Quinshon Judkins: Stats, Career, and 2026 Browns Outlook

Quinshon Judkins – Cleveland Browns RB, Career Stats and Year Two Preview

Born in Pike Road, Drafted in Cleveland

Quinshon A. Judkins was born October 29, 2003, in Pike Road, Alabama – a small town outside Montgomery that most NFL scouts had never visited before his senior film started circulating. He’s 22 years old, listed at 5-foot-11 and 221 pounds, and as of 2026, wears No. 1 for the Cleveland Browns after switching back from 10. The Browns took him 36th overall in the second round of the 2025 NFL Draft. He plays running back. He’s already been to injured reserve and back. And the honest read on his first season is that the raw numbers undersell what he actually did.

High School: 4,220 Yards and a State Title Before Anyone Knew His Name

Pike Road High School is AHSAA Class 5A. Not the biggest stage in Alabama, which means it’s still larger than most states’ top classification. Judkins ran for 4,220 yards over his prep career, with 1,534 yards as a senior and 1,482 as a junior. He scored 67 touchdowns. His senior season ended with a state championship and MVP honors in the title game – he ran the Patriot offense essentially by himself in the fourth quarter.

He fielded offers from Notre Dame, Auburn, Florida State, Michigan, Penn State, Tennessee, Miami, Florida, Arkansas, and Mississippi State, among others. Lane Kiffin won the recruitment. Judkins chose Ole Miss. That decision made statistical history before he turned 19.

Ole Miss Freshman Year: The Season That Made Everyone Look Twice

In 2022, Quinshon Judkins set Ole Miss school records as a true freshman: 1,567 rushing yards and 16 rushing touchdowns. He also caught 15 passes for 132 yards. The yards-per-carry figure was 5.7. He was named SEC Freshman of the Year and earned first-team All-SEC honors.

Those numbers were his ceiling in Oxford, as it turned out. His sophomore season in 2023 saw his efficiency drop to 4.3 yards per carry – his lowest of any season anywhere. He was still productive: over 1,100 yards, another strong touchdown total. He had a three-score game against Texas A&M and ran for 106 yards in the Peach Bowl. But the explosiveness metrics backed off, and draft analysts started asking questions about his second-level burst that would follow him into predraft evaluations.

On January 4, 2024, he entered the transfer portal. Four days later, he committed to Ohio State.

Ohio State and the Championship That Changed His Draft Stock

He shared carries at Ohio State with TreVeyon Henderson, which held down his individual volume. That kind of split backfield arrangement rarely helps anyone’s redraft numbers or combine narrative. But the 2024 College Football Playoff told a different story.

In the national championship game, Judkins ran for 100 yards and two touchdowns against Notre Dame. He also caught a touchdown pass. Ohio State won. When scouts are evaluating a back who’s been asked to share a backfield all season, a championship-game performance like that is worth more than a full month of regular season tape – not because the yards are special, but because he clearly gets faster when the game matters most, which is a quality that doesn’t always show up in yards-per-carry averages.

He declared for the 2025 NFL Draft on January 24, 2025.

College Career Stats

The Draft, the Announcement, and the Number

The Browns selected Judkins with the 36th pick as part of a complex trade with the Jacksonville Jaguars – the same deal that sent the fifth overall pick (Mason Graham) to Cleveland along with a fourth-rounder (Dylan Sampson) and a 2026 first-round pick. Pro Football Hall of Famer Joe Thomas made the announcement. Browns GM Andrew Berry and head coach Kevin Stefanski called Judkins live as the pick came in.

As a prospect, the consensus read was power with nuance – not just a battering ram. He forced missed tackles at a high rate in college, showed patience at the line of scrimmage unusual for someone who burst onto the scene so young, and caught passes out of the backfield cleanly enough that teams didn’t have to hide him on third down. The concerns were the sophomore efficiency dip at Ole Miss and a question about top-end speed that never fully resolved itself on the stopwatch. Those concerns existed. They just mattered less than everything else.

Rookie Season: What the 3.6 Average Doesn’t Tell You

230 carries. 827 rushing yards. 7 touchdowns. 3.6 yards per carry. Those are the surface numbers, and taken at face value, they read as the workmanlike debut of a decent but unspectacular rookie runner on a bad football team. That reading is wrong.

Judkins faced a stacked defensive front – meaning eight or more defenders in the box – on 45.2% of his snaps in 2025, the highest rate among all NFL running backs. Defenses do that when they don’t respect the quarterback or the wide receivers enough to cover them in man. Cleveland’s passing game was bad enough that opposing coordinators essentially said: we’ll give up the downfield throw and wall off the run. They stacked the box almost half the time and still couldn’t keep Judkins under control consistently.

555 of his 827 rushing yards came after contact – roughly 89 cents of every rushing dollar he earned, he earned the hard way, through or around defenders already touching him. That figure ranked 10th in the NFL. Among running backs with 200 or more carries in 2025, he ranked seventh in yards after contact per attempt. His PFF rushing grade of 68.7 ranked 52nd of 55 qualified backs – the grade reflects efficiency on a per-play basis and doesn’t adjust for the box counts he faced. The fuller picture is a back who was quietly excellent in genuinely brutal circumstances.

His first NFL touchdown came in Week 3: a one-yard rush late in the fourth quarter against the Green Bay Packers, in a 13-10 upset win. He started all 14 games he was active for. In Week 7 against the Miami Dolphins, he scored three times. He also caught 26 passes on 33 targets for 171 receiving yards – solid enough that Todd Monken, the new coordinator coming in for 2026, won’t have to simplify the passing game to accommodate him.

Week 16, Buffalo, and the Injury That Ended His Season

In Cleveland’s Week 16 loss to the Buffalo Bills, Judkins suffered a fractured right fibula and a dislocated right ankle. He was carted off. The Browns placed him on injured reserve shortly after, and he underwent surgery in late December to repair both injuries.

The recovery estimate came in at four to five months – a timeline that, if accurate, would have him back in full football activities by late April or May, with training camp starting in late July. In February 2026, Andrew Berry confirmed at the NFL Scouting Combine that Judkins had shed his walking boot and was on schedule. He isn’t on the injury report right now. The injury was serious. The recovery has, so far, gone as well as anyone had reason to hope.

Off the Field: The Arrest, the Outcome, and the Charity

On July 12, 2025, Judkins was arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on charges of domestic assault and battery. The arrest delayed his signing with the Browns and kept him out of the start of training camp. On August 14, prosecutors declined to pursue the case. No formal charges were filed. He joined the Browns’ active roster shortly after and started Week 2.

That’s the complete record of the legal matter. It’s worth knowing, and it’s also worth knowing it ended there.

On the other side of the ledger: Judkins had a partnership with Four Star Freightliner, an Alabama-based truck dealership, in which the company donated $1,000 to the Alabama Kidney Foundation for every touchdown he scored during the 2024 college season. He scored 14. The foundation received $14,000. The arrangement was announced in May 2024, before anyone knew how his Ohio State season would go.

2026 Setup: A Better Offense Around a Better Back

Cleveland spent its 2026 draft capital on offense in a way that directly helps Judkins. With the ninth overall pick, they took Utah offensive lineman Spencer Fano – the first OL off the board. The next two picks were wide receivers: KC Concepcion and Denzel Boston. New coordinator Todd Monken ran the Baltimore Ravens offense for three seasons before coming to Cleveland; his schemes used a fullback, loved play-action, and produced one of the NFL’s most efficient run games even without elite individual talent at running back.

Jerome Ford, who served as the veteran backup in 2025, left for Washington in free agency. Dylan Sampson is still on the roster but showed limited ability as a pass-catching back. Judkins has the backfield to himself in any realistic projection. If the offensive line is meaningfully better – and spending the ninth overall pick on a guard/tackle suggests the front office thinks it will be – then the 45% stacked-box rate he dealt with as a rookie has nowhere to go but down. That improvement alone would probably add half a yard per carry without any change in how he plays.

He switched his jersey from No. 10 back to No. 1, the number he wore at Ole Miss and Ohio State. The previous owner of that number, cornerback Martin Emerson Jr., never played in it due to injury. No symbolic weight needs to be manufactured here – the number change mostly just matters to Judkins.

Fantasy Football: Dynasty and Redraft Value for 2026

RotoBaller has Judkins at RB12 in dynasty rankings as of May 2026. Dynasty Nerds has him at RB11. His Sleeper ADP sits around 63rd overall in dynasty formats – late sixth round. FantasyPros and FantasyData both project him as a low-end RB1 to high-end RB2 in redraft if he returns healthy.

The dynasty case is strong and fairly obvious: he’s 22, he’s the unquestioned lead back on an offense that just invested heavily in its offensive line and skill positions, and he showed legitimate contact balance and receiving ability as a rookie against the worst possible defensive conditions. If the Browns’ offense takes a step forward under Monken – and they have the personnel to do it – he could finish 2026 as a top-eight back.

The real risk isn’t his health or his role. It’s Cleveland’s quarterback situation. Shedeur Sanders takes over as the starter, and while the arm talent is real, he’s also a rookie trying to run a pro-style offense behind an offensive line that’s being rebuilt around a freshly-drafted anchor. If the passing game struggles again, defenses will stack the box again, and Judkins’ efficiency numbers will reflect that more than his actual ability. That’s the bet you’re making – that a better line and Monken’s scheme are enough to make the passing game credible, not just passable.

Career Stats Reference

His 66.6 overall PFF grade ranked 47th of 55 qualified backs. His receiving grade graded out higher than his rushing grade – a useful detail for evaluating his role in a Monken offense that asks backs to work in the screen game and underneath routes. His 41 forced missed tackles as a runner put him in the top third at the position. The overall grade will climb if the box counts drop. It’s that straightforward.

Quick Reference