Is The RB Dead Zone A Thing In 2026?

We’re kicking off July with a hot topic of the 2026 offseason… the RB landscape and how their price changes have changed over the years. More specifically, we’re talking about the “RB dead zone”.

There’s for sure some varying definitions of where the dead zone is in drafts, or what exactly it even entails. For me, and I think at large amongst the FF community, the RB dead zone is best described as rounds 3-6 in fantasy drafts.

But what actually is the “dead zone”? The concept is rather simple. After the 1st two rounds of fantasy drafts (where we see relatively similar fantasy scoring between WR and RB), WR scoring has historically risen well above that of RBs in these rounds 3-6. A fairly simple concept at face value, but it’s definitely not as simple as just “fade all RBs in rounds 3-6”. And for that matter, the dead zone all but disappeared in the last few years from 2023-2025. And that’s where I want to open up this article, talking through how the dead zone has evolved over the years (since 2018).

Before doing so, I do want to note that all of this research here was done using redraft ADP from 2018-2025, courtesy of Fantasy Pros. So, this exact data will be more directly applicable to redraft leagues, but the overall trend is very similar in best ball drafts. The price of RBs as a whole will always be cheaper over on Underdog or DraftKings in best ball compared to a redraft format, so the “dead zone” might be a bit later (ie: rounds 4-7). But, I digress… the trend of RB pricing in this general range over the years is the same in both redraft and best ball, and the information below is therefore applicable to both formats.

Lastly, before we keep going, just a few notes about were you can find my other content, Discord access, and where the data I’m pulling is coming from…

Discord: If you want a place to talk fantasy with myself and others, get updates on articles and X posts, to get answers to questions you may have and more, join the subscribers Discord HERE.

Website: If you want to access my player rankings (best ball, redraft, dynasty, and rookies), my models (for rookies, year 2, and upcoming season fantasy points), dynasty tools (trade calculator and team analyzer), best ball tools (exposure tool), and my 2026 draft guide, click HERE to access the website which has all of that.

Data: You will see several basic and advanced stats throughout this article, most of which have been pulled from the Fantasy Points Data Suite. You can check out their comprehensive data suite by clicking that link.

So, what exactly does the dead zone disappeared in recent years actually mean? Well, pretty much exactly that. From 2018-2022, in both half PPR and full PPR formats, there was a clear gap in scoring between the RBs and WRs that were drafted in rounds 3-6 (WRs comfortably outscored RB, aka the dead zone). However, in 2023 and onward, that gap in scoring between WR and RB almost completely disappeared.

I have two charts below to show the difference in fantasy scoring between these season ranges. These are for half PPR, while the gap is even more drastic for full PPR (as one could obviously assume, since WRs score more there):

As you can see, the dead zone was alive and well in 2018-2022. There’s a clear delta that forms almost perfectly aligned with the start of round 3, where average WR scoring (purple) clearly outperforms that of RBs (green). In 2023-2025, the opposite occurs, RB was actually significantly higher scoring all the way through the middle of round 4. From there, the scoring gets closer, but no trend of WR outscoring RB forms by any means.

So you’re probably thinking, why did this flip? Why did the RB dead zone suddenly disappear? Well, I’ve got it boiled down to two major factors…