Bhayshul Tuten and Chris Rodriguez Jr. Are Co-Starters on Jacksonville's First Depth Chart and That Is a Warning

Jacksonville released its first unofficial depth chart of the preseason with Bhayshul Tuten and Chris Rodriguez Jr. listed as co-starters at running back, with LeQuint Allen also in the backfield mix. That is not the outcome the fantasy market has been drafting toward, and it is the clearest signal yet that the Jaguars intend to replace Travis Etienne's departed touches with a committee rather than a single lead back.

Unofficial depth charts are famously soft documents. Teams use them to reward camp performance, to avoid making declarations they are not ready to make, and occasionally to send a message. But co-starter designations at running back specifically are worth taking seriously, because they are the cheapest possible way for a coaching staff to say the job is not won.

How the market got here

Tuten spent the offseason as the popular answer. He was a 2025 fourth-round pick, he flashed during spring work, and he has the athletic profile that makes offseason hype self-sustaining: a back with speed and explosiveness stepping into an open job on a team that just lost its long-time starter. Rodriguez, a fourth-year back, has been slowed at points by his recovery from foot surgery, which cleared the runway further.

Reports through the offseason program consistently described Tuten as gaining ground. The reasonable extrapolation was that he would be the starter by August. The depth chart says the Jaguars are not there yet.

The more skeptical read, which now looks correct, is that this coaching staff never publicly committed to Tuten in the first place. Gaining an edge in a competition and winning it outright are different things, and the fantasy market routinely collapses the distinction.

What a committee does to the fantasy math

An open committee is the least valuable structure in fantasy football, and it is worth being precise about why. A back who commands 65 percent of a backfield's touches is a weekly starter. Two backs splitting that same workload roughly evenly are both flex-level options with no reliable ceiling and enormous week-to-week variance driven by game script rather than performance.

The specific danger in Jacksonville is that the split may not be even. A staff that lists two co-starters and keeps a third back involved has preserved the option to ride whoever is producing, which is the most common outcome and the hardest to project in advance. In practice that produces a backfield where the useful fantasy player changes every three weeks and is never available on waivers when you need him.

The offense itself is not the problem. Jacksonville has the pieces to sustain a functional rushing attack, and the volume vacated by Etienne is real. The problem is that the volume has no confirmed owner.

What to do in your league

Downgrade Tuten from a projected lead back to what he actually is: the most likely player to eventually own this backfield, at a price that has been assuming he already does. If his cost has not moved on the depth chart news, that is a reason to let someone else take him.

Treat Rodriguez as a genuine dart throw rather than noise. Co-starter status on a public depth chart is a real data point, and a back with prior experience who has recovered from foot surgery entering a split job is exactly the profile that gets underdrafted and then produces three usable weeks in September before the picture clarifies.

Do not ignore LeQuint Allen. Third backs in explicit committees tend to carve out a defined role, most often on passing downs, and in point-per-reception formats that role can be worth more than the early-down carries the market is fighting over.

The best structural approach is to avoid paying market price for either of the top two and instead target whoever survives the preseason with the larger share of first-team work. Jacksonville plays preseason games, releases another depth chart, and holds joint practices between now and Week 1. All three will produce better information than the current one.

The Verdexed model take

Verdexed's backfield projections are built on expected touch share rather than depth chart position, and an explicit co-starter listing forces the model to widen the distribution for both backs rather than assign a lead. The output is two running backs with nearly identical median projections in the low-end flex range and materially different upside cases: Tuten's ceiling is higher because his efficiency profile supports a larger role if he wins one, while Rodriguez's floor is more stable because his skill set fits the early-down and short-yardage work that gets distributed first.

The model's more useful conclusion concerns the aggregate. The total fantasy value available in this backfield is roughly what a single mid-tier RB2 would produce, and it is currently being drafted as if it belongs to one player. That gap is the actionable edge, and it argues for fading the room at current prices rather than trying to pick the winner.

Betting angle

Jacksonville's team rushing markets are the cleanest way to express a view here, because the committee structure barely affects the team total while significantly affecting any individual player prop. Rushing yardage props for either back that are priced off a lead-back assumption are worth attacking on the under side, and any anytime-touchdown price on a back in a three-man rotation carries risk that the number may not reflect.

On the season side, the Jaguars sit in an AFC South that the market has treated as competitive rather than settled. A backfield without a defined starter is a modest argument against the offense reaching the efficiency required to clear a win total priced for improvement, though it is nowhere near strong enough to be the whole thesis.

What's next

The next depth chart is the checkpoint. If Tuten is listed alone at the top after the preseason opener, the offseason read was right and his price is justified. If the co-starter designation survives into the final week of August, this backfield is a committee for real, and the fantasy market will have spent two months drafting a starter who does not exist.

The tell to watch in preseason games is not who runs first. It is who is on the field on third down and inside the ten-yard line. Those two roles decide fantasy value in a split backfield, and they almost never belong to the same player by accident.