While Commanders fans and media have been preoccupied by distractions, like Terry’s contract, and whether the defense will be able to hold opposing runners to under 7 yards a carry around the right end, I have been busy digging through the stats to get to the bottom of the really weighty matters that no one is talking about. And no issue will be more critical to the Commanders’ season, and their eventual return to glory than what they are going to do at fullback.

In fact, this topic is so multifaceted and crucial to the success of the Peters/Quinn rebuild that I had to break my second annual fullbacks update into two parts. The first part provides an update on the state of the fullback position, league-wide. And the second part drills down to examine the Commanders’ fullback utilization in Kliff Kingsbury’s first season as offensive coordinator.

Prequel – Why Fullbacks, and Why Now?

Washington’s last championship run was powered by a diesel engine, Hall of Fame fullback John Riggins. Riggins was listed as a fullback on the Jets’ and Redskins’ rosters for the first nine years of his playing career. Then his designation was switched to RB the season prior to the first Super Bowl win under coach Joe Gibbs. But he remained the powerful rusher, lead blocker and occasional receiver that he had been throughout his earlier years.

The role of fullbacks in NFL offenses has undergone considerable changes since Riggins hung up his cleats following the disappointing 1985 season (record 10-6, 3rd place in NFC East). In fact the fullback role has evolved continuously throughout NFL history, punctuated by a near extinction event in 2013, when their numbers dropped to two active players. Since then, the numbers of fullbacks on active rosters have rebounded. But, as so often happens following evolutionary bottlenecks, the new fullbacks are different than their predecessors.

In the 2024 season, 11 NFL teams listed 12 fullbacks on their active rosters. However, as we are about to see, those numbers belie the true importance of the fullback role to NFL offenses.

Prior to the 2024 season, Dan Quinn’s offensive coaching hires, followed by Adam Peters drafting TE Ben Sinnott in the second round raised hope among the faithful that we might see a return a noble vestige of the Redskins’ second championship era. As I showed in my hopeful review of the prospects of seeing increased fullback utilization in Washington’s offense, OC Kliff Kingsbury, Run Game Coordinator Anthony Lynn, and Quinn himself all have strong histories of using fullbacks in their offenses.

This two-part miniseries will examine the extent to which that hope was realized in the first season of the Quinn/Peters “recalibration”, and how the Commanders’ fullback utilization compared to that of other NFL teams. But before we get to the Commanders, I will need to review the state of fullbacks in 2024, to set the scene and dispel common misconceptions about the most misunderstood position on NFL rosters.

Designated Fullbacks in 2024

As I showed in last season’s article, simply identifying fullbacks in today’s NFL can be challenging, because different teams address the fullback role in different ways. Eleven teams had players designated as fullbacks on their active roster last season. Several others used defensive players in fullback roles on offense. And most teams use tight ends to varying degrees in fullback roles from time to time.

To get a handle on what the fullback role actually is in today’s NFL, I thought it would be best to start with the 12 players who are listed as fullbacks and took offensive snaps in 2024. The following table breaks down their snap counts by field position and role in the offense. Fullbacks are listed in decreasing order by playing time. All snap count data were sourced from Pro Football Focus.

The designated fullback who got the most playing time is the San Francisco 49ers’ Kyle Juszczyk. Juszczyk made the Pro Bowl for the ninth consecutive season in 2024 and received his second consecutive All Pro nomination. Perhaps ironically, Juszczyk took the lowest percentage of offensive snaps lined up as a fullback (FB%) of any of the designated fullbacks.

Designated fullbacks averaged 44.9% of offensive snaps aligned at their native position, in the backfield, ahead of the QB. The rest of their snaps were taken predominantly aligned as inline tight ends and in the slot, with smaller numbers of snaps aligned at halfback.

The four columns on the right show the breakdown of offensive snaps by role on offense: ‘Run’ = rushing; “Run Blk” = run blocking; ‘Route’ = running a route; ‘Pass Blk’ = pass blocking.

Ten of twelve designated fullbacks played the most snaps as run blockers. The other two were Juszczyk and the Dallas Cowboys’ Hunter Luepke, who both spent more time running routes as receivers than run blocking. In both cases, run blocking was their second biggest responsibility.

In fact, with one exception, the designated fullbacks spent more time running routes than rushing. In most cases the disparity was lopsided. As a group, the NFL’s named fullbacks spent over 20 times more snaps as receivers than runners. The odd man out was the New York Giants’ Jakob Johnson who was used exclusively as a blocker in 12 offensive snaps.

The last thing to point out is that designated fullbacks were used predominantly as run blockers, and relatively infrequently as pass blockers. On passing downs, they were much more likely to act as receivers.

Based on this breakdown of playing time, the fullback role in today’s NFL can be summarized as follows:

The fullback’s primary responsibility is lead blocking for running backs in the backfield.The fullback’s secondary responsibility is acting as a receiverThe fullback’s third priority is pass blockingFullbacks are rarely used to run the football

Contrary to common conceptions today’s fullback is no longer a big, powerful running back. They are primarily blockers. When they get involved as skill players, they are mainly receivers.

Now we know what to look for, let’s see what players at other positions filled the fullback role for NFL offenses in 2024.

Defensive Players Acting as Fullbacks

Twelve players at heavy defensive positions played at least one snap on offense in 2024. The following table shows the nine defenders who played more than one offensive snap. (Left out: DeForest Buckner, Byron Murphy, Grover Stewart – 1 offensive snap apiece).

This breakdown reveals two players listed on NFL rosters as defenders who averaged more than one offensive play per game at fullback. One of them played fullback full time.

Scott Matlock was drafted in the sixth round as a defensive end by the LA Chargers in 2023. He switched to playing predominantly fullback and special teams in 2024, and the Chargers just haven’t updated their roster. He played the third most offensive snaps of any NFL fullback last season.

The other player worth mentioning is the Philadelphia Eagles’ Ben Van Sumeren. Sumeren has primarily played on special teams since signing with Philly as a UDFA in 2023. Last season he played 22 snaps on offense and 0 on defense.

All of these defenders fit the fullback profile in terms their responsibilities on offense. Out of the group, only Matlock was a major contributor on offense.

As I mentioned in the intro, it appears that Kliff Kingsbury won the battle over fullback utilization in the Commanders’ offense, at least for now. Rather than dedicate a roster spot to a fullback, the Commanders opted to man this critical role by committee, leaning most heavily on TEs, as I will detail in the next article. This brings the Commanders to the position where Kingsbury ended up in his final season with the Cardinals. I am not sure how well that sits with fullback devotees Anthony Lynn and Dan Quinn.

As it turns out, this is most common pattern in today’s NFL. Most tight ends today take at least the occasional snap lined up in the backfield as fullbacks. For this article, I counted 91 TEs who played at least 100 offensive snaps and took at least one snap at fullback in 2024 (note: I bent the rules for Jaheim Bell and can’t say I was absolutely strict for other players). A full 50 of them played at least 10 snaps at FB in the course of the season. The following table shows the top 20 in terms of percentage of offensive snaps taken at fullback (FB%), listed in order of their fullbackishness.

Using the designated fullbacks for guidance, I think it’s fair to say that any TE who takes more than 25% of offensive snaps lined up at fullback is, in fact, a fullback. By that standard, there are two more FBs hiding in the TE ranks: the Steelers’ Connor Heyward and the Buccaneers’ Ko Kieft.

After those two players, there is a smooth continuum of fullback utilization among TEs. As a rough rule of thumb, I would suggest any TE who takes more than 5% of snaps at FB is showing fullback tendencies. There were 28 such players by my count, among NFL TEs in 2024, including two Commanders. I will have more to say about them in the next article.

Above 10% offensive snaps at fullback, you’ve got a fullback-like TE. There were 8 such players in 2024. I’d also suggest keeping an eye on Detroit’s Shane Zylstra and the Bengals’ Erick All to see if they come out as fullbacks this season.

The fifth most fullback-like tight end is a unique and special player, the New Orleans Saints’ Taysom Hill. Hill splits time on offense between receiving, rushing and run blocking and occasionally throwing passes. Earlier in his career he was more involved as a passer. In a sense, that makes his role hark back to the original fullback role more strongly than any current player. Prior to the development of the passing specialist QB position by the Redskins’ Sammy Baugh, fullbacks and tailbacks (any difference is probably splitting hairs) did the lions’ share of most teams’ passing. To really cement that, though, Hill would also need to add punting and place kicking to his resumé.

What About Running Backs?

The biggest misconception about fullbacks in today’s NFL is that they are a kind of running back. That is where they originated. But since the near extinction event of 2013 they have evolved into run blockers and passing game weapons who only occasionally run the ball.

In an effort to find some holdovers from the previous era, I searched 2024 rosters for RBs who took a high proportion of snaps at FB. Surprisingly, I only turned up two players, who are fairly different from the fullbacks we’ve seen thus far. The separation of the RB and FB roles in today’s NFL has become even more pronounced than I had suspected.

The Chiefs’ Carson Steele took the highest proportion of snaps at FB of any NFL running back last season. He spent a significant proportion of his time on offense running routes from the backfield and run blocking, as we have come to expect of a modern fullback. But he ran the ball a lot more than designated fullbacks do.

That, in itself, might just make Steele a throwback to the previous era (1965-2013), when teams occasionally featured fullbacks as ball carriers. What prevents me from classifying him as a fullback is that the bulk of his rushing attempts and receiving routes were run from an HB alignment. His alignment at fullback was mainly reserved for run blocking (43/55 FB snaps). Most of his time on offense was spent at HB. He is really a running back who aligns at fullback on run blocking down.

The other player who turned up was Detroit Lions’ rookie Sione Vaki, who mainly played on special teams and had a similar pattern of utilization to Steele in just 28 offensive snaps.

Honorable mention goes to former Redskins UDFA, Craig Reynolds, who took 18.2% of his offensive at FB for the Lions.

Fullbacks’ Offensive Production

The forgoing search identified 17 players on rosters of 15 teams who are either listed as fullbacks, or whose role on offense matches the profile of the modern fullback. They include 12 designated fullbacks, 3 tight ends, 1 linebacker, and 1 player listed as DE, who is really a fulltime fullback. There were 30 more tight ends who played between 10 and 30 snaps at FB, who didn’t make the cut for inclusion in this article.

The following table lists their 2024 skill position stats to complete the profile of their contributions on offense beyond their primary responsibilities as run blockers.

As we have come to expect, more fullbacks got touches as receivers than rushers. And every fullback who got both had more receiving targets than rushing attempts.

Fullbacks’ infrequent rushing opportunities tend to come in short yardage situations. Consequently, Rushing Success Rate (Success %) is a better performance indicator for them than rushing average (Y/A). The median Success Rate of 70 RBs with more than 50 carries last season was 48.95% (Commanders’ Brian Robinson was the player just below median at 48.7%). Four of the seven fullbacks with rushing touches achieved Success Rates above to well above median for RBs. Fullbacks may not run up gaudy rushing totals, but good ones get the important yards when you need them most.

In the passing game, fullbacks tend to be used as receivers near the line of scrimmage, who can act as checkdowns and create mismatches in underneath coverage and convert in short yardage situations. The fullbacks’ YAC/Rec figures look good compared to WRs (median: 3.9 YAC/Rec, >30 tgts, n = 118), but not so great compared to RBs (median: 8.5 YAC/Rec, > 20 tgts, n = 55), who have the most similar receiving duties.

As with rushing, Success Rate is probably the most appropriate metric to quantify performance in their primary role of gaining crucial yards in red zone and short yardage situations. For comparison, the median Receiving Success Rate for RBs was 46.7%. Eight of the 12 FBs with receiving targets achieved higher Success Rates than that, with six topping 60% (five if we exclude Shane Zylstra who only had one target). As with their rushing duties, fullbacks aren’t high volume receiving targets, but they’re good at converting the tough yards that can decide drive and game outcomes.

Contrary to common misconceptions, fullbacks have not gone extinct in modern NFL offenses. Rather, the role has transformed and is often shared by players at other positions, most notably tight ends.

The modern fullback is primarily a run blocker who can act as a receiving option out of the backfield. Fullbacks mainly play a supporting role on offense. But, they can be effective weapons to convert or score in short yardage and goal line situations.

This concludes the update on the fullback role in 2024. In the next article we will see how Kliff Kingsbury incorporated the fullback role into his offense in his season year in Washington.