rush/target - preseason game three https://t.co/Bty1X9TzTE pic.twitter.com/3NLonAJoFZ
— Jacob Gibbs (@jagibbs_23) August 24, 2025
You can see the above film here. The first rep is especially concerning. He gets a gaping hole opened for him in the defense, and rather than turn it into an explosive play, he falls to a simple trip attempt. As he always does. Johnson's film is full of him getting tripped constantly and lacking the contact balance to stay upright.
Another thing I hate about Kaleb Johnson is how easy it is to trip him. At some point (if I don't forget) I'm gonna make a compilation of all the times he gets easily tripped that I can find from his senior season. It happens multiple times per game. Poor contact balance. pic.twitter.com/DxjCWvCNYd
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) August 12, 2025
I intended to make a compilation of Johnson getting tripped in college to demonstrate how much of a problem it was. Luckily, I thought better and figured that the issues would show up pretty quickly. And they already have. For a running back of his size, he doesn't seem to have the lower-body strength to keep his balance in these situations.
Let's compare this to Kaleb Johnson's attempts at breaking tackles. Or in other words you can just trip him and he goes down pic.twitter.com/6MWoeX8cuK
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) June 14, 2025
I could post endless clips of this. I'm not the only analyst who sees a lot of Trent Richardson in his runs. In the play below, you can see a good example of this. Richardson has some famous clips where he doesn't see clear holes in front of him.
I do genuinely wonder if Kaleb Johnson has bad vision or just knows he's not athletic enough to even juke defensive linemen. This should be a touchdown. Literally just make a cut to the right and he can follow 67 into the endzone. He can't read his blocks. Just plows forward. pic.twitter.com/xhHkhnM2lE
— JohnJohn Analysis (@JohnJohnalytics) August 12, 2025
The bad reps just go on and on. Iowa had the highest-rated run blocking of any team in the Power 4 group of conferences in college football last season, and Johnson benefited from fantastic run-blocking, but not everyone gets to play for the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL.
Kaleb Johnson is the most overrated prospect in the class
- Made the least out of elite blocking
- Terrible open-field elusiveness
- Outside-zone only option with a 1.62 10-yard split
- Goes down on light contact
- Runs high with poor leg drive and head-on powerDay 3 Talent pic.twitter.com/7WjWMxdsW8
— Dynasty Zoltan (@DynastyZoltanFF) April 17, 2025
Don't draft Johnson in any leagues.
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