Rewind: Rookie Running Backs in Season-Long Leagues

JJ Zachariason (0:00)

Hey, everyone, it's JJ, and thanks for tuning in. As I said earlier in the week, instead of a mailbag episode today, you're getting a late-round podcast rewind. Last summer, I talked about rookie running backs in season-long leagues, and I talked about how rookie running backs are generally pretty good bets in those leagues. That's the show I'm bringing back today. You're about to hear the data and the reasoning as to why you should continue to target rookie running backs in those season-long leagues. Now, before I start the rewind, I wanted to let you know that Underdog is giving away a million dollars in bonus cash to verified Underdog accounts on the day of the National Championship. So what's that mean for you? It means you should sign up on Underdog and start playing. Just head to underdogfantasy.com and sign up, and make sure you use promo code LATEROUND when you do. That'll give you a deposit match up to $100. Again, they're giving away a million dollars on National Championship Day, so you don't want to miss out. Make sure to sign up and use promo code LATEROUND when you do. Now, without further ado, here's the episode from last summer on rookie running max and season-long leagues.

Last offseason, I did a study on rookie wide receivers and season-long leagues. The data that I presented showed that not only are rookie wide outs good bets just in general, but they're especially good bets because of the second half of the season and how they perform during that second half. Most rookie wide outs score more fantasy points during the second half of the season, which makes sense because they're getting acclimated to the NFL game. A big reason those players are valuable in fantasy is because fantasy managers hate uncertainty. The market can't stand it when things aren't predictable. So fantasy managers push down the cost of players who have no experience because there's more up in the air with those players. But if there's one constant throughout this year's late-round draft guide, which you can get right now over on lateround.com, by the way. But if there's one constant theme throughout the guide, it's to embrace that uncertainty. Embrace the fact that we know little about these players. Because oftentimes, those players are the ones who become big values.

And that's not just at Wide Receiver. It's at Running Back, too. For whatever reason, I never got around to doing this episode on running backs. Well, I should say there is a reason. The reason is that people seem to be more willing to draft rookie running backs in season-long leagues than rookie wide receivers.

Running backs can produce immediately in the NFL, and I think most people understand that. It doesn't take as much for them to get used to the NFL game. So we see rookie running backs have these big seasons all the time. But is it possible that they're still undervalued in season-long fantasy? Yes, it's possible because they generally are. In this year's draft guide, I go position by position, and I break up fantasy drafts into different buckets. At running back, I've got the early rounds, then the running back dead zone, then the middle rounds, and then the late rounds. The early rounds go from pick 1 to pick 30 in a 12-team league. So the top of the draft through the middle of round 3 The dead zone then starts there and goes to the end of round 6 There's some overlap with the middle rounds, but the middle rounds consist of round 6 through round 9 running backs.

And then the late rounds are the backs taken after pick 108, or backs going in the double-digit rounds. And I usually cap that off at the 15th round, just so that we're not dealing with players who never sniff a football field. Now, I talked about this before on episode 643 That episode was on beating the running back dead zone. But one of the easiest ways to find value in the running back dead zone is by drafting rookies. Last year was Breece Hall and Damian Pierce. This year, it's looking like Jameer Gibbs. Historically, rookies out of the dead zone have produced like back half second round running backs, genuinely. They've been that good. The running back dead zone is not a great place to get running backs, but there are running backs who emerge from the dead zone every single year. And you can look even earlier than the dead zone and find a lot of successes too. I've brought this up on the show a lot in the past. But one of the things I like doing is looking at player performance versus average draft position expectation. Just picture a scatter plot. The X axis, the one that goes left to right, that represents average draft position, ADP. The Y axis, the one that goes up and down, represents a player's PPR points per game.