The world of fantasy sports is much like the coaching profession. Once something works for one person, the rest of the league begins to employ that strategy.
With the 2015 fantasy football season in the books for most owners, we’re beginning to see some chatter about avoiding the strategy of years past — drafting running backs early in the draft.
This season, that would have been a good strategy. Between busts and injuries, this was not a banner year for top running backs.
But don’t follow the knee-jerk reaction mentality.
Running backs are still a solid bet at the top of the draft. There’s only a handful of running backs who get the lion’s share of their team’s touches, making that position a coveted asset in fantasy football.
Only two running backs are over the 200-point barrier in fantasy football this season – Adrian Peterson and Devonta Freeman. Their respective values can only be duplicated by Rob Gronkowski’s dominance at the tight-end position.
Peterson and Freeman, for the most part, stayed healthy, giving them an edge on their fellow running backs. They also are two running backs with offenses that feature them for the majority of the game.
Because there’s so few teams that only employ one running back anymore, it still offers high value to the running back position.
Let’s look at the other top running backs this season. DeAngelo Williams, Doug Martin and Todd Gurley rounded out the remaining of the top-five for running backs this season. Williams missed multiple games because starter (and preseason top-three pick) Le’Veon Bell handled the majority of duties for a few games.
Martin started each game, but rarely found the end zone, while Gurley missed the first part of the season due to an injury.
Those top-five still delivered when they had the opportunity. The only issue was injury problems, which you can’t predict and you shouldn’t attempt to predict that unless a player is inevitably always going to get injured.
Now that we’ve seen who made the top-five at the end of the season, let’s look at the preseason top-five. Peterson was the No. 1 pick for many, followed by Bell, Eddie Lacy, Jamaal Charles and Marshawn Lynch. Bell, Charles and Lynch all got injured, and Lacy had one of the weirdest years in recent memory, with his sudden lack of production. It appears that injuries hampered him through the season, too, but there may be more at work with the Packers than just Lacy’s inability to get things going.
With the way the NFL is going, it’s less about the player, and more about the scheme. Bell’s replacement, Williams, was the third-best option among fantasy football running backs this season, while Lynch’s replacement, Thomas Rawls, was a beast in fantasy until he also went down with injury.
Charles’ replacement, Charcandrick West was a solid option, until he also went down with injury and the Chiefs then decided to utilize a two running back approach.
Sure, this fantasy season is all about the injuries and busts at the running back position. But there’s a big discrepancy of fantasy points within the top-10 for running backs. There was a 73.1 point differential between the top spot to the 10th spot among running backs.
Even between the fifth-best to the 10th, there still was a 30.5-point differential. That’s a major differential when discussing a position that requires two spots on fantasy roster, and may also include a flex position. For wide receivers, the difference between the top spot to the 10th player was 62.5 points, and the top six were only separated by 13 points.
Taking a top running back still matters in fantasy football. Getting touches is important for the running back position, and if you allow a couple of rounds to go by without drafting a running back, you could be looking at an impossible situation, mired in picking players in two running-back systems.
