Shawn Siegele explains why he departed from his patented WR-heavy tactics in a high-stakes expert draft. What did it take for him to break his cardinal rules?
Running back tactics are always a flash point in fantasy football discussions. This week, Colm Kelly and I had Scott Barrett on RotoViz Overtime to explain why he’s going Bell Cow or Bust in 2020. That provides a nice counterpoint to our more WR-heavy approach, although there is overlap. We often recommend Single-Elite-RB as an approach that combines safety and upside in a high win-rate package.
But what do you do after star RBs are off the board? In If WR Is Deep, RB Is Bottomless, I used the Win the Flex tool to show just how many points you’re giving up by continuing to draft RBs.
These are the results from the last three years, but the tool allows you to pick and choose any of the last five years. If you think a specific season will be most representative of 2020, you can grab that one for study.
We can double check these findings in the Range of Outcomes tool. There we discover that an RB-RB start at the tail end of your draft costs you approximately 4.0 points per game over starting WR-WR. You might prefer to give up the points at this juncture instead of giving up even more points later, but the Roster Construction Explorer suggests you can overcome those concerns by simply taking a hard-core WR-heavy approach.
Zero RB – WRx4 With Early TE (2017-2019)
Points really do matter, and this is the power of WRs in a 2-RB, 3-WR, 1-TE, 1-Flex format. As Blair Andrews explained to us in the Wrong Read No. 64, it may be tempting to think WR-heavy is more effective in best ball than redraft, but there’s a powerful reason it should be even more potent in your regular leagues.
The need to balance your upside picks is less pronounced in managed redraft leagues. It seems like the time to take shots on players with wide ranges of outcomes is in a league where you don’t have to make start-sit decisions. But breakout rookies make those decisions for you in managed leagues. Kamara was a clear every-week starter early in his rookie season. The advantage of not having to choose when to start him disappears quickly. But the advantage of being able to drop Henderson from your redraft roster continues throughout the season as he sits on the benches of many best ball squads.
Single-Elite-RB Dominates the Draft Early – Then Where Do You Go?
The first five RBs off the board have averaged at least 21 PPG in one of the last two seasons and did so with a favorable split between rush and pass games. After that the situation turns dark in a hurry.
- Clyde Edwards-Helaire: Compared to Brian Westbrook by the coaching staff, it’s worth remembering that the former Philadelphia star scored 42 points as a rookie, albeit in a worse situation with much more limited expectations. Pushing Westbrook to the side, LeSean McCoy scored 160 as a rookie.
- Derrick Henry: Henry broke 20 PPG last year but didn’t even average 15 Expected Points and owns the type of run-heavy profile that tends to collapse the year after a monster campaign.
- Joe Mixon: Mixon has missed nine games over the last two seasons and wasn’t quite a top-20 back in 2019 PPG.
- Kenyan Drake: A feast or famine runner, Drake has averaged 12 PPG and finished as an RB3 or worse 52% of the time over the last three seasons. It’s so hard not to be drawn in by his 30 PPG average over the final three games in the emerging Cardinals juggernaut, but he also averaged just 10 PPG in the four games previous to that.
- Josh Jacobs: A potential league-winner with the second-year bump, but he needs a sea change in the passing game to pay off this ADP.
- Nick Chubb: Held a 13.0 to 12.7 edge over Kareem Hunt once the latter was activated, and wouldn’t benefit from a Hunt injury as much as his running mate would benefit from a Chubb injury.
- Austin Ekeler: Hard to justify at this price in the revamped offense, but his discount options are intriguing.
- Aaron Jones: Arguably undervalued relative to the names immediately ahead of him, but history suggests A.J. Dillon could be a threat sooner than many realize.
- James Conner: Although Pittsburgh prefers a workhorse, it’s hard to ignore the touch pressure he faces as a runner (Benny Snell) and receiver (Anthony McFarland).
- Melvin Gordon: Will dominate the high-value touches early in the season but isn’t on Phillip Lindsay’s level as a runner.
- Leonard Fournette: The least efficient RB in the NFL will now lose receiving touches to Chris Thompson while needing to fend off an underrated challenge from Ryquell Armstead.
A few members of this group could and probably will succeed – 2019 featured good health and overperformance from the RB Dead Zone – but the resumes of these backs are riddled with concerns. History suggests drafters are chasing less-than-likely scenarios.
Why then did I deviate from my Single-Elite-RB approach in the Apex Experts league?
