Shawn Siegele breaks down the underdog heroics from D’Ernest Johnson, looks forward to Javonte Williams’ breakout, and locates the next 10 cheap RBs to buy.

D’Ernest Johnson was the latest Zero RB fill-in option to win a week, leading the NFL with 146 rushing yards. He was a difficult decision in free agency, given the potential that he would only get a single start. Nick Chubb appears on track to return in Week 8, but anyone who bid on Johnson is likely happy with the result. High-volume Zero RB managers will tell you one element is frequently missed in offseason analysis: full season numbers can be misleading when you’re managing your roster weekly. Many of these one-week blowup games are obvious plays before they occur, not just in hindsight.

Only one team out of 12 could play Johnson in Week 7, but desperate managers had a wealth of quality options. The RB1 tier featured 12 backs scoring 16.5-plus, and nine of them were drafted after the Dead Zone. (The RB2 tier was heavily late-round as well, although some of those finishes probably were on the bench.) Those three early backs? RotoViz all-stars D’Andre Swift, Jonathan Taylor, and Javonte Williams.

The Week That Gave Us Zero RB Stars Also Provided a Flurry of New Options

In finishing off the intro after writing the bulk of the article, I can report that this was my favorite week to do the Ultimate Watch. On just the AFC side, I have 10 more backs I’m seriously considering adding this week. We have options at all price levels and for all formats.

Yesterday I talked a little bit about the strength of our RotoViz draft plan through seven weeks. A big part of that plan is to dominate the bye weeks. Your teams should be deep at WR to hammer the flexes, and the RB landscape is giving us a lot of potential opportunities for rostering the next Johnson.