2024 Fantasy Football Running Back Tiers: Jahmyr Gibbs’ injury mixes things up

When drafting your Fantasy Football team for 2024, you should never do it based just on one list. Whether it’s rankings, projections, tiers, or average draft position, using any of these by themselves is going to lead to value missed. With that in mind, I have created tiers below that are mostly based on my projections. If you use these in conjunction with ADP, you’ll be on the right path.

My running back tiers got a shake-up on Monday night with the news that Jahmyr Gibbs suffered a hamstring injury on Monday. Seeing as we still have more than three weeks until the season starts, there should be plenty of time for Gibbs to recover assuming this is nothing more than a normal hamstring injury. But Gibbs has battled this specific injury multiple times, including last season and earlier this offseason. At the very least, this injury takes Gibbs out of first-round consideration for me and bumps him down one tier in the tiers below. If we find out the injury is more serious, he’ll drop even more.

Of course, the flip side is the effect an injury like this has on the value of David Montgomery. The Lions have talked about increasing Gibbs’ workload this season and I believed them. Because of that, Montgomery fell in Tier 8 strictly based on projections. I’ve taken 10% of Gibbs’ workload in my projections and given that work to Montgomery, which bumps him up to Tier 6. 

What this injury should highlight though, is Montgomery’s contingent upside. If Gibbs were to suffer a long-term injury, we’d expect Montgomery to perform like a Tier 4 back at worst. It wouldn’t be that surprising if he was a top-five back without Gibbs. This is one of the best offenses in football and it has been very friendly to running back production. For players like Montgomery, it’s worth considering that contingent upside when drafting, and not just his projection with 17 games of Gibbs.

Tier 7 is all about that contingent upside. These three backs, Tyjae Spears, Trey Benson, and Zach Charbonnet, do not project higher than all the backs in the tie below them. But if the other back in their offense goes down, I believe all three would have top-12 upside. Benson’s first preseason performance gave me a little pause in that regard, but I still believe in what he put on tape in college and expect he’ll acclimate to the NFL quickly. 

De’Von Achane, Raheem Mostert, Jaylen Warren, Najee Harris, Brian Robinson Jr., and Ty Chandler are just a few of the other backs I would consider bumping up because of contingent upside. Though I’m less sure that Achane and Warren would see workhorse roles even if there was an injury.

Here are my running back tiers: