The return of running back duo Jaylen Warren and Rico Dowdle is getting closer, but Pittsburgh elevated running back Lew Nichols from the practice squad for their Week 5 game against the Indianapolis Colts, which is probably a bad sign for the status of veteran running back Rico Dowdle.
Warren had 296 total yards the last 2 weeks without Dowdle in the lineup and played over 87% of snaps in both games. In week 1 Dowdle led the RB room with a 57% snap share, but he appears to be on the wrong side of questionable heading to the Steelers’ Week 5 contest vs. Indianapolis.
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There is more to this story than just football skills. Despite bringing an 89th-percentile 103.9 Speed Score and a 99th-percentile 48.9-percent College Dominator Rating to Pittsburgh, Kaleb Johnson saw five snaps in the preseason opener. The coaching staff pushed the third-round pick down to sixth in the running back rotation during Sunday’s full-pads practice.
A cut candidate at the start of preseason, Johnson was already undraftable in seasonal formats. A tumble to RB6 signals a further eroded second-year opportunity share that demands an immediate valuation downgrade in fantasy football dynasty formats. Johnson is PlayerProfiler’s Dynasty RB85, a historical decline for a college workhorse with Day 2 draft capital.
