NFL Rushing Yards Leader 2026 Odds: Model Verdict on the Full Board
By Jake Hari
August 5, 2026 · Updated September 24, 2026
Kenneth Walker III leads the NFL in rushing, and he is the back the August panel priced sixteenth on the board. Two weeks in, the rushing-title board has a favorite the eight-model panel dismissed, a second-place runner the panel called its biggest fade, and the panel's two favorites sitting fifth and sixth in yards.
A Yes contract pays $1 if that player leads the league in regular-season rushing yards, so the price in cents reads as the chance. New to event markets? How to bet NFL on Kalshi covers the mechanics.
The Back The Panel Wrote Off
Walker has 290 yards, the most in the league, and Kansas City has handed him the ball 47 times in two wins. The contract asked 4 cents in August and asks 20 today, the top price on the board.
The panel's number was 1.9 percent, and its reasoning is worth quoting against itself: Walker "lands in a good offense that has not fed a back 290 carries in years." The mechanism the panel built the whole board on was the right one, a bellcow load with no roster rival. It just did not believe Kansas City would be the team to supply it, and two games in, that is exactly what Kansas City has done.
Henry Is Second, And The Panel Faded Him Hardest
Derrick Henry has 212 yards and the contract asks 17 cents, up from 12.5 in August. The panel had him at 6.6 percent, its largest gap under the market, on one argument: no back his age appears anywhere in the ledger. That argument is a base rate, and a base rate does not lose in two weeks. What has changed is that Henry gave the market nothing to worry about in September, and the price moved toward the workload instead of the birth certificate.
The Panel's Favorites Are Fifth And Sixth
Jonathan Taylor, the panel's narrow first name, has 190 yards in two Colts losses, and the contract asks 16 cents, up from 11 in August. The market has moved toward the panel on him even as the leaderboard has not. Bijan Robinson, the market's August favorite, has 155 yards for an 0-2 Atlanta team and asks 9 with a 5-cent bid. The panel read the profile right and did not price the offense around him.
Gibbs And Cook: The Volume Arrived
Jahmyr Gibbs has 208 yards and asks 15 cents. The panel's bull case was that David Montgomery's move to Houston made Gibbs a bellcow, and 29 carries in the opener is what that looks like. James Cook III, the defending champion, has 192 yards and asks 11, the same price he carried in August. The panel had him fourth on the repeat question, and he is the one name on the board the market and the panel still agree on.
The Leaders Nobody Can Buy
There is no field contract, so an unlisted leader resolves every one of the 25 contracts No. Three unlisted backs are inside the league's top ten: D'Andre Swift and Kyle Monangai in the same Chicago backfield, and Aaron Jones Sr. in Minnesota. The panel put 9.0 percent on this outcome in August, and two weeks in it is holding up. Josh Jacobs, whom the panel gave 2.8 percent, has not played a game and is listed as out.
The Rest Of The Board
Barkley carried 4 times against Tennessee and asks 3 cents.
The Board
Prices are the ask on the Yes contract (KXLEADERNFLRUSHYDS-27), pulled the morning of September 24, 2026. Yards are through Week 2 from ESPN with the game-by-game split; the panel column is unchanged from August 3.
| Player | Through Week 2 | Wk 1 / Wk 2 | Yes price | Panel (Aug 3) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kenneth Walker III (KC) | 290 yds · 47 car | 173 / 117 | 20¢ | 1.9% |
| Derrick Henry (BAL) | 212 yds · 40 car | 144 / 68 | 17¢ | 6.6% |
| Jonathan Taylor (IND) | 190 yds · 43 car | 98 / 92 | 16¢ | 10.5% |
| Jahmyr Gibbs (DET) | 208 yds · 45 car | 156 / 52 | 15¢ | 8.3% |
| James Cook III (BUF) | 192 yds · 34 car | 57 / 135 | 11¢ | 9.1% |
| Bijan Robinson (ATL) | 155 yds · 37 car | 83 / 72 | 9¢ | 10.4% |
| Ashton Jeanty (LV) | 150 yds · 44 car | 102 / 48 | 5¢ | 3.4% |
| De'Von Achane (MIA) | 110 yds · 31 car | 36 / 74 | 4¢ | 5.8% |
| Chase Brown (CIN) | 136 yds · 36 car | 56 / 80 | 3¢ | 2.0% |
| Saquon Barkley (PHI) | 92 yds · 19 car | 83 / 9 | 3¢ | 4.5% |
| Omarion Hampton (LAC) | 137 yds · 35 car | 43 / 94 | 2¢ | 2.4% |
| Breece Hall (NYJ) | 131 yds · 38 car | 102 / 29 | 2¢ | 2.4% |
| Kyren Williams (LAR) | 126 yds · 23 car | 41 / 85 | 2¢ | 4.7% |
| Cam Skattebo (NYG) | 117 yds · 30 car | 81 / 36 | 2¢ | 0.9% |
| Christian McCaffrey (SF) | 91 yds · 20 car | 68 / 23 | 2¢ | 4.1% |
| Javonte Williams (DAL) | 71 yds · 24 car | 41 / 30 | 2¢ | 3.3% |
| Travis Etienne Jr. (NO) | 71 yds · 17 car · questionable | 46 / 25 | 2¢ | 1.8% |
| David Montgomery (HOU) | 70 yds · 26 car | 60 / 10 | 2¢ | 1.1% |
| Jacory Croskey-Merritt (WSH) | 106 yds · 28 car | 63 / 43 | 1¢ | 1.1% |
| Chuba Hubbard (CAR) | 102 yds · 22 car | 49 / 53 | 1¢ | 0.7% |
| Josh Allen (BUF, QB) | 92 yds · 20 car | 23 / 69 | 1¢ | 0.2% |
| Lamar Jackson (BAL, QB) | 74 yds · 11 car | 40 / 34 | 1¢ | 0.2% |
| RJ Harvey (DEN) | 18 yds · 1 game · questionable | 18 / DNP | 1¢ | 1.2% |
| Alvin Kamara (NO) | 15 yds · 1 game | DNP / 15 | 1¢ | 0.6% |
| Josh Jacobs (GB) | no games · out | DNP / DNP | 1¢ | 2.8% |
| Any unlisted leader | Swift 169 · Monangai 147 · Jones 145 | 124 / 45 (Swift) | no contract | 9.0% |
Every Model's August Number
The per-model split from August 3, before the revision round, top of the board only, kept as written. On a phone this table scrolls sideways.
| Player | ChatGPT | Claude Fable | Claude Opus | Claude Sonnet | Gemini 3.1 Pro | GLM 5.2 | Kimi K3 | DeepSeek V4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jonathan Taylor | 11.5 | 8.0 | 10.0 | 11.0 | 11.5 | 10.0 | 11.0 | 11.0 |
| Bijan Robinson | 10.0 | 10.5 | 10.0 | 9.0 | 12.0 | 9.0 | 11.0 | 11.0 |
| James Cook III | 10.5 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 10.0 | 10.5 | 10.0 | 12.5 | 10.0 |
| Jahmyr Gibbs | 4.6 | 8.5 | 9.0 | 6.5 | 8.0 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 8.0 |
| Derrick Henry | 7.5 | 7.5 | 6.5 | 7.5 | 5.5 | 6.0 | 9.0 | 8.0 |
| De'Von Achane | 6.0 | 5.5 | 6.0 | 3.5 | 9.0 | 6.5 | 6.5 | 6.0 |
| Kyren Williams | 5.2 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 5.5 | 7.5 | 5.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| Saquon Barkley | 4.8 | 7.0 | 3.5 | 6.5 | 2.5 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 8.0 |
| Christian McCaffrey | 7.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 4.5 | 3.5 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 6.0 |
| The field (unlisted) | 14.2 | 7.0 | 12.0 | 7.0 | 5.5 | 7.8 | 8.5 | 10.0 |
How The Panel Read It, And How It Reads Now
Seven of eight models opened in August with the same mechanism, stated cleanest by Claude Opus:
"The ledger says the winner needs roughly 1,600-1,800 yards (median 1,697), which is a volume outcome, not an efficiency one: 300+ carries with no roster rival." (Claude Opus)
Two weeks in, the mechanism is holding and the names are not. The top five in rushing yards all have 34 or more carries, and the leader has 47. The panel's age rule on Henry was stated by GLM 5.2 as "the cliff is imminent and Lamar vultures rushing yards"; Henry has 40 carries to Lamar Jackson's 11. The roster fact that moved the most numbers, David Montgomery listed in Houston, played out as written. And the field, which Claude Fable argued up on the grounds that repeat leaders are rare, has three unlisted backs inside the top ten. Every model is graded against the real leaderboard when the season ends, on the public model verdict scoreboard.
What Decides It Next
Kansas City at Miami on Sunday afternoon, where the Chiefs are double-digit favorites and a lead that size is a fourth-quarter handoff script for Walker. Baltimore at Dallas for Henry. Houston at Indianapolis for Taylor, where an 0-2 Colts team playing an 0-2 Texans team gets its first chance at a lead to run out. The Jets at Detroit for Gibbs, and the Chargers at Buffalo for Cook. At 20 cents the favorite is priced for a full season, so size it like a season-long hold.
Rushing Title Odds Vs Your Fantasy Lineup
This board is a market-priced volume projection, which is most of what a running back's value is. The rushing board pays pure ground volume while the fantasy RB1 board rewards Gibbs's catches; the full map of fantasy-relevant Kalshi families is the fantasy football prediction markets hub, the award races that shadow this board live in the Kalshi NFL awards hub, and for weekly projections against live lines, Stokastic Prop Tools runs that exercise every slate.
Every number in this piece lands in our backtest ledger the day it is generated and gets graded against the real season-ending leaderboard on the public model verdict scoreboard.
Projections and hit rates on this page are estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
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Verdicts generated August 3, 2026, price-blind. Prices as of September 24, 2026, quoted as the ask on the Yes contract. Panel: ChatGPT, Claude Fable, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.2, Kimi K3, and DeepSeek V4, all eight revised in an anonymized cross-read; the blend is the simple mean of the eight revised estimates. Models are frequently wrong; the market price reflects real traders' money.
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