The coaching staff
What do you mean by the coaching staff? They do not physically play the game. How can this possibly make any kind of difference?
Trust that there is a big point to be made by the end of this section of the article.
The head coach of the Detroit Lions, Dan Campbell, has said what to expect out of Jahmyr Gibbs already this season.
"“He’s going to be our bell cow now.”"Dan Campbell
This is a clear sign of what is to come. Coach Campbell is expecting Gibbs to carry a big load this upcoming season. Meanwhile, there has yet to be anything similar said about Bijan Robinson by the new head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, Kevin Stefanski.
While there is no statement on how Robinson will be used this upcoming season, there are ways of estimating what his workload should look like. This is not the first trip around the block for Stefanski. This will be his 20th season as a coach in the league.
There is useful data to pull from six of those seasons. In 2016, Stefanski was the running backs coach in Minnesota; additionally, he was the offensive coordinator there in 2019. Before landing his current job, he was the head coach in Cleveland from 2020 until 2025, although there were a couple of really injury-riddled seasons for that team in the running back room, so there will be an exclusion of 2021 and 2024.
Taking a peek at the running back data from 2016, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2025 will show how he likes to use running backs. At a glance, Stefanski is not a fan of having a sole running back.
One can point to Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt during the bulk of his Cleveland days, and say that both guys were great. You know, that is fair; but what about Matt Asiata and Jerick McKinnon? Well, neither of those guys was that great.
Okay, let's kick it back to just last season between Quinshon Judkins and Dylan Sampson. They were both rookies, but there was a clear difference between the two of them.
Now that there is an establishment of Stefanski liking a two-running-back system, one has to ask, “Who is the second option in Atlanta this year”? He went out and grabbed Brian Robinson, who has been a solid running back at every team he has been on in his short career so far.
So, it is going to be like the running back room of Robinson and Allgeier never left? Initially, that was a thought that came to mind; however, a deeper look into the statistics would suggest something a lot different.
That deeper look comes in the form of snap counts. Those show a more jarring outlook for those looking to draft Robinson above Gibbs.
The top running backs for each season of data extrapolated from the six previously mentioned years being looked at throughout Stefanski’s coaching career will paint a blurry picture that will become more clear very shortly. Jerick McKinnon (48.53 percent snap share), Dalvin Cook (58.98 percent snap share), Kareem Hunt (51.5 percent snap share), Nick Chubb (56.22 percent snap share), Jerome Ford (50.73 percent snap share) and Quinshon Judkins (41.74 percent snap share) is a complete list of all the top rushers for Stefanski over the years.
Obviously, the snap share is not that high for any of those running backs, but that has become the norm for the position in the modern NFL, right? Largely, that may be the case. However, it is far from it with Robinson. Since coming into the league in 2023, he has had a floor of a 68.23 percent share of the snaps on offense, and that was as a rookie.
If we look at the best running back snap shares for Stefanski-coached runners, that would mean Robinson would lose about 10 percent of the snaps from his worst fantasy year. That is not the worst of it either; the Falcons back has averaged a snap share of 74.01 percent since bursting onto the scene. Compare that to Cook and his 58.98 percent snap share in 2019, and it is a difference of nearly 16 percent.
That is a lot of lost attempts for Robinson. However, it does get a bit worse from that comparison once one looks at the average of all the top running backs from coach Stefanski. Together, that group averaged a 51.28 percent snap share on offense.
That would be a difference of about 23 percent compared to what Robinson is used to in his career so far. That would result in so much lost opportunity for a guy who is used to being fed the ball.
Although it seems awful, Stefanski-coached running backs have had success in fantasy football. Cook, Hunt and Chubb all finished as top-10 running backs as being a lead back for coach Stefanski. Ford finished as the 16th best running back in fantasy football in his year.
As for the debate between Robinson and Gibbs, however, it feels like a no-contest unless there is a huge switchup from the Lions heading into the season. The top pick in the fantasy draft should go the way of Gibbs.
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