Player
Alvin Kamara
RB · NO Saints
Goal-line carries are the single most valuable touches a running back gets, and they are assigned by a coaching staff, not earned play to play. A back who loses them has lost the part of his job that pays fantasy points fastest. New Orleans splitting its short-field runs six ways, with the quarterback taking the largest share, is a staff telling you what it thinks of its 30-year-old back in short yardage.
The year the touchdowns stopped
Two carries inside the 5 all season. His rookie quarterback got five.
AnomalySaints rushes from inside the 5-yard line, 2025 regular season
| Runner | Carries inside the 5 | TDs |
|---|---|---|
| Tyler Shough | 5 | 1 |
| Audric Estime | 3 | 0 |
| Taysom Hill | 3 | 1 |
| Devin Neal | 2 | 2 |
| Alvin Kamara | 2 | 0 |
| Spencer Rattler | 1 | 0 |
The goal-line job is gone. In 2020 Kamara took 28 carries inside the 10 and scored 14 times. In 2024 it was 17 carries and 5 scores. In 2025: six carries inside the 10 across 11 games, and none of them reached the end zone. Inside the 5 he got two attempts, fewer than rookie quarterback Tyler Shough, fewer than Taysom Hill, fewer than backup Audric Estime.
Why it matters. Goal-line carries are the single most valuable touches a running back gets, and they are assigned by a coaching staff, not earned play to play. A back who loses them has lost the part of his job that pays fantasy points fastest. New Orleans splitting its short-field runs six ways, with the quarterback taking the largest share, is a staff telling you what it thinks of its 30-year-old back in short yardage.
Nine seasons of doing everything
Four backs since 1999 have 7,000 rushing yards and 550 catches. Two of them came out of the 2017 draft.
MilestoneRBs since 1999 with 7,000+ rushing yards and 550+ receptions (regular season)
| Back | Rush yards | Catches | Rec yards | Scrimmage yards | Seasons |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christian McCaffrey | 7589 | 626 | 5390 | 12979 | 2017-2025 |
| LaDainian Tomlinson | 13686 | 624 | 4767 | 18453 | 2001-2011 |
| Alvin Kamara | 7250 | 606 | 4948 | 12198 | 2017-2025 |
| Matt Forte | 9789 | 555 | 4679 | 14468 | 2008-2017 |
The club is four deep and half of it is one draft class. McCaffrey went eighth overall in 2017; Kamara went 67th, in the third round, and has finished within 20 catches of him across nine matched seasons. Then 2025 split them completely: McCaffrey led every running back in football in PPR scoring, and Kamara finished 46th.
Why it matters. Receiving volume is the rarest thing a running back can offer, because it requires a coaching staff to trust him in protection and a quarterback to look for him on passing downs. Kamara built a decade of fantasy value on it while taking a fraction of McCaffrey's draft investment. The club membership is permanent; the 2025 split is a reminder that the skill and the role are different things, and only one of them is still intact.
What round thirteen is buying
What happens next: the base rate for a 31-year-old back with 1,674 career carries is 8.8 points a game.
RB seasons since 1999 at age 31+ with 1,500+ career carries entering
| Outcome | Result |
|---|---|
| Qualifying seasons | 55 |
| Reached 200 PPR points | 7 of 55 (13%) |
| Reached 150 PPR points | 17 of 55 (31%) |
| Finished under 100 PPR points | 23 of 55 (42%) |
| Average PPR points per game | 8.8 |
| Best of the 55 | Derrick Henry, 2025 (279.5) |
Kamara turns 31 in July and enters 2026 with 1,674 regular-season carries. Fifty-five back seasons since 1999 have matched that age-and-mileage profile, and they averaged 8.8 PPR points a game, almost exactly the 9.15 he just posted. Seven of the 55 reached 200 points; 23 finished under 100. The call: Kamara finishes the 2026 regular season under 150 PPR points and outside the top 30 running backs. Grade it against his final 2026 line.
Why it matters. This is a base-rate call, not a talent call, and the base rate is unusually harsh because the cohort is already survivorship-filtered: these are the old backs good enough to still be getting carries. Kamara's own 2025 landed within a rounding error of the cohort average, which is the strongest argument that nothing about him is beating it. The realistic path to a miss on this call is an injury to whoever is ahead of him plus a New Orleans offense that jumps several rungs at once.
A 13th-round dart on a job that got reassigned. Watch the touch count in September, not the yards per carry.
What to watchThe draft-day ledger on Kamara
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| 2025 PPR finish among RBs | 46th (100.7 points) |
| 2026 ADP | 146.1 overall (round 13) |
| Touches per game, 2024 to 2025 | 21.1 to 14.9 |
| Carries inside the 10, 2024 to 2025 | 17 to 6 |
| Scrimmage yards per game, 2024 to 2025 | 106.6 to 59.7 |
| Saints backs with a better 2025 yards per carry | 2 of 4 |
At pick 146 nobody is paying for the 2020 version, and they should not be. What the price buys is a name attached to a backfield that has not settled: Estime, Miller and Neal all took carries in 2025 and none of them took the job. The number that will tell you whether Kamara still has one is touches, which fell from 21.1 a game to 14.9. If that figure is back near 18 in September, the rest of the profile stops mattering. If it is 12, no efficiency rebound saves the pick.
Why it matters. Late-round running back picks buy a role, not an ability, because a back who gets 18 touches a week is startable at almost any efficiency and a back who gets 10 is not startable at any. Kamara's ability is not the question after nine seasons; his 2025 collapse was a usage collapse first and an efficiency collapse second. September touch counts resolve that faster than any preseason report will.
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