Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Early RB Rankings, Fantasy News & Mailbag

Yeah, I, go ahead, Jay. I agree. I think the comparisons to Adrian Peterson are very perfect. Very perfect. Coming out into the draft, you know, you hear from year to year, oh, this guy's Adrian Peterson level talent, but this one has actually hit it on the head.

And you've got a guy who's going to come out. So the question is, how many times is he going to get the ball? Is he going to get the ball near that 300 carry mark? If he gets it near that 300 carry mark, then he's going to be one of the best, you know, one or he's going to either finish number one or number two, you know, as low as he can go. But if he doesn't, he doesn't catch the ball at the same rate that we see some of these other top guys in our consensus list.

doing. And so to me, the argument you made Andy on the team is really what puts David Johnson ahead of Todd Gurley. I think Todd Gurley is more talented. Despite the knee injury, I think Todd Gurley has kind of shown he can take that workload in his career in college and be a workhorse back. The difference is I think Arizona is going to put up a lot more points on the year than the Rams. If I was going to make an argument.

Gurley Johnson, I think a lot of people fall on the girly side. To me, don't you think the touchdown number for Gurley is more sustainable than the numbers you saw for David Johnson? You know, catching the ball.

On the ground, yes. On the ground. That's what I'm referring to. On the ground, Todd Gurley will have more touchdowns than David Johnson. But then when you supplement touchdowns through the air. But that's the hard number to predict. Right. Touchdowns are always the hard number to predict. Well, I mean, the specifically passing touchdowns are very difficult. Yeah, they're volatile. Yeah, they go really here and there with running back. Someone like Sean McCoy.

I don't know how many touchdowns McCoy had last year, one or two through the air. You think of him as a big-time pass catching back. It's just a variable that is not, you know, how many of David Johnson's touchdowns through the air came before he was starting? Yeah, most of them. And I think three of the four did, but what I'll throw out there, like I said, he's the goal line back, Johnson had eight on the ground. David Johnson basically started five games. Right. And Todd Gurley started 12. 11, yeah. Girlie started 12 games. There you go. So that's, I have no problem.

with Gurley. And four straight games of 100 yards, best start as a rookie running back ever. The concern, like Jason said, is the touches. He had the back-to-back weeks against Cincinnati, nine touches, one catch against Arizona, nine carries. I mean, that's probably an outlier and a fluke of his career, but the fact that back-to-back weeks that can happen is troublesome. All right, you guys ready to move on to the next name on our list?

searching and failing to find the drop that was appropriate for this one, which was welcome back. Oh, yes, Mr. Jamal Charles. I don't know where it went. Now, Jamal Charles, to me, it's a bit of a leap of faith, I think, going with Charles coming off of his second ACL tear. The talent level is elite. You have years and years of production to back that up. And here's what...

I loved about Jamal Charles last year, 30 targets and four and a half games. That's incredible. He was basically on a pace for 80 catches. 80 catches. You give Jamal Charles 80 catches on a year. He's the number one running back. Exactly. And so you give him this 80 catches. Like, you look at a guy like Danny Woodhead, who was right around there without rushing attempts, and he's an RB1. So you give those to Charles, and you're talking elite.

game changing, running back. The rushing attempts were a little bit lower in games of 11, 11, 12, and I think he only played five games. So three of those five, he was under 13 carries, which is a little strange for Charles, but as long as you keep up those targets, Devante Freeman has taught me one thing. You keep up those targets, you put up RB1 numbers. Yeah, regardless of your yards per carry, which happened to be Jamal Charles' strength and one of the things. It's five.

that he's done better than anybody in history, pretty much. Now, I have Jamal Charles a little lower than you guys. I have him at 7 in a standard league. We're talking about him as number four here in the consensus. So you guys both have the confidence. But I think the dance that we're all doing is the dance of mitigating a small amount of risk, not just in the injury, not necessarily re-injury risk, just age, coming back from injury. Let's see it again on the field.

He is a match made in heaven for Alex Smith in that offense and that situation. You know, you saw the Chiefs put together one of the great ends to a season ever last year without their best weapon that they've had for the last five or six years. You mix in maturing Kelsey, you've still got Macklin, you've got Charles, and you've got Andy Reid. Is this an offense that should be talked of in that upper third? It can. I think it'll be sort of...

I would put it in the middle. The Justin Houston injury is a big time shot. They lost Abdullah today, too. Oh, yeah, to retirement. Yeah, he retired. Yeah. And so, I mean, those things really, really impact the defense. So that could have an effect on the overall game. Maybe we get a little bit more offense from the chiefs if they have to put up more points to stay ahead in the game. But it's...

But Jamal Charles, like I said, two ACL tears is troublesome, but the talent is just so elite that I will take the chance. Yeah, and there is the worry of saying, well, Charkandric West and Spencer Ware, they looked good last year. And so they might not feel the need to really use Jamal Charles too much. He's 30. He's coming off the knee injury.

But the worry is always mitigated by how efficient he is with the ball. He's always been over five yards of carry. And like Mike said, we forget before he went down with the knee injury, he was doing great for fantasy. He was a top fantasy option last year. And so even if he is only getting the ball, 11, 12, 13 times a game, that's all Jamal Charles needs. And I'm not worried about him slowing down. You can argue another injury maybe, but I don't think he's going to slow down.

This look, I mean, Nile Davis, everybody wanted to talk about Nile Davis stealing workload from Jamal Charles. It didn't materialize. You know, these guys, Char West, Spencer Ware, they are going to fall in line behind Charles. So I agree. The efficiency is the key there. Let's move through these. We've got Adrian Peterson at number five. Yeah. So, AP, tried and true, just keeps doing it. So tried and true that if you wanted to make him the number one pick in the draft, I would have...

Zero problem with that. I wouldn't either. 327 carries. Yeah, he has fewer questions than all the guys we just talked about because of his history, the fact that you know he's going to get the ball 300 times. Is it worth taking any risk with those top four guys? That's an honest question. I am probably of the three of us the most. I value risk mitigation, I think, more than you two. Mike, you get a little crazy with it.

And you'll take your shots. Yes. Here, let me help you contextualize and I'll let you finish. Here's Adrian Peterson since 2007 touchdown numbers. 12, 10, 18, 12, 12, 12, 10, the season off and 11. So talk about risk mitigation with numbers like that. So when you have numbers like that, look, if all of these players we just talked about perform to the best of their ability.

Adrian Peterson will not finish as the number one running back because he is not involved in the passing game nearly as much as most of these other options. But if they all do what you kind of have as their absolute baseline, because you take a look at David Johnson, who I love, I think he's going to be great.

But we haven't seen it yet. If it comes out next year and all of a sudden, shocking to our expectations, he's in a 60-40 or a 50-50 timeshare, he's not going to be the back we think. But Adrian Peterson, you know what you're getting. And, you know, you have to weigh, do you value the risk mitigation? And it's a matter of where that baseline is because Adrian Peterson's baseline is still elite. So you're not going, well, I'm going to take an average guy that I know over potential.

You're taking a great player who you know over potentially better. And so for me, if I'm on the clock, I very well, depending on the league I'm in and the format, I very well might take Adrian Peterson ahead of all of those guys we just talked about. Yeah, I got no problem with Peterson going number one. The question mark, and it's not even that big of a question mark. I just wanted to bring it up again. Is Jerich McKinnon, I feel like, I guess so you were just talking.

a personal opinion that they really found something, a strength in Jerich McKinnon at the end of last year, and that was catching the ball. I think McKinnon gets on the field more and more this year. That's not to say that Peterson's not going to get his 250 rushing attempts or so. But I think McKinnon will be a factor in Minnesota. You think McKinon will be? Yes. Okay. So I mean...

The arguments for Adrian Peterson are consistency. You're going to get 10 touchdowns from Adrian Peterson. And so I think a lot of people will draft Peterson as it depends on their risk mitigation and whether they like the upside, whether they like the excitement of a new name, a Todd Gurley, a David Johnson, or the tried and true, and you build some of those lottery ticket type players into the rest of your draft.

All right, number six on our rankings, begrudgingly for me. What? Where do you have him? Yeah, I am curious where you have him. Let me say, before I give the name, I have him at 10. I have him at 10 in half. He's 10 across the board for me. So who's pushing him all the way up? That's me. That's you. It's not disrespectful. I think he's a little higher. What do you have him as number one? All right. No. So let me help people out here. I haven't met four.

You remember when he does consensus, he waits his own. Yeah. Mark Ingram is the name that has yet to be revealed. Believe it. Believe it. Mark Ingram is number six on the consensus rankings thanks to Mike. Four for Mike, seven for me, and ten for Andy. So he's still absolutely top ten. Mike believes he is going to be definitely elite, right? So Mike, why don't you talk about him?

All right, you can't. I gave a pretty strong case for Mark Ingram during the election episode. But just to get a summary of it, his pace was over 220 carries, 1,000 yards, 8 touchdowns. The big thing for Mark Ingram, like I've been talking about with these other guys, is the catches. His role as a pass catcher, we hadn't seen it before. So maybe that's the knock that Andy has over there, is there's not the history built in that Mark Ingram.

being the pass catcher. He was on pace for 67 catches. To me, Mark Ingram gives that team the best chance to win. And if he can do both, why take him off the field? Why have that predictability of here comes cadet, they're going to pass. And knowing that on second down.

On third down, you're like, oh, they're going to pass every single time. I think Ingram gives them an extra dynamic because of that. The talent level of Ingram is there. He had 81 evaded tackles last year. That's fourth among running backs. And that's in only 12 games. C.J. Spiller is... Is C.J. Spiller anything? I still feel like... And this is a little bit silly and hearsay.

But I still feel like C.J. Spiller, they're just holding on to him until every team has found their running back needs and then they're going to cut him because they hate him. Just to ruin his life. A punishment? Yes, it's like, wait, well, we're going to cut C.J. And Sean Payne's like, not yet you're not. He could go and find a team right now. They owe him too much guaranteed money to cut him. I can tell you, I'll tell you my counterpoint on him. And let me preface by saying, when you debate rankings like this, it's hilarious because I am.

Now taking some sort of oppositional point to Mark Ingram, who is 10th on my running back list? And all these guys are separated by like five points. Not a ton of points necessarily. However, the reason he's 10 on my list has to do, I can give you one number. The number's 12. Yeah. Average games played? That's his average games played over the last five years. Mark Ingram, and look, that is a pattern. A five-year pattern of average games played of 12 tells me maybe the Saints need to keep him off the field a little bit. And so I don't have him