Currently, there are two players in the NFL with 56 touches after two games: Detroit Lions RB Jahmyr Gibbs and Kansas City Chiefs RB Kenneth Walker. They are both on pace for 476 touches which would be second all-time behind James Wilder's 492 in 1984.
The Denver Broncos' leader in touches is JK Dobbins, and he only has 18. The Broncos currently have 12 non-QBs that have gotten at least one touch through two games. The Broncos have 74 plays where Bo Nix has not been the only ball carrier. That means that on average our non-QB ball carriers are getting 3.1 touches per game so far.
Jonah Coleman is currently second on the team with 13 touches. It is generally not good to overload one player with too many touches, as the Chiefs have done so far with Walker and the Lions have with Gibbs. Walker currently has 42 more touches than the player on the Chiefs with the second most, Emmett Johnson, who has 14.
Denver Broncos taking smarter approach to splitting up touches early in 2026
The Lions have Amon-Ra St. Brown with 19 touches, but the rest of the team has 25. That means that for the Lions, St. Brown and Gibbs have 75 percent of the touches (taking the 5 Jared Goff touches out). For the Chiefs, Walker and Johnson have 67 percent of the touches. That's a lot of eggs in two baskets for both teams.
The seasonal leader in touches in 2025 was Christian McCaffrey with 413. He also led the league in 2023 with 339. Most recent seasons have had at least one player with 350 or more touches (22 touches per game in a 16-game season). Ashton Jeanty currently has 54 and Jonathan Taylor has 50. All four running backs are on pace for more than 400 touches. That is unsustainable.
James Wilder set the NFL record with 492 touches in 1984. KW3 is on pace for 476 right now. Franchises learned not to ride RBs too hard in the early part of this century. pic.twitter.com/DIhT0sAazR
— Joe Mahoney (@ndjomo76) September 21, 2026
The only player to get more than 400 twice in his career recently is Christian McCaffrey and he has paid the price by missing the better part of 2020, 2021, and 2024 seasons. JK Dobbins currently leads the Denver Broncos with 18 touches through two games, although he missed some of the game on Sunday. That's only a pace for 153 touches in 17 games. The most recent was DeMarco Murray in 2014 with 449 touches. He broke down the next season.
Denver Broncos spreading the ball around early in the 2026 season
The two leading touch players on the Broncos, Dobbins and Coleman, account for only 42 percent of the team touches. For running backs, history has told us that spreading the carries (and touches) around leads to more effectiveness and fewer injuries.
RBs who can handle extreme NFL workloads are few and far between. Recently one season of extreme workload has broken many RBs. pic.twitter.com/Gow3wORVhV
— Joe Mahoney (@ndjomo76) September 21, 2026
Going back to 2019, all of the yearly leaders in touches are still playing. Ezekiel Elliot is out of the league, and so is Le'Veon Bell.
McCaffrey appears to be the rarest of running backs who can miss most of a season with injury (or multiple seasons) and then come back for an extreme workload again. He has led the NFL in touches three times in his career (2019, 2023, and 2025). McCaffrey's 5.7 yards per touch for his career is Hall of Fame-worthy, particularly when you consider that he now has over 2,300 NFL touches. With the exception of Steven Jackson, every player who has over 3,200 career touches is in the Hall.
Saquon Barkley, who led the league in touches in 2024 with 378, had a huge drop-off in production in 2025. He went from 6.0 yards per touch in 2024 to 4.5 yards per touch in 2025. His 2025 value was still respectable, but a 17 percent drop is significant. He has averaged 5.0 yards per touch during his career. So far in 2026, he is close to that at 4.8.
Josh Jacobs averaged 5.2 yards per touch during the season when he led the league. His next season, he averaged 4.1. That's a 22 percent drop. His average season is 4.7. Derrick Henry has only led the league in touches once (surprisingly), and that was in 2020 when he had 397. He got 5.4 yards per touch that season, which is only a little above his career average of 5.2. He did have a poor season in 2021, only getting 4.6 yards per touch.
Ezekiel Elliot averaged 302 touches per season during his career before his final season, when he was a shell of his former self. He got 5.3 yards per touch during the 2018 season when he led the league in touches. He's the first leader who has been discussed who didn't have a significant drop-off in the following season. He averaged 5.0 yards per touch in 2019. That was his third-best career season in terms of yards per touch.
Dobbins got 4.9 yards per touch last season. Jaleel McLaughlin got 5.2. Tyler Badie got 6.1 (on 27 touches). RJ Harvey got 4.6. Dobbins career high in games was 15 as a rookie. His career high in touches was 227 with the Chargers in 2024. The Broncos had 354 running back carries, and RJ Harvey led the group with 193 touches.
I would expect a split like we saw last season with two running backs getting about the same number of carries. The Broncos' running backs had 441 combined touches last season, with 44 percent of those going to Harvey.
The player who is currently second on the team in terms of touches is Jonah Coleman. He had 13 on Sunday after getting zero touches against the Chiefs in the first game of the season. Because of his three catches, he led the Broncos in touches on Sunday with 13. JK Dobbins, who missed some time due to hamstring tightness, carried the ball 10 times, but almost all of those carries were in the first half (only two came in the second half).
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