Top 10 RB Rankings + Best Ball Breakdown - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/7

Jeremy Sprinkle, get on it. Take care of business. Also, Falkland, do not draft either of these players. Yes. Absolutely. Do you have any other news that you want to bring up? Any other things to talk about? Are we? No, we're good. Let's get into the running backs. All right, let's do it. Running bags. Number one. This one will surprise everybody. Shocker. We discussed this internally here. We spent some time breaking things down.

looking at it analytically watching film. I was pretty upset that you guys copied my ranking here, to be honest. See, I thought you copied my ranking. Yeah, and I thought you guys copied my ranking. It is, of course, Eddie Lacey. That's right. Now, Christian McCaffrey is the number one running back on our board. Not a surprise. We are going through our consensus top 10 running back rankings, half PPR.

And Christian McCaffrey's at the top of the list. He came out yesterday and said, look, I would draft myself first becoming the first fantasy player to ever have that level of confidence in himself. I like it. You got to love confidence. Yes. There are things that have been brought up on the show to, you know, you can't throw cold water on Christian McCaffrey. He just rebukes it. It doesn't land. But. He is oil. He is. Repels the water. He is oil.

You're right. You're right. And McCaffrey will be in a position where we once again, like, you know, different offensive system, different head coach, different quarterback. Those variables are in play. Also, you know, running backs, they fluctuate at the top of these lists. But McCaffrey is as guaranteed as anybody gets. He is the center piece of their offense. And he had, you know, when you look at wide receivers in the top 12.

several wide receivers come from teams that were, you know, not successful on the field. High draft pick teams. Not as common at the running back position. And yet McCaffrey was one of those guys. I mean, he was number one in the league on a very bad team that struggled to get around the goal line that struggled at the quarterback position. And so, you know, it's probably fair to say things are upgraded for Christian McCaffrey from a team perspective. And so anything that he would.

miss by way of a little bit of volume is probably safe. I mean, I just don't have a different expectation for him this year. No, I mean, the reason is because of his receiving work, right? Yep. He is, I forget the stat, but if you just took his receiving work and put him in the wide receivers, he's basically one of the best wide receivers in fantasy football. You get that added to his rushing total. And so that's why, you know, if you're going to be a running back, you know, Derek Henry is not going to succeed if the Titans are a bad team.

Christian McCaffrey can succeed when his team is bad because they dump the ball off. And the thing I really love is the fact that their offensive line is bad. Teddy Bridgewater is an accurate, not pushing the ball down the field, but dumping it out, getting it out quick. Yeah, quick decisions. It's basically a perfect alignment for DJ Moore and Christian McCaffrey to have success this year. The fact that their defense is bad, they're completely trying to rebuild it. Their offensive line is bad. Their quarterback is a great short.

accurate passer, it just all lines up. There are, you know, if at the end of the year, Christian McCaffrey is the running mac five because of all these changes, nobody's going to be shocked. But you have to put him number one based on what he's done in the past. And while we, the fantasy footballers, I don't know if you, I don't think we've announced this on the main show. But what are you doing? You might want to check out our website and check out these new hot player profiles that we've got coming soon. But I've been doing some work behind the scene on the athletic profiles.

When you just look at Christian McCaffrey and what he's able to do, not for fantasy, but just as a human being, you're like, oh, I see why he's so good at football. There's only been 18 whiteouts in NFL history with 116 catches, and that's what Christian McCaffrey had last year. What? The 141 targets would have been eighth at the wide receiver position. Oh, my goodness. And then let's just throw in 287 on the ground, 1,387 yards, and 15 touchdowns on a team that struggle at times on offense. He can break the big play.

Percentage chance that CMC repeats is the RB1. That's a good question as we move towards the second player on our list. I put it at about 50%. Yeah, I'm right. I was thinking 45%, which would be my largest percentage, you know, even though it is under 50%. Yeah, I would say this is the most confident I've been in the RB1.

repeating. I'm still lower than you guys. I would put it at about 35, maybe even 30%, but follow the money, got the bag, who's behind him in the depth chart? Reggie Super Bonifon. Well, the big, the reason I have so much confidence in it compared to like maybe previous years is the gap is not small between the Sequin Barclay and the Ezekiela Elliott reception totals of last year.

It's double. He has double the receptions of those two players last year. And obviously Saquan with the injuries and things like that. But I don't have some tremendous amount of confidence that New York's going to, you know, up that total tremendously. So that's why that percentage is higher than maybe previous years. And throwing this out there, last thing, I think we should say on Chris McCaffrey, the depth chart is part of the confidence in him. There's really nobody to, you know, you brought up Reggie Bonifon as the backup. But it is also worth noting because people sometimes are.

drafting the backup, that it could be Mike Davis. And I would, in fact, I just did a best ball league where I did draft Mike Davis, not Reggie Bonafone. All right. Number two on our consensus rankings, number two for me, number two for Jason, number three for Mike. Ezekiel Elliott of the Dallas Cowboys, he's as reliable a fantasy option at running back as you can really get.

Average 19.2 fantasy points per game and 24 touches per game through his 56 NFL games. Coming into the year, lost his center, Travis Frederick. He retired. Kind of didn't have him for all of last year. Kellan Moore is still the offensive coordinator. It's an offense that can move the football. Great deal of confidence in Dak Prescott and what they were able to do last year. When I look at Zeke, I guess the only thing that comes to mind.

from a negative perspective is I don't think Zeke's going to finish a lot of blowouts. I think Tony Pollard is going to get some playing time in those situations. You'll probably be looking, you know, you have the great Zeke game first three quarters and you're saying, man, this could become one of those monster games. It might not be on the field a lot to end them just because I think they like Tony Pollard. I think they want to give them some opportunities to do things here and there, but it really doesn't affect, obviously, my ranking on Zeke. He's number two.

Yeah, I mean, what it does is it says that instead of being the running back one that week, he's going to be the running back six on a weekly basis. And so it takes a little bit of the edge off. But on the flip side, not on the upside, but on the downside, he is the safe. A lot of sides. A lot of sides. Well, you know, where all this coin talk, there's at least two sides every coin. Yeah, that's what I've heard.

He is by far the safest running back to me. His offense is intact. His offensive coordinator is the same, even though the head coach has changed. He has been the most consistent running back since he entered the league, the fewest number of bus games. Last season, literally not one bus game. Nobody not. Even Christian McCaffrey could say that. And you do have this extra wrinkle of the fact that we know he has.

gone through the coronavirus. And you, you, we don't know, man. We know this is an absolutely point to bring up. That one we know he went through it because he said it. Yeah, he was upset that his agent said that, but we know that one. And my point is, so I was just the number two draft pick in an expert best ball league, a full PPR, and I had the choice between Sequin and Zeke.

And that was the tiebreaker for me. So, I mean, if it matters to me, I think it would matter to others in the sense that it's just one. I mean, look, I love both those guys. You could, I don't know, flip a coin between them. But that was my tiebreaker. And I think it's, I just can't imagine anyone safer than Zeke. I can't, he doesn't get injured. He can carry the workload. He's got a great offensive line, a great offense, continuity. And he's always been great. That's why he, I think some people would be surprised he's number two and not Sequan.

Yeah, and speaking of the player that I have at number two, we're going to get into that. But first, I want to thank today's sponsor, Fantasy Champs. This is the place you need to go for your fantasy hardware. You want to show off the victory. Grab a trophy, grab a ring, grab a belt, just grab something for Fantasychamps.com so you can rub it in everybody else's face that you were the winner and they were not. In fact, they were all losers. So remind them of that on a daily basis.

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All right, Mike. Did you want to add anything to Zeke? It's just a transition of the reason I have Zeke at number three. It's because I have Sequin Barclay at number two. And the reason for that is I'm going with burst. I'm going with huge games instead of the consistency. I will not argue. I think that Zeke is a safer pick. He's going to be a top 24 running back each and every week. But those ceiling games.

Barkley is going to have more of them that will push you fully into victories. Like week 16. If you were in your championship week and you had Sequin Barclay, you could have benched everybody else on the team and he would have handled the business by himself. It's hard for me to see those games coming at any sort of regular clip.

For Zeke, it was nice to have the touchdown positive regression come back where he was over 1,400 yards two years ago and only hit six touchdowns. It bounced back the way that it should. But because of the high ceiling games that can come from Saquan Barclay, which, I mean, he was hitting ceilings all the time until the injury and the recovery time of the injury. That's why I have Saquan number three.

Week 7 on. Or number two. Yeah, week seven on, he was the RB5. I got no problem with that, Mike. I think in a full PPR, I think Sequin has, you know, like you said, breakaway potential on any given play. That's what he's shown outside of the injury window. Picks up Jason Garrett as an offensive coordinator. Which I don't mind at all. I mean, you have Jason Garrett coming from the Cowboys where he used.

Ezekiel Alia is a workhorse, so no fears of him trying to put some committee in place when you've got Sequin. Mike, big news for you, I know. From the 4th of August, this came out, according to Empire Sports Media. Sequin Barclay's thighs actually look like they have gotten bigger. That's impossible. Oh, no. Can he still walk? Can the Grand Canyon become more grand? I mean, goodness gracious, that's impossible. Can he still walk? How does this man put?

pants on those are custom those are that's a custom pant right there zip ups like do you remember the the old like general pants where it would like really really skinny on the bottom but then they just oh yeah what did you used to wear what did you used to wear in high school oh ginkos ginkos could fit those oh yes true maybe say it'd be a little tight but look say these are my skinny jeans someone introduced sequo to chico

His skinny jeans are jinkos? Yeah. Oh, man. Give me my skinny jeans, honey. Here's your jingos. We're going out tonight. We're going out. He's great.

I agree with Mike that his upside on a weekly basis, he will give you higher explosive games. His athletic profile is off the charts. What he's done his entire career has been great until he got injured last year and it had a little bit slower time getting back from the high ankle sprain. But obviously at the end of the year, you saw it. I'm 100% fine with any one of these three guys taking them number one. I would have no problem. We did see the targets go down for...

Barkley when they made the switch to Daniel Jones. But again, it was a small sample that you can't say for certainty that's what's going to happen next year. He's still going to get a bunch of targets. All right, Dalvin Cook at number four. We weren't positive he would end up here by this time. But he is. He's back. He's back. And I've got him at four. Mike has him at four. Jason at five. He was absolutely dominant to begin the year. He was the RB2 from weeks one through 14.