The last time we met I was blathering on and on about quarterbacks and if they had or had not lived up to their Average Draft Position, i.e. ADP. i.e. place where lots of people picked that player. So this time I’m going to change things up completely and talk about running backs instead of quarterbacks. You see, running backs run, while quarter backs quarter, which I guess is a fancy term for what your grandpa did when he found quarters behind your ear or I guess in this case, your back.
Last season, we as a fantasy football community, had some big misses. This is the way of the oft-injured, oft-hit running back position, but just like the seasons of yore, the rewards if you hit on the right back were great. Let’s see how our collective consciousness made out.
Arian Foster – ADP 1 (Finish 2) – Foster was the number one pick in ADP on every site used by Fantasy Pros. There wasn’t much debate. And really there shouldn’t have been. All signs pointed to him once again being the every down back on a good run first team.
We want bell-cow backs, and we got a bell-cow back in Foster. He was used and used often on his way to 391 regular season touches. It was a down year for Foster in terms of per touch productivity, but I doubt his fantasy owners are going to complain too much, especially when he totaled 17 touchdowns on the season. Those touchdowns made him a safe top-25 running back in 15 of his 16 starts.
Of course his steady decline in yards per carry from 4.9 in 2010, 4.4 in 2011 and 4.1 last season is worrisome, but when you consider the alternatives out there, an every down back like Foster is still quite rare, which outweighs the possibility of injury from overuse in my book. If you are really afraid of him, then you’ll rank him third overall and never have to draft him.
Ray Rice – ADP 2 (Finish 6) – After finishing as the best fantasy running back in 2011, the only real debate over who should be the #1 pick was Foster versus Rice. Foster seemed to have won in a landslide, but Rice had all the prospects to repeat his great 2011.
Rice’s sixth place finish wasn’t a fantasy back breaker, but it was slightly disappointing. That disappointment mostly stemmed from Rice’s decrease in touches from the previous two seasons. In 2010 he ran and caught the ball 370 times, in 2011, 367 times, and last season 318 times. Those extra 40 touches are the difference in tying Foster as the second best fantasy back.
Unfortunately for fantasy owners, Rice’s decrease in touches coincided with his team winning the Super Bowl. We will most likely see a similar workload next season. Especially with Bernard Pierce taking a step forward in the second half of 2012.
LeSean McCoy – ADP 3 (Finish 21) – 2012 was a lost season for McCoy and the Eagles. The offense couldn’t move while the defense also couldn’t move as receivers caught touchdown after touchdown against them. McCoy went the way of the offense as a whole and even if all things were equal to the previous season, had little chance to live up to his 20 touchdowns from 2011. But of course all things weren’t equal and besides the team being horrible, McCoy missed four games to injury.
The expectations will be high for McCoy to rebound next season. There are many variables to consider going into 2013 that make McCoy seem risky. A new coach, system and oft-injured quarterback being the main three I'll have sleepless nights over. There is no doubting his ability and in a more stable environment he’d be hard to pass up on draft day 2013, but if he once again comes off the board as a top-5 back I may just have to.
Chris Johnson – ADP 4 (Finish 13) – In 2011 Johnson finished as the 16th best running back with 157 standard fantasy points and in 2012 he finished 13th with 162 fantasy points. Those numbers are eerily familiar. The bounce back season is starting to look like a fantasy and not the good kind where he scores a bazillion points.
Johnson did his best Jekyl and Hyde impersonation all season. With only eight top-25 weekly running back finishes, and just two of those being top-5 finishes, his consistency was quite inconsistent. His ADP was driven up in the preseason with some nice preseason games, the absence of a hold out, and the memory/mystery of the bygone days of the mythical beast CJ2K.
With two subpar years, it will be hard justifying an early pick on Johnson. Of course much will depend on his ADP, but if it’s not out of the top 10, I’m not biting.
Darren McFadden – ADP 5 (Finish 28) – Run DMC should have walked a different way because whatever he was doing last season was the opposite of the way that could possibly help your fake team.
The knock on McFadden has of course been his health and for good reason, but the upside of even a 12-14 game season for McFadden was still worth a high draft pick due to his numbers over the previous two seasons. Let’s take a quick look so as not to forget how good McFadden has been. In 2011/2012 McFadden played in 20 games and rushed for 1,771 yards and 13 touchdowns on 336 carries for a 5.27 yards per carry average. He also caught 66 passes for 661 yards and four touchdowns. That’s a whopping 2,432 total yards on 402 touches. Adrian Peterson touched the ball 388 times for 2,314 yards this season. That per play explosiveness is nothing to scoff at and it’s hard to fault those who grabbed McFadden early last year.
But of course hindsight is better than frontsight usually and picking him early was the wrong choice. The interesting/depressing thing last season was that his health wasn’t the main problem. Of course his old injury woes haunted him again, but when he was on the field his production was nearly non-existent. His 3.3 yards per carry was quite a drop off from his 5.4 over the previous two seasons. That kind of drop off doesn’t just happen out of the blue. Blocking scheme and playing with an injury will be the two main culprits bandied about and with a new power running scheme over last season’s failed zone blocking scheme, the bounce back articles will be abundant. I may write a couple for fun. But there is no doubt the guy has trouble when touched or touching things at velocity.
Matt Forte -- ADP 6 (Finish 12) – Mr. Forte’s season showed bursts of promise, but never seemed to get fully on-track, especially after an ankle injury that only kept him out a game, but obviously hurt his production. His biggest problem this season was his lack of production through the air. As long as he was able to put up around 500 receiving yards a season, it would balance out his touchdown problem. Also, there’s the touchdown problem. Over the last four seasons his total touchdowns have gone from 4 to 9 to 4 and then 6 last year. The odds of him getting into double digits at this point are slim. His value will remain in his versatility as a pass catcher, which should resurface next season, if he can stay in one piece.
DeMarco Murray -- ADP 7 (Finish 25) – DeMarco Murray wowed us in 2011 with a couple of huge games, which also helped him win the job as the starting running back of THE Dallas Cowboys. Tony Dorsett? Emmitt Smith? DeMarco Murray? Nope, not DeMarco Murray, at least not last season.
His prospects looked great with some strong preseason running and 131 yards rushing in week one, but that all took a nose dive pretty quickly. He never reached the 100 yard mark again. His running style is similar to punching everyone in the mouth as you try to run by them. But he was then punched back a few too many times and missed six games due to injury. With a full season his numbers would have put him around 12th overall for running backs, so that isn’t all that bad. The worry of course is how well he’ll hold up, especially since his record is 100% for not holding up.
Maurice Jones-Drew – ADP 8 (Finish 50) – The decline of MJD had long been talked about, but in 2011 he thwarted all talk and finished as the third best fantasy running back in the league after taking his team squarely on his shoulders. That year allowed us to forget some of our angst over his decline, so of course he declined, at least physically. Jones-Drew only played in five games and sadly enough for the Jaguars, still led the team in rushing. But I digress since talking about the Jaguars in a normal way is pointless.
Jones-Drew looks to be on track to be back in June, but there are many questions for him going into next season. And by many, I mean two; his newly healed broken foot and a new zone-blocking scheme brought in by new offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch. That’s a lot of new. But MJD is a ball of muscle that when healthy pretty much gets the job done no matter. At least right now I might be giving him a shot next season as long as his ADP doesn’t go too high.
The last time we met I was blathering on and on about quarterbacks and if they had or had not lived up to their Average Draft Position, i.e. ADP. i.e. place where lots of people picked that player. So this time I’m going to change things up completely and talk about running backs instead of quarterbacks. You see, running backs run, while quarter backs quarter, which I guess is a fancy term for what your grandpa did when he found quarters behind your ear or I guess in this case, your back.
Last season, we as a fantasy football community, had some big misses. This is the way of the oft-injured, oft-hit running back position, but just like the seasons of yore, the rewards if you hit on the right back were great. Let’s see how our collective consciousness made out.
Arian Foster – ADP 1 (Finish 2) – Foster was the number one pick in ADP on every site used by Fantasy Pros. There wasn’t much debate. And really there shouldn’t have been. All signs pointed to him once again being the every down back on a good run first team.
We want bell-cow backs, and we got a bell-cow back in Foster. He was used and used often on his way to 391 regular season touches. It was a down year for Foster in terms of per touch productivity, but I doubt his fantasy owners are going to complain too much, especially when he totaled 17 touchdowns on the season. Those touchdowns made him a safe top-25 running back in 15 of his 16 starts.
Of course his steady decline in yards per carry from 4.9 in 2010, 4.4 in 2011 and 4.1 last season is worrisome, but when you consider the alternatives out there, an every down back like Foster is still quite rare, which outweighs the possibility of injury from overuse in my book. If you are really afraid of him, then you’ll rank him third overall and never have to draft him.
Ray Rice – ADP 2 (Finish 6) – After finishing as the best fantasy running back in 2011, the only real debate over who should be the #1 pick was Foster versus Rice. Foster seemed to have won in a landslide, but Rice had all the prospects to repeat his great 2011.
Rice’s sixth place finish wasn’t a fantasy back breaker, but it was slightly disappointing. That disappointment mostly stemmed from Rice’s decrease in touches from the previous two seasons. In 2010 he ran and caught the ball 370 times, in 2011, 367 times, and last season 318 times. Those extra 40 touches are the difference in tying Foster as the second best fantasy back.
Unfortunately for fantasy owners, Rice’s decrease in touches coincided with his team winning the Super Bowl. We will most likely see a similar workload next season. Especially with Bernard Pierce taking a step forward in the second half of 2012.
LeSean McCoy – ADP 3 (Finish 21) – 2012 was a lost season for McCoy and the Eagles. The offense couldn’t move while the defense also couldn’t move as receivers caught touchdown after touchdown against them. McCoy went the way of the offense as a whole and even if all things were equal to the previous season, had little chance to live up to his 20 touchdowns from 2011. But of course all things weren’t equal and besides the team being horrible, McCoy missed four games to injury.
The expectations will be high for McCoy to rebound next season. There are many variables to consider going into 2013 that make McCoy seem risky. A new coach, system and oft-injured quarterback being the main three I'll have sleepless nights over. There is no doubting his ability and in a more stable environment he’d be hard to pass up on draft day 2013, but if he once again comes off the board as a top-5 back I may just have to.
Chris Johnson – ADP 4 (Finish 13) – In 2011 Johnson finished as the 16th best running back with 157 standard fantasy points and in 2012 he finished 13th with 162 fantasy points. Those numbers are eerily familiar. The bounce back season is starting to look like a fantasy and not the good kind where he scores a bazillion points.
Johnson did his best Jekyl and Hyde impersonation all season. With only eight top-25 weekly running back finishes, and just two of those being top-5 finishes, his consistency was quite inconsistent. His ADP was driven up in the preseason with some nice preseason games, the absence of a hold out, and the memory/mystery of the bygone days of the mythical beast CJ2K.
With two subpar years, it will be hard justifying an early pick on Johnson. Of course much will depend on his ADP, but if it’s not out of the top 10, I’m not biting.
Darren McFadden – ADP 5 (Finish 28) – Run DMC should have walked a different way because whatever he was doing last season was the opposite of the way that could possibly help your fake team.
The knock on McFadden has of course been his health and for good reason, but the upside of even a 12-14 game season for McFadden was still worth a high draft pick due to his numbers over the previous two seasons. Let’s take a quick look so as not to forget how good McFadden has been. In 2011/2012 McFadden played in 20 games and rushed for 1,771 yards and 13 touchdowns on 336 carries for a 5.27 yards per carry average. He also caught 66 passes for 661 yards and four touchdowns. That’s a whopping 2,432 total yards on 402 touches. Adrian Peterson touched the ball 388 times for 2,314 yards this season. That per play explosiveness is nothing to scoff at and it’s hard to fault those who grabbed McFadden early last year.
But of course hindsight is better than frontsight usually and picking him early was the wrong choice. The interesting/depressing thing last season was that his health wasn’t the main problem. Of course his old injury woes haunted him again, but when he was on the field his production was nearly non-existent. His 3.3 yards per carry was quite a drop off from his 5.4 over the previous two seasons. That kind of drop off doesn’t just happen out of the blue. Blocking scheme and playing with an injury will be the two main culprits bandied about and with a new power running scheme over last season’s failed zone blocking scheme, the bounce back articles will be abundant. I may write a couple for fun. But there is no doubt the guy has trouble when touched or touching things at velocity.
Matt Forte -- ADP 6 (Finish 12) – Mr. Forte’s season showed bursts of promise, but never seemed to get fully on-track, especially after an ankle injury that only kept him out a game, but obviously hurt his production. His biggest problem this season was his lack of production through the air. As long as he was able to put up around 500 receiving yards a season, it would balance out his touchdown problem. Also, there’s the touchdown problem. Over the last four seasons his total touchdowns have gone from 4 to 9 to 4 and then 6 last year. The odds of him getting into double digits at this point are slim. His value will remain in his versatility as a pass catcher, which should resurface next season, if he can stay in one piece.
DeMarco Murray -- ADP 7 (Finish 25) – DeMarco Murray wowed us in 2011 with a couple of huge games, which also helped him win the job as the starting running back of THE Dallas Cowboys. Tony Dorsett? Emmitt Smith? DeMarco Murray? Nope, not DeMarco Murray, at least not last season.
His prospects looked great with some strong preseason running and 131 yards rushing in week one, but that all took a nose dive pretty quickly. He never reached the 100 yard mark again. His running style is similar to punching everyone in the mouth as you try to run by them. But he was then punched back a few too many times and missed six games due to injury. With a full season his numbers would have put him around 12th overall for running backs, so that isn’t all that bad. The worry of course is how well he’ll hold up, especially since his record is 100% for not holding up.
Maurice Jones-Drew – ADP 8 (Finish 50) – The decline of MJD had long been talked about, but in 2011 he thwarted all talk and finished as the third best fantasy running back in the league after taking his team squarely on his shoulders. That year allowed us to forget some of our angst over his decline, so of course he declined, at least physically. Jones-Drew only played in five games and sadly enough for the Jaguars, still led the team in rushing. But I digress since talking about the Jaguars in a normal way is pointless.
Jones-Drew looks to be on track to be back in June, but there are many questions for him going into next season. And by many, I mean two; his newly healed broken foot and a new zone-blocking scheme brought in by new offensive coordinator Jedd Fisch. That’s a lot of new. But MJD is a ball of muscle that when healthy pretty much gets the job done no matter. At least right now I might be giving him a shot next season as long as his ADP doesn’t go too high.
Adrian Peterson – ADP 9 (Finish 1) – What else can you say about AD’s 2012? There really is no comparison season out there for what he accomplished after his Christmas Day knee disaster. And that’s why he went off the board as the 9th running back instead of at least in the top 3. The facts presented did not add up to a record-breaking season. Why didn’t he do this when he was 100%? We can all kick ourselves six ways from Sunday for not grabbing him when we had a chance, but it’s not going to do us any good.
He was by far the best fantasy player of 2012. In 15 of 16 weeks he was a top 25 (startable) running back and in 9 of 16 weeks he was a top 5 running back. His consistent greatness in the second half of the season was historic and won fantasy leagues by wide margins. Here is where he finished each week, starting with week one – 3, 28, 15, 14, 18, 8, 2, 4, 2, 1, 20, 1, 2, 1, 23, and 3. There are a few big numbers in there, mostly at the beginning of the season when his knee still wasn’t 100%. And these numbers are for a player who blew away the competition for best running back in the league. It just goes to show you how impossible it is to dominate statistically from week to week when you look at the numbers over a full season.
Peterson will be the number one player taken in every single 2013 draft where its participants haven’t gone off their meds. Of course the chances of him being the number one player again aren’t great. It’s just the nature of this game, but he’s the odds on favorite and I’ll side with the odds here.
Marshawn Lynch – ADP 10 (Finish 4) –Lynch wasn’t as flashy as pretty boy Peterson, but he was nearly as consistent with 14 weeks with a top 25 finish. This is two years in a row now where Lynch’s reliability from week to week has become commonplace. And he’s actually a year younger than Peterson. There’s no reason not to think he’ll get right back on that Skittles horse and ride into the end zone tens of times.
The Usurpers
Those were the top 10 running backs in ADP, and now I’ll take a look at who went from outside the top 10 ADP to finish in the Reality Top 10.
Doug Martin – ADP 17 (Finish 3) – Mr. Martin was a beast last season. Not really hamster-like, but more of a jungle cat mixed with a razorback and some hedgehog and what the heck, a little hamster too. No matter the Dr. Moreau amalgamation, he did some great fantasy football work as a rookie.
I’ve heard some complaints that he put all his numbers up in a handful of games, and yes, he did have one monstrously huge game of 251 yards rushing and 4 touchdowns against Oakland in week nine, but he was just as consistent or more so than the rest of the top running backs. Like Lynch, he finished in the top-25 14 out of 16 times to go along with his third place finish in fantasy points. I wouldn’t hide that under a bushel basket.
Next season Martin will go very high and I’ll be the one driving his ADP up (or is it down?) until people start writing articles saying he’s overrated. Then I’ll just take him some more.
Alfred Morris – ADP 60 (Finish 5) – Your bang for your buck winner of 2012 was Alf Morris and there is no debate so don’t even try it! Morris was in the Shanahan mix at running back in preseason, but we had all gotten used to that mixture being poisonous, so some grabbed him as a late round flier and some were able to get him off the waiver wire.
I admit to being a doubter and paid the price for it. Morris is not going to blow you away, but much like the Shanabacks before him who were successful, he fits the zone-blocking scheme perfectly and is talented in other ways beyond speed and ability to make defenders whiff in the open field. He moves well in small spaces, finds a crease and explodes through them, falls forward and stays healthy.
With Robert Griffin III in the mix, there’s no way defenders can focus all their run stopping ability on Morris, so that, coupled with a good offensive line and the perfect scheme for Morris’ skill set make for a long term fantasy back as long as those factors stay consistent.
C.J. Spiller – ADP 37 (Finish 7) – On paper, there weren’t many running backs better than Spiller last season. Over the last two seasons Spiller has run the ball 314 times for 1,805 yards and 10 TDs at 5.74 yards per carry and caught 82 passes (110 targets) for 728 yards and 4 TDs. That’s 396 touches for 2,533 yards and 14 TDs compared to Peterson’s 388 touches for 2,314 yards for 13 TDs last season.
And no, you can’t compare the two straight up because there is no way C.J. Spiller touches the ball close to 400 times in a single season. It’s just not going to happen, but looking at the numbers we can see that Spiller has been putting these numbers up for a while now and has an elite talent.
And many of us fake footballers hope and pray that they’ll give him the ball 20+ times a game so we can see that talent more often, but I think we have to be careful what we wish for. If he did touch the ball 300+ times I truly doubt Spiller would last a whole year uninjured. So I think we just need to hope for a top 5 finish from Spiller next season with a slight increase in touches.
Jamaal Charles – ADP 11 (Finish 8) – J.C. Superstar had a longer time to recover than Adrian Peterson, but his injury was still worrisome coming into the season and dropped his ADP outside the top 10. Even though Charles finished 8th, he still was extremely inconsistent, which had much more to do with his team/coaching than his ability.
Next season he will have a new coach and a new quarterback. It may raise expectations higher than they should be because as we know, change isn’t always for the better, but I’m still betting on Charles’ ability and the fact that Andy Reid has made great fantasy backs in the past.
Steven Ridley – ADP 26 (Finish 9) – I liked Ridley a lot coming into the season, but much like Coach Shanahan, Coach Belichick can be scary when he has your fantasy backs in his hands. Ridley ended up playing much above his ADP and even when he wasn’t topping 100 yards like he did in the first half, he was still getting into the end zone. He finished third in rushing touchdowns with 12 and as the goal line back for a high-powered offense, there’s no reason to doubt he’ll still be a TD machine.
Frank Gore – ADP 19 (Finish 10) – Many, including myself skipped over Gore due to a decline toward the end of 2011, but in 2012 he still put up some healthy numbers. After two straight years of average yards per carry of 4.3 and 4.2, he popped back up to 4.7. His 16 carries a game were low for him, but kept him fresh.
He once again had a worse second half of the season. In the first nine games of the year he averaged 5.4 yards per carry and then in the last 7, just 3.9. But that may have had a lot to do with Kendall Hunter getting hurt in week 12, which put more of a burden on Gore.
Gore will be 30 in May and there’s no doubt the 49ers will want to continue giving his legs rest. LaMichael James and Kendall Hunter depending on health will see plenty of work next season in what could be a three-headed Potter-style monster dog creature.
Those running backs whose ADP didn’t live up to their finishes almost all were injured at some point in the season, well, except for Chris Johnson, but his season wasn’t abysmal either. Only four backs drafted in the top 10 finished in the top 10 and two of those were coming of major knee surgeries. So if you think you know, you don’t, which of course is why this game is fun. If you knew the outcome before playing, why play? Did Bob Dylan say that?
Anyway, running backs get injured, so why not grab one of those quarterbacks who we know is going to be in the top 5 barring a meteor strike? Well, there are many reasons, but I always look at all those running back injuries as a reason to take as many running backs as my team can fit. That and quarterback is insanely deep next season, making for another year of being burned by first round running backs!