How to Maximize Your RB Production in Fantasy Part 1

The following is written by Dr. James Ferretti @TFSDoc

Hey gang, the doctor is in! Glad to have you here to talk running backs and some ways to maximize your production at the position heading into 2022. 

Fair warning, anyone out there can slap together a player list – and credit to those who do, but I’m all about giving you the list AND the process BEHIND what goes into making the list. I want to inform AND educate to help make you into the best fantasy player you can be…However, if you are pressed for time, or more into instant gratification than into self-improvement (no judgment, I promise) please just check back in later for Part 2 of the article for the player list.

Still here, awesome!! Now’s the perfect time to grab your favorite beverage, buckle up, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times and hereeee…We…Go…

Part 1: The Argument Against A “Robust RB” Draft Strategy:

Let this serve as a Trigger Warning if you are a “robust RB” drafter.  

Just kidding, sort of – but if you are big-time into early RBs, I want you to understand that I get it. Drafting early RBs is fun – like lots of fun. And really, is there anything better than seeing your starting running backs rip off big games, stuff the stat sheet and single-handedly carry your fantasy squad to victory?!

So again, I get the commonly held beliefs in some circles of the fantasy football community that to win your league that you need to spend early picks/a high amount of draft capital to acquire elite RBs. I really do understand that pull.  However, let me tweak this sentiment a little bit….

I would argue instead that to win your fantasy league, you don’t need quality running backs per se. To win, you need quality running back PRODUCTION.

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Certainly, this production can come from top picks and elite running backs, but very often this production can (and does) come from RBs taken much later in the draft or at significantly lower auction values (and in some cases from players who aren’t drafted at all and are picked up off of the waiver wire)!

Yeah, great Doc, no kidding…I knew THAT already, how can I use this to MY advantage? We’ll get there, I promise.  But first, let’s take a closer look as to why so many backup running backs/RBs picked up off the waiver wire scrap heap end up providing significant (and in some cases LEAGUE WINNING) production year after year…

There are a few reasons for this, some of the biggest being:

1. Recency bias – It is definitely a thing. Sometimes the stars just align for an RB for some or most of a given season. It often goes like this…Coaching preferences, necessity due to injury to other players, game scripts, small sample size variability, dumb luck, and acts of God – just to name a few – lead to production.
   
   That’s awesome, but the problem is that most of those factors don’t carry over year to year AND new variables enter into the equation and change things as well. Yet, those juicy stats from the prior year are there staring at us all when it’s time to pick and this serves to push some RBs up the draft boards and ADP ranks by drafters expecting a repeat performance which may be much less likely to occur the following year.
   
2. Injuries – you knew the Doc was gonna get there eventually. Football is a dangerous sport. Injuries are very prevalent and often significantly alter the fantasy football landscape on a weekly basis. (We do an hour-long show every week on Monday nights on the #GoingFor2 network during the regular season and we are RARELY short on injuries to discuss). Simply put, injuries are a part of life, especially in the NFL.
   
3. Playing running back – by its very nature the RB position is basically the equivalent of having a player be involved in 10-30 plus low-speed car crashes in a given week; (that’s what a tackle essentially is from a medical/physics perspective). This is especially potentially hazardous to a football player’s health.

If you’ll indulge me, I want to take you down the injury rabbit hole a little further (this is what I do, after all, so don’t act surprised). Anyway, if we were to examine the starting RBs in the NFL, one analogy I might suggest would be to think of them all as cars in a big demolition derby. They are all racing around at top speed and crashing into things constantly just by the very nature of what they do.  Certainly entertaining to watch, but an inherently dangerous activity. With me so far? Ok, great!  Now, let’s say you were trying to predict RB injuries for a given season. 

I submit THAT is just like watching that same demolition derby and trying to guess which cars in the derby were going to get damaged (and when). So if I asked you to predict that, maybe you could see that some cars were a little bigger, or moved a little faster.  Maybe some were more elusive.  Maybe all of those things could decrease the chances of damage. Heck, maybe even some were more reckless with their style and sought out contact/collisions and while being even more fun to watch, they likely upped their chances of sustaining damage even more. So maybe you could look at some of those things and say at a micro level, “I think this one might be a little better off”, or “this one maybe is a little worse off” and that’s great.

Now if you asked ME, I’d say “it’s a freakin’ demolition derby – they’re ALL probably going to get messed up!” And that brings us to one of my foundational processes in the analysis of RBs every year. RBs, just like the cars in the demolition derby, are going to get damaged; it’s only a matter of time! The only real questions are “when?” And “how badly?”

Furthermore, when fantasy players are evaluating RBs for the year, especially with regard to injuries – the process tends to skew towards “all or nothing” outcomes. It usually sounds like this, “I think this player is more likely to get hurt, so I don’t want him,” and conversely, “this player is ‘healthy’ so I’m going to bump him up.” Aside from being too binary, this approach to RB analysis predraft also commonly fails to capture the most likely outcome; that an NFL RB – ANY RB – is very likely to miss a handful of games in a year due to injury even in a year where the player does not sustain a “major injury.”

So, process-wise, how you can apply this to fantasy football is – when you draft ANY starting RB, EXPECT him to miss at LEAST 2-4 games a year due to injury at minimum! If they don’t, great, they got lucky – but I assure you that scenario is very much the exception rather than the rule!  

Still with me?  Good.  Let’s keep going…

Those missed games (which are almost assuredly guaranteed to remember) provide OPPORTUNITY for other RBs further down the depth chart to step in and potentially provide high-end RB PRODUCTION for those games…And believe me, when injures and BYE weeks hit your squad, that unexpected RB production alone could (as Al Pacino playing Coach D’Amato from the movie Any Given Sunday would tell us) “make the f**kin’ difference between WINNIN’ AND LOSIN’!” for that week.

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Of course, there are (and will continue to be) plenty of instances where elite, high draft capital running backs miss MORE than 2-4 games in a season. If and when that happens, you can get that potential high-end PRODUCTION from those lower-cost/replacement RBs on your roster for even longer – that’s just icing on the cake.  

Hopefully, this has convinced you that there is significant value to be had by potentially shifting at least some of your draft capital and attention away from the RB position early and seeking out those RB3 (or lower) types later to get more chances at that desired high-end RB PRODUCTION at a discounted price.  

This also has the added bonuses of not overloading your roster with the riskiest type of position player and allowing your roster to (hopefully) be stronger at QB, TE and WR – so if your RBs get hurt, you decrease the chances of fighting an injury war on multiple fronts/positions.

Now, maybe that all sounds good in theory to you and maybe it sounds scary as hell (and if it does, that’s okay – I know old habits die hard. Heck I was a “robust RB” drafter once myself)…  

But if the thought of you passing on those early RBs is leaving you cold and exposed, in part 2 of the article we’ll look at the player list for some RBs who could easily outproduce their draft slots in the near term and hopefully help restore those warm and fuzzy feelings that only RB production can provide!

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