DRBR: Carolina Panthers

Yeah, when you look at the DRBR scores for the Carolina Panthers backfield, there's not a whole lot to love. There's not even a whole lot to like, to be honest with you. In fact, the most explosive running back on their roster right now may be the newly drafted Jonathan Brooks, who is about six months removed from an ACL tear.

Miles Sanders, who the Carolina Panthers invested in as a free agent, was just downright bad last season in terms of volume and efficiency. When you put the ball in his hands, he really wasn't giving you any upside whatsoever. So they moved to Chuba Hubbard and made him the starter last season, and it went okay, but it was more based on the volume than it was on the efficiency. If he got X amount of carries in any given week, you got a decent amount of fantasy points, but the big plays just were not there.

Part of that is because of the offense. The offense as a whole was a mess last season. They didn't have nearly enough playmakers, and Bryce Young didn't look like the first overall pick. And while Chuba Hubbard's yards after contact and tackles avoided per attempt aren't awful and are way better than what we saw from Miles Sanders, there's also a great possibility that neither of those numbers will touch what Jonathan Brooks does when he's fully healthy. I don't expect Jonathan Brooks to make a huge impact this season. If he starts to get more and more of a workload, it will be towards the mid to end portion of the season.

So in drafting Chuba Hubbard this year, who is likely going to be the first guy you should take in this backfield, don't go any earlier on him than maybe your RB4. Chuba Hubbard, because of his lack of upside, should be looked at as depth. If he gives you depth and he's a guy that you can play maybe on the bye weeks or if you have some injuries, that's not that bad. But if you draft Chuba Hubbard as your RB2 in some weird zero RB type of draft strategy, it's not going to work out all that well for you.

When you think Chuba Hubbard, think depth and nothing else.