Jaguars hype Tuten's speed, not his ceiling

Jacksonville handed its backfield to a guy with 83 career carries. Travis Etienne bolted for New Orleans on a 4-year, $54 million deal after going over 1,000 rushing yards for the third time in his career, and that left a void the Jaguars are trusting Bhayshul Tuten to fill. He was a 4th-round pick out of Virginia Tech in 2025, No. 104 overall, and he ran for 307 yards and 5 touchdowns as a rookie mostly playing behind Etienne. Now he's RB1 by default, and everyone wants to know if he's actually good enough to hold the job.

Coen isn't hiding his excitement. He's leaned on Tuten's track speed every chance he gets, and it showed up again this week when the coach talked up his rookie ahead of training camp.

"When he can get going and get downhill, I mean, he was 4.28 coming out. So he can fly," Coen said, per @JaguarsOnSI. "Go be special, that's who you are. And we're definitely expecting Tuten to have a big year for us." That's about as direct an endorsement as a head coach gives a 2nd-year back with under 100 career touches, and it's the kind of quote that gets fantasy Twitter buzzing about a breakout.

Except the people who actually cover this team every day aren't buying the ceiling fantasy managers want. Hayden Winks relayed that the consensus among Jaguars reporters is Tuten does not get to 1,000 rushing yards this season, a number that would've matched what Etienne delivered in his best years there.

The skepticism tracks with what Tuten actually showed as a rookie. A 3.7 yards-per-carry average on a limited workload isn't nothing, but it's not a sign of a bell-cow back either, and durability questions haven't fully gone away. Add in that Jacksonville brought in Chris Rodriguez this offseason, and the running back room looks less like a clean handoff and more like a timeshare — even with Tuten reportedly taking every meaningful snap through OTAs and minicamp.

This is exactly why Winks flagged the Jaguars as one of the most fascinating fantasy teams on the board for 2026 — the coach-speak says star, the beat says role player, and Travis Hunter's usage question on the other side of the ball only adds to how unsettled this offense looks heading into camp. Tuten gets first crack at the job. Whether he keeps it, and whether it's worth anything close to a 1,000-yard workload, is what training camp and the preseason are about to answer.