The TRUTH About Fantasy RBs in 2020, Part 1 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/26

I think it'll be Mitch is a free agent right now. So it could be anybody. And that will clearly make a big difference. So quarterback, but I expected to be Mitch Trubesky. I think they figured something out at the end of the year that's good enough to keep Pace's job and keep Nagy's job. You mean like the negotiations with Mitch, they've been able to say, okay, you can play a quarterback, we'll give you this much money. Also, you're tidying up the locker room.

And we're like, we got to make some cutbacks. It's a team friendly contract because they're going to be making sure he does a lot around there. I think they're putting him in culinary school right now. He might be in charge of the lunches. I'm not, you know, that's just a source I can't name right now. Every other third quarter he'll jump out. He'll be the lemonade guy. Mm-hmm. Just like grandma made. But the reality is, I think that.

you know, they were better the second half of the year. They did scrap and claw once he got back in the lineup and they made the playoffs. And, you know, if they were re-roll that team and improve the offensive line, I think David Montgomery could be a serious fantasy option next year. All right. Number five, Aaron Jones, consistency rank of number four. That was a little different than last year where he was, I believe, what, number one or two at the position. And yet consistency was a problem. Correct. And yet.

The truth about Aaron Jones is that he leaves his Packers legacy with a fumble, a chest injury, and a future we don't know much about right now in Green Bay. And, you know, I know the wounds are fresh. I know that Al Borland has probably walked out of the studio already as we bring up the way the season ended. But the player, Aaron Jones, was elite. 79% good games, no bust, 21% great games. And yet...

somehow, some way, I'm not sure that he's the kind of player that I enjoy having on my fantasy team. And I know that seems contradictory to the finish. But it's like you're waiting for the shoe to drop with Aaron Jones. You're waiting for A.J. Dillon to get more work or Jamal Williams gets a series. And you need the efficiency from Aaron Jones on every play to squeeze enough juice out of that game to give you the elite.

draft capital payback. Am I wrong there? No, you're right. He feels like Alvin Camaro without Drew Brees. He's awesome. He's excellent. But if he's not getting that consistent passing work because he...

isn't involved in the running game like some of the other big-bodied backs who get the ball, you know, 15, 20 times a game on the ground. The BBBs. Then you're going to be disappointed. So it's really a matter of where he goes. He's an unrestricted free agent. You know, if he were to go and sign for good money with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers next year where they clearly want to get the ground game going and they want to have someone who can catch the stinking ball at running back from Tom Brady, then I'd be like all in on Aaron Jones. Or, you know, if he.

goes back to Green Bay. I think we know what we're going to get there, which is a low volume, highly efficient running back, who is worth a second round draft pick. All right. So let's make our predictions right now. Aaron Jones, percentage chance he returns to Green Bay. What's your gut saying right now? I say 55%. Oh. Producers? No. There it is. Right on time.

We got some weird storm stuff going on, and I think everyone's very distracted. It's like snowing outside in Arizona. Yeah, there's strange things happening right now. I would put it lower. I would say I'm around 30%. There was a time when I was sure they'd bring them back. That time is not now. I have it about 20%. Every step.

that AJ Dylan took carrying that man on his back lowered the percentage about 2%. Isn't that like a legal fracking though when he runs in Green Bay? Isn't that the danger to the subterranean earth? Yeah. What's funny Jason was talking about the, you know, comparing Najee Harris to the size of Derek Henry and like how this guy's great, but he's 20 pounds under Derek Henry. AJ Dylan is the same size as Derek Henry. Dylan is the same size as Derek Henry. Dylan is.

If Dylan can get unleashed next year, I'll be very happy because he would be a really fun player to watch on your fantasy team. All right. So last year he was the 18th ranked player in consistency, Aaron Jones, yet had a higher total finish. This year he's probably nicer to have on your roster than last year. But who knows where he goes. Jonathan Taylor at number six. Holy crap.

Jonathan Taylor and David Montgomery spent the back half of the year just rising in the ranks. Consistency of nine for Jonathan Taylor had a scary three-week stretch in the middle of the year where he looked like he had lost the confidence of the coaching staff. And look, I mean, there were people, and it wasn't me. I was certainly jumping on.

But it wasn't me. The Trent Richardson types of things were coming out of people's mouths. That name was thrown out. There were video cuts of just like highlighting one play. But when you saw that play, you went, holy crap, I've seen that before. And it was when Trent Richardson avoids open holes so he can run into the butt of his offensive linemen. And then let me be fair with the end of season.

for Jonathan Taylor because he had second picks with David Montgomery. Green Bay, Houston, Las Vegas, Houston, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville to end the season. So it was nice to see him good against Pittsburgh and good in the playoffs. I think they did figure something out. You saw a change that coincided with his efficiency from running out of the shotgun versus running under center. And

I love that about Frank Reich that he will take a look at his players, try to put them in the situations that they excel at, as opposed to saying, well, this is how our system works and you're going to either fit it or you don't. And, you know, it'll be interesting next year to see, is it a three-headed rotation on the roster? Do they try to bring back a Marlon Mack who is a free agent coming off a horrible...

surgery or do they make the transition and go straight to Jonathan Taylor? Because what we saw at the end of the year was that they can rely on him. He has built to be a workhorseback. He's built to be a 20-touch guy. This is an offensive line that can handle that. And I think this could be close to a Ezekiel Elliott situation we had with the Dallas Cowboys for a while where you've got a dominant ground game with a dominant offensive line. And there's just nothing you can do about it if the player can hold up. And I think Jonathan Taylor can.

Mike? It's all up to the quarterback because 39 targets for Jonathan Taylor. And he was amazing. Jonathan Taylor, we knew he had some pass production in his profile in that final year. But you wouldn't say Taylor is an elite pass catching option. But he caught all of his targets. And then right at the very end of the year, he started he had a game where he just dropped a few. But my point is.

39 targets for a running back who was sharing time with a pass catching specific running back and Naim Hines and Hines isn't going anywhere. Let's see which quarterback they bring in because 250 carries and for Jonathan Taylor, maybe that drops down to the 20 target area. That changes some things. Yeah, there's, I mean, there is not a quarterback on planet Earth they could bring in that will throw to the running back as much as the one they just lost.

So the total passing to the running back will go down. It's just a matter of does the carry count come up for Jonathan Taylor as the dominant leader of a timeshare? Or is this going to be just how this system wants to work and have two and a half running backs active each game involved in the running game? And I'm not going to read too much in these splits, but he was so much better against bad defenses.

19.23 fantasy points against the bottom 16 versus just 10 points against the top. But kind of getting a foothold in the offense, he just happened to play those top defenses in the beginning part of the year. So I don't read too much into that at all. An impressive finish to the season, an impressive rookie player that I think, you know, this team should hand him the ball. You know, they did it in the playoffs. They showed confidence in him there.

And the second half should be more indicative of his future than the first half was. Yeah, the only rookie running backs with 1100 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns while being over five yards of carry. Here's the entire list. Oh, man. Adrian Peterson, Clinton Portis, Barry Sanders, Ezekiel Elliott, Jonathan Taylor, and Saquan Barkley. So he's a, that's a good list to be on. He's a special talent. Number seven was another rookie. His name's James Robinson.

Consistency rank of eight. How many times did James Robinson on the disastrous Jacksonville Jaguars team bust this year? The answer. The answer is zero, Jason. I know what the answer is. Zero times. Zero times. 71% good games, 21% great. Yeah, he had a couple moments where he was with Aerosmith living right on that edge of a bus game, but he never went over our threshold. I mean, it's just kind of a,

deserve so much credit, 240 for over 1,000 yards, seven touchdowns, 60 targets. You know, two straight years, a Jacksonville running back has made his mark in the passing game on this team. And now what? Now what do you do with James Robinson? He proved himself. Trevor Lawrence is coming in. Are people going to look at this as a one-year wonder Steve Slayton scenario? Or are people going to value him for what he was?

I can tell you right now that they are not going to value him for what he was. Making my own rankings for next year, there was no player that I hated more in my personal rankings and where I had James Robinson. He was like my running back 18. And the reality is I don't know how, you know, obviously when we get down into the ultimate draft kit work and we're statting all these teams out and seeing where the chips fall, he might end up much higher. I hope he does.

But there are so many other names that I feel like I would rather have ahead of James Robinson, like DeAndre Swift, who didn't do much this year. But the talent is there, the draft capital is there. With James Robinson, he was on pace, you know, a 16-game pace for 274 carries because this team didn't have really anything it could do other than keep giving the ball to James Robinson next year.

I expect them to build around Trevor Lawrence, try to get him more involved and become the leader of this team where they weren't trying to do that with any of, you know, with Mike Glennon and company there. So I think James Robinson's workload comes down a little bit next year. Well, a great running game and an efficient running game helps a rookie quarterback succeed. That's for sure. So I'll be very curious to see what kind of work. I mean, 85% of the team's running back opportunities is abnormal.

That is not something that you do on purpose with a rookie. It's something that you do on accident when you have nobody else available to you. What was it from the very beginning of the season? Raquel Armstead, went out with COVID, missed the entire season. Divino Ziegbo. Divino Ziegbo got hurt. Chris Thompson, he was not what we thought he was. And he also got her. Nets is in the Super Bowl. Think about that. I mean.

You know the way that that franchise felt about Leonard Fournett and him getting to ride his white horse into the Super Bowl. How many executives for Jacksonville in a boardroom somewhere are grimacing and groaning and furious about that? I am a dynasty general manager of Leonard Fornett and I am loving this playoff run because it gives me hope that he might sign somewhere and duped someone again. Please do it. Touchdown run. It was awesome.

Incredible. I mean, I will say at the exact same time, it was a moment where I was watching a complete paradox of this is an incredibly not athletic man doing incredibly athletic things. It were like the spin and the mini jump at the beginning. It was like you got.

two feet. You got like a foot off the ground. It was a very bizarre run. And then at the end, it was, it turned into this just masterpiece of a run that people will actually remember. Well, I don't know when the transition was for fantasy players from Leonard Fernette, the super athlete, the most athletic, incredible college prospect to ho-hum plotter. I don't know when it happened, but that moment, that run, that was a return to.