This week
RJ is on the road against KC. We project 21.3 rushing yards, 18.9 receiving yards on 3.2 targets. The number comes out of a drive-level simulation of the game rather than a season average — it asks how many possessions his side is likely to get, what they do with them, and how much of that flows through him.
How much he's on the field
Across 19 games, RJ has been on the field for 44% of his team's snaps. That's a limited role, and it caps everything else on this page. A player on a third of the snaps can't produce like a starter no matter how efficient he is, and the projection reflects the opportunity rather than the talent. The model weighs this above efficiency for a simple reason: snap share predicts next week better than last week's yardage does.
What kind of back he is
RJ has 165 carries for 597 yards (3.6 a carry) and 7 rushing touchdowns. He's also seen 70 targets for 424 yards — pass-game work is what separates a back who plays on third down from one who leaves the field, and it's worth more to a projection than the same yardage on the ground. Running-back yardage swings hard on the blocking in front of him, which is why the model weighs opportunity — carries and targets — above efficiency.
His last 5 games
Over that stretch RJ has 355 total yards. Worth noting: his snap share is trending up — 59% lately against 44% overall. Five games is a small sample in any sport and a tiny one in football, where a team plays seventeen times a year — so recent form informs the projection without overriding the usage underneath it.
How the model reads him
Every projection here is built the same way for RJ as for a starter on a contender — simulate the game, then apportion it by role. No manual adjustments, no gut calls on who's due. The weighting behind it is proprietary and re-tuned on real outcomes; everything it produces is public and graded against the box score.
What we'd flag
Three things to carry. The season is seventeen games, so most trends here are small samples wearing a confident number. Game script rewrites usage — a team trailing throws, a team ahead runs. And injury news lands after we publish.