There is a new wind blowing in home leagues. For years, it has been uncommon for RotoViz to be ahead of the market on any RB, yet here we are; this year, there are a few. The home leagues are drafting more WRs in the first few rounds than ever before, and RBs are being pushed down, even on places like Yahoo, where eight WRs are being taken in the first round.
This happened once before . . . kinda. In 2016, five WRs broke into the top ten in ADP; Antonio Brown, Odell Beckham, and Julio Jones each landed in the top four with Brown topping the charts. It seemed the process of Zero RB had finally landed with the masses — at least the part about devaluing high-end RBs in favor of WRs early. But it wasn’t the best year for it (though this trio of WRs all finished in the top seven at WR), people got burned, and the masses recoiled. But slowly, Zero RB has crept back into the beer league circuit. Finally, last year, the masses bit hard, and Zero RB smashed. Now, the public is feeling more confidently invested.
Several actors are at work here, not the least of which was Shawn’s landmark 2013 article in which he laid out the strategy and coined the phrase. The rise in the popularity of best ball, where WR is of greater priority to players, has influenced early ADPs and ranks and residually affected home league ADPs, and analysts at the old-school pillars of fantasy media have finally bought in. But this time, it is probably here to stay.
Why is it different now? For one, the NFL has bought into Zero RB in its own way. RBs used to be signed to max contracts and taken in the early rounds of drafts in abundance. Now, franchises are ridiculed for first-round RB selections, and the latest iterations of top-end RB extensions are getting roughly 4.5% of the team’s cap on short-window contracts. Analytics have stressed the devaluation of RBs (to be clear, the running game is not necessarily devalued in analytics — a common misconception — merely the notion that a specific RB is the driver of it), and teams that have abandoned paying out huge contracts to RBs have been rewarded while those who have spent big have subsequently suffered. Even the hardened acolytes of the establishment (pun intended) have given up their empty arguments and recognized the winds of change have already blown, taking the umbrellas and the tables and all the plasticware, napkins, and tablecloths with them.
HOW WE SHOULD REACT TO THIS
In fantasy, we may be tempted to see this as an opportunity to pivot and reprioritize early RBs; we can buttress fragility more comfortably than we used to, for sure. But it also could be a mistake to abandon the other larger tenets of Zero RB — mainly the opportunity cost of taking early RBs relative to remaining WRs. We need to remember that the WR Avalanche comes earlier than ever before, and diving into a robust RB build will undoubtedly foster weakness at WR as much as it will strengthen RB. We must remember that entering the end of the draft with few RB options gives us a reserve we can dig into off the wire; leaving a draft without enough WRs seldom provides many useful outs (Puka Nacua is a unicorn). If anything, this market correction has put the edge more on player selection than ever before. There used to be more room for a personalized shopping experience; it is now critical to find the right options at RB in the middle-to-late rounds. This happens to be one of RotoViz’s very strengths.
A lot of ink has been spilled on these pages recently regarding home leagues, priority redraft players at broken ADPs, and RB values. All of the below articles pertain to at least one of these very subjects and have been published on RotoViz in the past two weeks:
- Elijah Mitchell’s Breakout Rookie Season Was Better than You Remember, and This Electric Rookie Running Back is Set to Repeat it
- 2024 Redraft Game Plan: The Upside Mega-Tiers Combine Optimism and Utility to Crush Your League
- David Johnson Bucked a Powerful Trend to Become a PPR Monster, and These 2 Rookie Running Backs are Now Trying to Follow His Lead
- Could the Next James Conner Be Hiding in Plain Sight? This Rookie Running Back is Already Showing Signs of Following in His Footsteps
- If You Can Sneak this Cohort of RBs Into the Playoffs, Their Back-Weighted Production is Going to Win Fantasy Championships
- The 2024 Zero RB Candidates Countdown: No. 15 to No. 11 – Your Heart Should Race a Little
- Home Leagues Are Giving Us These Easy Shots at League-Winning WR Upside in the Middle Rounds
- 2024 Zero RB Candidates Countdown: No. 10 to No. 6 – Extreme Contingency-Based Upside
- This Simple Hack Has Delivered a 40% Breakout Rate and Could Be Your Path to Finding the Next Fantasy Superstar: 4 Cheap Running Backs Poised to Explode
- 2024 Zero RB Candidates: No. 5 to No. 1 – The Tournament Winners
- These Undervalued Metrics Are the Secret to Unlocking RB Breakouts: 4 Must-Draft RBs for 2024
- Range of Outcomes Projections: 2 Undervalued Veterans and the RB Who Can Take Teams at the Turn to the Next Level
- Shawn’s 24 Priority Targets and 2024 Redraft Game Plan: How to Land the League Winners
- Become a Shark in Your Home League: These High-Stakes Favorites are the 12 Best Current Values in ESPN Drafts
- The RotoViz Home League Blueprint: 25 Priority Targets to Help You Navigate Your Most Important Draft
- There’s No Place Like Home: Navigating 2024 Yahoo ADP Through the Eyes of a Year-Round Fantasy Drafter, Part 1 – The WR Gameplan
- Home League Titles Live Forever: 10 Upside Plays to Crush Your Most Important Draft
- There’s No Place Like Home: Navigating 2024 Yahoo ADP Through the Eyes of a Year-Round Drafter, Part 2 – Either Zero or Hero, Let’s Get Those RBs
- There’s No Place Like Home: Navigating 2024 Yahoo ADP Through the Eyes of a Year-Round Fantasy Drafter, Part 3 – Elite or Late at QB and TE?
- 2024 Zero RB Candidates Countdown: The Watch List – 9 Running Backs to Keep on Speed Dial
- These 2 Underused Running Back Metrics Are the Keys to Both Reality and Fantasy Wins: 1 Must-Draft Breakout RB and 4 More to Monitor Closely
As with the WR companion piece I wrote last week, there are a few parameters I’ll put on myself for this list: I’ll use Yahoo ADP, and I’ll choose players in an ADP range between 61-120. Let’s dig in.
