• Travis Etienne Jr. started strong: Etienne was the RB2 over the first half of the season, but after the Jacksonville Jaguars‘ bye week, his playing time dropped significantly and so did his fantasy points per game.
• The offensive line is holding Etienne back: The Jaguars offensive line had the worst team run-blocking grade last season, and there isn’t a lot of reason to believe it can improve significantly.
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
The player profile series gives the most in-depth view of a player possible using the best data points at PFF’s disposal to look at how good the player has performed, what competition the player has for touches, and how other teammates and coaches will impact each player's performance.
Last updated: 7:15 a.m. Friday, July 12
Player performance
Etienne finished last season as RB3 partly thanks to volume. He maintained a high 15.7 attempts per game along with 23.8 routes per game. He graded out relatively well in both the pass and run game, leading to the 12th-highest overall grade out of the 40 running backs with at least 400 offensive snaps last season. His stats don’t match his quality of play partly due to the offensive line.
He stands out the most in both perfectly and non-perfectly blocked plays, but he has much fewer perfectly blocked plays than most running backs. We’d expect him to average more than 3.8 yards per carry if the line played better.
Competition for touches
While Etienne’s offensive line has hurt his fantasy value, he’s more than made up for it based on his role in the offense. His 73.5% snap rate was among the best for running backs in the league. He played at least 70% of Jacksonville's snaps in all situations outside of third downs, which is the best time for running backs to miss snaps.
The changes to the running back depth chart have been minimal. They added Keilan Robinson in the fifth round of the draft but are largely relying on Tank Bigsby to improve his ball security after drafting him in the third round in 2023.
Etienne's big concern is he will likely play fewer snaps. Etienne averaged 81% of the Jaguars' offensive snaps before their bye week and 66.5% after. He similarly averaged 20.5 PPR points per game before the bye week and 13.2 after. Etienne showed up on the injury report for two weeks due to a rib injury that likely impacted the quality of his play, but his decrease in playing time occurred before that. Doug Pederson has confirmed the plan is to reduce his workload this year, although it will probably be less compared to the start of the year rather than the end.
Impact of teammates
Since Doug Pederson and Press Taylor joined the Jaguars in 2022, they’ve been more pass-heavy while not targeting their running backs often. The high plays-per-game rate at least somewhat makes up for that. The staff remains intact this year, so we shouldn’t expect much change compared to the last two years.
Etienne's biggest problem again this season will be the offensive line. The unit had the third-lowest graded line last year, including the lowest team run-blocking grade. Ezra Cleveland was supposed to be a bright spot in terms of his run blocking, but he posted his worst season in his first year with the Jaguars last year. Brandon Scherff similarly had strong run-blocking grades in the past, but once he joined, the Jaguars his run-blocking grade decreased significantly.
They added Mitch Morse at center, but he’s played much better as a pass blocker than run blocker. That is also true of Cam Robinson. Ideally, Anton Harrison improves after being the 27th pick of the 2023 draft, and the guards start playing like they did with their old team, but we shouldn’t expect massive improvements out of this unit.
Bottom line
Etienne is a pretty talented running back who has played 34 games over the last two seasons. He posted dominant volume in the first half of 2023, helping him to a RB3 finish. His talent and lack of competition make it very likely he remains a fantasy starter, but his upside only exists if the offensive line improves dramatically or if Tank Bigsby keeps turning the ball over, forcing Etienne to play over 80% of Jacksonville's offensive snaps again.
Footnotes
- Statistics for the tables and charts were generally chosen based on their ability to predict future fantasy performance on either per game or per opportunity basis, or chosen for their ability to describe the player relative to other players at the same position.
- Opportunities for this purpose are defined by passing dropbacks, rushing attempts and receiving routes run.
- Numbers are either by season or based on the last three years. For rookies, only college numbers are included. For non-rookies, only NFL numbers are included, even if they played in college in the last three years.
- Because college competition is relatively easier than NFL competition, it can be expected that most rookies will see a decline in their numbers compared to their historic numbers.
- For all of the tables in this article, colors range from blue (good or high) to red (bad or low).
- All percentiles or colors compare the given player to other players with a high sample of opportunities. Generally, it’s one-third of the possible opportunities given the sample. If the player in question doesn’t have enough opportunities, they are still compared, even though a player could look good or bad on that small sample size which might not be as predictive.
- Information on running back utilization classifications and importance can be found here, wide receiver here and tight end here.
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