Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Top 5 RBs, Numberfire's Joe Juan, Mailbag Surprise

I understand that one. Last year he played 13 games. He got 260 carries, 1,246 yards, 8 touchdowns on the ground. If he did that over 16 games, you'd be happy. If he did it over 16 games, we saw it in 2010, 327 carries 1,600 yards, 16 touchdowns. Yeah, he is... That's the... I mean, that's... What people think about Aaron Foster, and the beautiful thing is, is we're going to bring in, in a minute here, number fires Joe on. Well, let's...

Let's talk to him and get his take because this is really talking about area. Yeah, because, so let's do it. Let's bring in number fires Joe Juan. He wrote a great article and we're going to talk to him right now. You talking to me? All right, the fantasy footballer's podcast is excited to welcome in a friend of the show, the fantasy football scientist himself. Joe Juan, how you doing, Joe?

Pretty good, pretty good. Thank you for having me on. Absolutely. Thanks for coming on this show. I'm going to warn you right off the bat. I do not have any beakers or bunsen burners. Is that going to be an issue? No, that's fine. I brought my own. That's good. That's good. Joe and I are, we became fast friends when a couple of months ago, or I guess about a month ago, as I was sitting on my island in the middle of the ocean with Arian Foster as my top back.

I see this article come across my Twitter, and Joe hits me up and he sends me this link, and Joe and I both believe in Arian Foster this year. Yes, definitely, definitely. I was a pleasant surprise to hear you say that you also liked Arian Foster at the top of your boards. For a moment, I thought you were kidding, but Mike kind of tried to goad you on. I know. You were serious, so I thought I'd have to back you up on that. I know. I appreciate it.

I am starting to believe I am living in 2012 or something because my love for Aaron Foster and my love for Calvin Johnson this year is making me think I'm just going to read a board from about three years ago. But I just believe in these guys. I think they're able to bounce back. Yeah. It's like the Chip Kelly system of buying players, right? Kind of get them at a bargain and perhaps somewhat damaged goods.

You know, it's 2015 now. I think there's going to be a big bounce back, and you're going to get these guys at really good values. You could have both on your teams easily now. Yeah, absolutely. And this article that Joe wrote goes over a lot of kind of the, I don't know, the arguments that you hear against Arian Foster, which I get them, I guess, but they're the same type of arguments that seem to impact running back value every year and send certain guys down the board.

that end up performing like top-tier talents. And that's what I think Arian will be this year, a top three guy. So let's talk a little bit about this. Arian Foster last year, he was a 12, he was over 1,200 yards, eight touchdowns, ran for 4.8 a carry. But some of the arguments against him, they circle around a number of things. One of them is consistency, right? There's a worry, I guess, that Arian Foster is inconsistent.

And so what are your thoughts on that argument? Well, I think the inconsistency comes from most owners having Aaron Foster, not knowing if they're going to be able to play them on a week-to-week basis, right? Your injury reports, there's groin injuries, there's a knee injury. But when he hits the field, when you know you can start him, he's putting up 16 points per game in a standard league, 19 points per game in the PPR in four of the last five seasons, which only Adrian Peterson has done.

amongst all other backs. Isn't that the definition of consistency? Exactly, exactly. You know, when you plot out the scoring on a points per game basis for the last five seasons for, you know, the top 10 backs in the being taken in drafts right now, there's this kind of tight grouping, you know, of scoring for Aaron Foster. You know on a weekly basis what you're getting out of them, and that's pretty much a top five running back performance.

And so a lot of it is circling around fear of – so you hear – I remember this with Matt Forte a few years ago when he was kind of, quote-unquote, injury prone. A lot of that was based on even weeks he started, you weren't sure if he was going to start, right? Kind of the Marshaun Lynch back injury that shows up, but he never misses because of it. And so there becomes this aura of fear around a guy. And so one of the interesting things that I think you pointed out in this article was this 75-25.

idea, where the majority of Foster's points are coming from where? Pretty much his yardage, right? His receiving and his rushing yards. And actually, he gets a fair amount of receptions for a running back just because he's pretty much all they have over in Houston. I think that's going to continue, if not more, given, you know, who's their quarterback, Brian Hoyer, perhaps Ryan Alley. Maybe. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, but there's DeAndre Hopkins in the passing game, right?

And then you have Arian Foster as you're likely dump off. So he's going to get those yards. He's going to get his yards on the ground. And he's done pretty well in terms of touchdowns. I think I saw a tweet earlier today that said that last season, Arian Foster was the seventh player in the last 20 years to score five rushing and five receiving touchdowns in a season. So he knows how to get to the end zone also. But having that stable floor of yardage is what's really, really,

appealing to me. You don't have to worry about a guy, you know, if he doesn't cross the goal line, he's going to give you a goose egg on a game day. Yeah, I mean, touchdowns, like you said, they're the fluctuating variable a lot of the times. And we see it all over the board from running backs to wide receivers. Jordy Nelson can catch 13, and then he can catch 5. But yeah, that's an aspect I really like about Arian. Now, what about somebody who's arguing that he's...

I mean, he's been in the league for several years. When we're talking about 2012, there's a reason, right? He had, like, a three-year run in which he was the most dominating force in fantasy. Now he has come to, you know, he had injury short in seasons, back-to-back years in some capacity. So is he on the back end of his career? I'd argue that he's on the upswing. He's been in a league for six years. His rookie year, he didn't get too much play.

At Numberfire, we have these advanced metrics, and I won't go into too much detail about it. We call it net expected points or NEP. And the short story of it is if a player contributes to his team's chances of scoring, he gets a positive score. If he detracts from that, for example, he fumbles on a fourth and goal. You get a negative score.

If you track his efficiency, he's actually on the upswing from 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, both in terms of rushing and receiving. So it suggests that he might just be hitting his prime, and he just hit a rough patch early on with a couple of injuries. Yeah, I looked at that chart you had in the article, and it was pretty impressive because you had his three-year run. He slips down to the injuries. But, I mean, 4.8 to carry, that's great.

Yeah, yeah. I think it was second only to DeMarco, who's playing against that massive line in Dallas, right? So it's definitely efficiency right there. So let's talk for a minute about that offense because one of the things we've talked about here on the show is the fact that you kind of want a running back that's on a winning team. You know, I think nine of the 10 teams, or nine of the top 10 running backs last year were on teams that were 500 or better.

I myself, I think Houston competes in that division just because of how bad the bottom half of that division is. Do you have any concerns with kind of the offense as a whole affecting Foster or affecting his play? Yeah, I think that's definitely a concern, right? If we can be super excited about Frank Gore being on the Colts, I think there's a concern about Aaron Foster being on a bad offense.

But with that being said, I think they have enough weapons to sustain drives. Their defense should be pretty good to keep them in games. And like you said, they're in a fairly weak division in terms of the bottom half. So in those games, they're definitely going to be in that. So, you know, I think I have them projected being a 500 team this season. So in that case, I think Arian Foster will be fine. And with that being said...

Aaron Foster's been on the same offense for the last four or five seasons now, right? Yep. And he's produced year and year out. If anything, he's one of those rare instances where you know he's getting the ball, but he has the skills, the athleticism to get the yards on the ground or through the air. Yeah, I think he's proving a lot of people wrong in this last couple of year resurgence because a lot of people thought, you know, he'd burn bright for two or three years and a system change or some of the things he does with his body would.

kind of knock him back and end his career, but it's surprising me a little bit, but it's why I have him at the top of the list as well. What about workload this year? I mean, talk a little bit about what you expect from his workload, and then also I want to get into kind of the handcuff situation there, because it's a little murky. Oh, definitely, definitely. In terms of workload, I think, you know,

Other than his injury riddled 2013 season, he's averaged about 23, 25 touches per game. Like I said, he gets about 3 or 4 catches, gets about 20 or so carries also. And, you know, Brian recently said that if he's healthy, he's going to be the centerpiece of their offense. And I believe him because really there's not much else to game plan around given that you have a somewhat inexperienced quarterback. If it's Hoyer.

He's showing flashes of billions. We don't know we're getting out of mallet. So I think he's going to see pretty heavy usage of this season. Yeah. So in terms of handcuffing, I'm ending up with Arian Foster in a lot of my mocks, a lot of my MFL 10 leagues, obviously, because he's slipping. I think when you had written this article, you said he was kind of the RB7 off the board. So I'm ending up with him. So if I want to draft a handcuff, which for him, I'm not sure I do or not.

If I want to draft a guy, is it Chris Polk or is it Alfred Blue or is it none of the above? That's a tough question. From what I'm hearing from camp reports, it doesn't sound like Blue nor Polk have really distanced themselves in that race. Personally, I don't know if I'd take a handcuff because I like to stash a bunch of sleepers on my bench. But if you are looking for a handcuff, I think the early bets on Alfred Blue to maintain that. Two reasons for that is,

One, he's, you know, he's already shown that he's had some big games. He's been in the offense. Yes. And second, if you watch their playing styles, I assume that they're going to go back to a zone blocking scheme in Houston. And you need a little bit of wiggle. You need some lateral agility to make that one-cut move. And you see that with blue. With Polk, it's more of a no-cut, just run straight down the middle, try to rack up yards, break a few tackles.

Now, the one advantage that Polk does have is he's the better pass catcher. Blue is a bit stiff in his route running from what I remember last season. So if they want an all-around back, they might turn to Polk. And he's shown when he was in Philadelphia that he could also get the job done near the goal line and stole a couple of touchdowns when I had Sean McCoy last season. Yeah, yeah, and they're both young guys. The thing that's tough about that is I'm kind of with you. I don't, if it's a guy like that who I'm not sure has supreme talent.

That's the handcuff. I mean, I'd rather be taking flyers on David Johnson or, you know, Matt Jones or somebody in the back half of the draft. But what's tough is that, like you said, this offense runs the ball. And so if Foster does go down, you probably have a decent running back back there. Yeah. I think the question you have to ask yourself is, if Foster goes down, would you be happy starting Alfred Blue or whoever becomes the starter every week? And that's the question that I have.

I'm not too sure. I mean, last season when Alfred Blue was starting, you know, he was never a must start, right? Yeah, you're right about that. Well, the good news is Foster can't go down because I've booked my whole off-season on Aaron Foster. Same here, same here. So he'll stay healthy, that diet of his. We'll keep him healthy, and hopefully he has a really good year, validates both of our opinions on him. He's certainly going to have a better year than Amir Abdullah, right?

Oh, so Mike told me to bring that up with you. Did he really? Yeah, I actually. Oh, he wanted to talk some Joyke or Amir? Oh, do you? Do you? Yeah, I like Amir. I mean, Joyc, when you watch him, he's very patient, great cuts and everything. But Amir Abdullah, you watch him play, and he just turns heads. So let me get your opinion on this then. Is Amir a three-down guy? I think Amir is a three-down guy. Okay.

I'm worried about his ability to pass protect given his size. Right. But at the same time, for some reason, it seems as though Detroit doesn't really care about keeping Matt Stafford up right as it is. So they might just throw him Dula out there, use them kind of like Javid best, right? Right, yeah. You know, the running back that kind of lit everything up, concussions cut his career short. But...