Welcome to Fantasy Football Weekly, a production of iHeartRadio.
Time now for Fantasy Football Weekly from iHeartRadio, your weekly source for the nation's best fantasy football advice, speculation, and whatever stupid stuff they decide to drop into the show. Now, here's your host, Paul Jarchian.
Hey, everybody, welcome to Fantasy Football Weekly. A rare solo show for me. Oh, it's gonna be a lot of charge. Hope you can make it through that. I'll do my best to make it worth your while. I guess I'm not entirely alone. I do have a couple of people that are gonna chime in like this.
Yeah, I should do the opposite.
Should If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Yes, I will do the opposite. Yes, I will do the opposite.
Hopefully by now, longtime listeners, you know how I feel about do the opposite. This goes back twenty years when Seinfeld was relevant on television. I imagine some of you didn't even recognize that as being a Seinfeld clip. That I've been advocating a draft strategy and acquisition strategy for auctions drafts. However, you play that basically says, don't draft runners for at least four rounds and then draft a slew of runners through the middle rounds of your draft.
And overall the success rate on this has been very good. And it's taken until really last year, last draft cycle, where I think people are really starting to figure.
It out a little bit. And one of the things we talked about in.
This show Fantasy Football Weekly, coming out of August's drafts was, Man, people weren't drafted a lot of running backs. In fact, to the first two rounds last year, only nine running backs taken. This was a really sizeable departure, and I think it's just taken a lot of time for people to get burned and burned and burned on highly drafted running backs and seeing the people winning their leagues winning it with other positions drafted early quarterbacks, wide receivers.
Tight ends.
So I thought, let's spend one episode of Fantasy Football Weekly recapping this year, this past season, twenty twenty three season. Let's begin here the nine running backs that were drafted in the first two rounds. How did they fare? So if you America started drafting fewer running backs, you'd think the hit rate would go up because we're not being so reckless with our picks at running back through those
first two rounds. Well, let's take a look and see how those nine running backs that were taken in the first two rounds ended up faring. We begin here Christian McCaffrey. He was the first running back taken and he finished as running back one. McCaffrey worked out great, and he's really gonna be the out here as you're going to see. Then. Austin Eckler was running back too. He finished his running back twenty nine. B Jhon Robinson was running back three
last year. He finished his running back fourteen, So not a total disaster, but not what you expected when you took him at running back three.
And roughly the middle of the first round.
Nick Chubb went next, running back four. Obviously, you know his season ended very early. He finished his running back eighty six. Sakwon Barkley was running back five last year, finished running back eighteen. Tony Pollard was running back six. What an epic disappointment he was, even though he got a little bit better at the end of the year. Finished his running back twenty two. Derrick Henry was drafted
as running back seven, finished his running back seven. All right, Derrick Henry, Josh Jacobs, we'll talk more about him in a little bit here. Josh Jacobs finished as he was your running back. Eight, he finished his running back twenty five. And the funny thing is he didn't get hurt, and the usage was high, it didn't matter. Najee Harris was running back.
Nine.
He finished his running back twenty four. So in totality, there wasn't a single runner who's finish exceeded his draft position. Two of those nine running backs taken in the top two rounds met his draft position. That was Christian McCaffrey and Derrick Henry.
Nobody else did.
The other seven averaged running back thirty one. So unless you hit on Christian McCaffrey or Derrick Henry, you got punished for taking running backs in the first two rounds. So in average, in totality, those nine running backs, even with Christian McCaffrey Dereck Henry, who did what they should have done, the first nine running backs averaged out to be running back twenty five with a median of running
back twenty two. And what's really interesting about this past draft class was, unlike most hears, eight of the top nine guys missed very little playing time. You know, in a typical year, one of the things that really hurts these highly drafted running backs is massive injury to several of them. We didn't get that normally, Like one out of one third of the top running backs taken end up suffering major injury. We didn't have that here, just the Nick Chubb injury. For everybody else, it was just
typical running back variants. So where did the top.
Ten running backs come from?
Well, let's let's look. So here's gonna be the top ten guys by This is assuming full point per reception leagues, which I think most of you are playing in. Now, where did the top ten running backs come from? Well, let's look. The highest scoring running back was Christian McCaffrey.
He came out of round one.
The second highest scoring running back, Raheem mostered round ten. The third highest scoring running back, Kyron Williams.
Well, you know this is gonna be deep.
Round twenty one RB four. Travis Etn came from round three RB five Rashad White. Round six, RB six was Joe Mixon from round four RB seven. As I mentioned earlier, Dereck Henry came out of round two. RB eight was Bryce Hall, who came from round four. RB nine James Cook came from round six, and RB ten Jimior Gibbs, came from round four.
Again, eight of the ten came.
From lower than their average draft position. On average, the top ten running back came from round six, an immedian spot of round four. So what this says is really one of the key principles of do the opposite, which has always been turn your attention to running backs and roughly rounds four, five to six and just take a bunch of them out of the middle of your whether you start drafting running backs in round four or round five or round six, then you just take like.
Four in a row and.
Enjoy the probable success that you got from non running backs in the first three rounds or longer.
So let's look at non running backs. So let's dive in for a second.
And as I'm reading this list, im gonna I'm gonna give you non running backs taken in the first two rounds. I'm gonna read you the list of guys, and I'm gonna tell you in order where they were taken through the first two rounds non running backs, where they finished and as I'm reading this list of players, ask yourself, do you wish you had drafted those guys? Would they have been would they have been good producing players on your team. I'm gonna give you what is fourteen guys here.
Of these fourteen, you're gonna wish you had had most of them. So the first non running back taken was Justin Jefferson obviously missed the whole middle part of the season, finished his as wide receiver thirty seven. Jamar Chase was taken next. Widers finished his wide receiver eleven. Travis Kelcey was next, finished his tight end three. Tyreek Hill finished his wide receiver two. Then Stefan Diggs was taken wide receiver thirteen. Ceedee Lamb taken next. He finished his wide
receiver one. Patrick Mahomes was next, finished his quarterback seven. So that was a bit of a dip. Aj Brown finished his wide receiver five. DeVante Adams finished his wide receiver sixteen. Cooper Cup came into the season hurt and so you know a lot of people were wary on him. He still went off the board late second round, finished his wide receiver forty. I'm on Rossaint Brown was the
next player taken wide receiver four was his finish. Josh Allen was the next player taken among non running backs, finished his coquarter back one. Garrett Wilson was taken next, finished his wide receiver thirty five. Obviously the whole quarterback problem to Jets say Tim Boyle starting games for Pete's sake, and Garrett Wilson still had some pretty good games, he just had some stone cold duds where they could not pass. Then Jalen Hurts was taken next, finished his quarterback two,
and then Jalen Waddle. Last non running back taken on average in the first two rounds of your drafts last year, finished his wide receiver twenty eight, worse than I think a lot of people expected, but in totality, out of this whole group through the first two rounds, non running backs finished at position thirteen and a median of position seven, that's not bad. Remember, the running backs finished as an average of twenty fifth and twenty second at their positions,
so it's still way higher than normal. And by and large, these guys helped your team. Jamar Chase, Tyreek Hill, Ceedee lamb aj Brown, I'm on Ross Saint Brown, Josh Allen, Jalen Waddle, Hurts.
These guys helped your.
Teams obviously, way way safer and fund to review the data and go back and look now that we know what the results are, So if we were to break it out specifically by position. In the first couple of rounds, Travis Kelcey was the only tight end taken. He was tight end one, but he finished his tight end three and what was a good not amazing year for Travis Kelcey. Among the quarterbacks, three were taken in the first two rounds. Travis Kelcey, sorry sorry, two taken Josh Allen, and I'm
sorry three Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Jalen Hurts. Josh Allen finished his quarterback one. Jalen Hurts finished his quarterback two. Mahomes was the one guy who was a semi missed but not a bad miss at quarterback seven. Mahomes wasn't hurting you, he just wasn't helping as much as we'd liked.
And then the wide receivers by and large finished well. Jefferson, Chase, Tyreek, Hill, Diggs, Ceedee lamb aj Brown, DeVante Adams, Cooper Cup we already mentioned was a miss i'm on Rossaint Brown, Garrett Wilson slight miss, and Jalen Waddle slight miss. But overwhelmingly, these guys performed about how you would have expected, or potentially even better. Unlike any of the running backs, some of these guys finished better than their draft position. Tyreek Hill
finished better than his draft position. Ceedee Lamb finished better than his draft position. Aj Brown finished better than his draft position. I'm on Ross Saint Brown better than draft position. So you these players, non running backs, gave you the chance to improve your team based on where they were drafted.
Do the opposite.
You know, you can apply, try to apply some logic to guessing which one of the top running backs will fail, and then you could work around those guys. And I've seen people do this, like, Okay, look, I'm.
Still drafting running backs. I don't care.
I'm gonna be stubborn about it, but I'm gonna be smarter than consensus. I'm still gonna draft running backs, but I'm not gonna draft the bust running backs. So you could try to target injury prone runners that you think will end up getting hurt again, and so then you avoid those guys. But the problem is, like Christian McCaffrey was injury prone two straight season and then he wasn't and Nick Chubb wasn't injury prone until he was really
hard to predict injury. You could target older runners who might be ready to fall off, like a great example from last year would be Dalvin Cook, who the Vikings ultimately chose to give up on and then you know, ended upon two different teams and never did anything. You could try to do that, but even and I think usually that's not a half bad strategy if you are going to go running, But even then you can't know.
Look at Joe Mixon and.
Derrick Henry Guides you would have avoided if you were just targeting older runners who might be ready to fall off. Those guys buck the trend and they stayed healthy and they actually produced.
Okay, you know, usually.
We don't know which running backs are going to fail. We don't know why running backs are going to fail, but we know they do overwhelmingly year after year at a way higher rate than the other positions. So rather than trying to guess which running backs are not going to get hurt, which running backs aren't going to be at the end of their life cycle, which running backs aren't going to struggle just because their quarterback struggles. You know Freese haul as an example, or the whole offense
goes down and the running back goes with it. There's so many reasons running backs can be so much more volatile. So we don't play the odds. You just don't draft any running backs in the first three rounds and possibly the first four or five rounds. And I know what you're thinking, No, I can't do that. I'll bet hamstrung at running back all season long. But really you won't. Active fantasy owners will work around it. You will find help. You will when run running back goes down, you'll go
to the backup. You'll plug and play guys. You'll have drafted all these running backs in the middle rounds, or you'll have auctioned for eight percent or ten percent or twelve percent of your cap instead of forty percent of your cap on a guy or thirty percent of your guy. You're gonna have a bunch of eight, ten and twelve percent cap guys from your auction that are gonna help you.
You're not gonna be hamstrung.
You're gonna be okay at the running back position. So there you go a recap of do the opposite from twenty twenty three A lot. You know, I've been looking at this for twenty years. Eight or nine out of every ten years, these highly drafted runners just proved to be very volatile, injury prone.
Not every year.
There have been a couple of years that we've we've done the analytics on it and it will have gone back and it turned out, Yeah, taking running backs was probably the right thing to do. Wide receivers got hurt or quarterbacks got hurt, which you know they do. That
happens to Justin Jefferson got hurt. But overwhelmingly, the safe play with your most valuable picks, the majority of your auction cap, is to put those that those valuable dollars in those valuable draft picks on non running backs, just like it was last year. Thanks for listening, everybody, talk to you next week. Fantasy Football Weekly is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.