Which RBs To Target and Which RBs To Fade This Season (Episode 1011 with Evan Silva, Adam Levitan, John Daigle)

**Adam Levitan** (0:15)
Hello, and welcome to episode 1011 of the official establishtherun.com podcast. My name is Adam Levitan, joined by Evan Silva and John Daigle.
And NFL offenses continue to evolve back to the run. The running back position continues to evolve as a whole. And running back remains the most important part of fantasy football. Evan, how's it going today?

**Evan Silva** (0:41)
It's going well. Probably my favorite position to watch in the NFL is running back. And as you mentioned, the importance of the running game has made at least a little bit of a return. So it'll be fun to break it all down today.

**Adam Levitan** (0:54)
Indeed. Daigle, how's it going?

**John Daigle** (0:56)
Doing well. The time of the year where everyone tunes in to Establish The Run, there's always rankings and tiers changes going on. So we can feel the season getting much closer.

**Adam Levitan** (1:06)
Indeed. On today's show, we are going to be talking all things running back, how to handle the early rounds, player takes, targets, busts, sleepers, handcuffing, and more.
If you have a fantasy draft coming up, and I know you do, we can help. I promise no one dedicates more time and frankly money to ensuring that we have the most up-to-date and best rankings that you can bring to your draft. Our Draft Kit Pro is only $55, includes Silva's top 150 in tiers, all our ETR rankings, my draft strategy, my player-by-player notes, Thorman's rankings in season, tons, tons more. And if you're really serious about the fantasy football, you need the bundle. Combines Draft Kit Pro with our in-season product, aka all our projections, Silva's matchups, Thorn Offensive Line, Defensive Line matchup, tons of premium shows, including Man vs. Machine in season, tons more. Details on both of those products, Draft Kit Pro and the bundle, are available at establishtherun.com.
All right, let's get into it here. I want to start by talking about some of the early round stuff around running backs. So clearly, the NFL has changed. Passing rate is down. Passing yards are down. Yards per target is down. At the same time, starting running backs have sustained health at a really high rate over the last two seasons, leading to running backs being... And you combine all that, and running backs have been overwhelmingly the best fantasy plays on average.
Now, the ADP has shifted a little bit. We now have, I expect, 12 running backs to go off the board in the first 20 picks. So that sets the stage here for the early rounds. I think all of us have Gibbs and Bijan. I know me and Silva both. Gibbs won, Bijan too. Daigle, do you see any merit to taking wide receiver over Bijan there at the top? I think we're all in agreement that Gibbs is our number one player.

**John Daigle** (3:15)
Especially since we're talking about home league formats. And as we move along this episode, we'll talk about the players that we've lost confidence in that you can draft on the comeback. So, Gibbs, Bijan, firmly entrenched as one and two overall.

**Adam Levitan** (3:29)
Okay, yeah, and as we talk here today, we are referring to the standard half PPR 12 team redraft formats that I know is the most common format out there for people.
I think a question that people have, Silva, is Gibbs, Bijan, Chase Puka, everybody feels good about. When they get to pick five, people can make a case, well, Jackson Smith and Jigba lost Clint Kubiak. Should we be, we need running back? Should we be looking at a Christian McCaffrey or Jonathan Taylor at pick five? Or some people have a Mon Rah over JSN straight up. So anyway, Silva, when it gets to you at pick five, what's on your mind, especially when it comes to the running back position?

**Evan Silva** (4:10)
It's wide receiver. It's a Mon Rah for me as well. I actually have Puka down here as well, just due to the at least mild suspension risk that Adam Schefter has brought about. I mean, the running backs here that you're looking at right in this range would be Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Taylor, maybe James Cook, Kenneth Walker for me.
The thing with Christian McCaffrey is that he's 30 years old. He's coming off a career high in carries and touches. He's already experienced some tightness in training camp. We don't even know if that's real. There have been some rumors that that might be contract related. I'm not worried about the injury. I am a little bit worried that he continues to get more advanced in age.
All this wear on his tires at the NFL, he's had a ton of touches at the NFL level. He had a ton of touches at the college level as well. Then Jonathan Taylor, we saw how awesome he could be when that offense was humming last year in weeks one through a little bit after midseason. The Colts had the best offense statistically in the NFL, and Jonathan Taylor was absolutely killing it. Now Daniel Jones coming off of the torn Achilles, he had the broken leg last year. Is that going to affect the overall output of the offense? I think that those guys, McCaffrey and Taylor at the top of this tier, belong behind Aman Ra, Jackson Smith and Jigba and Puka.