The TRUTH: Second Tier RBs in 2019 - Fantasy Football Podcast

13% bus games, 73% good games, just 7% great games. That's hard to deal with as a Todd Gurley owner. And isn't it kind of the hardest thing to do in fantasy to adjust expectation on a player that used to be the number one and decide what you do with them and what they would be? Who would you rather have as your running back one hitting into next year based on today's rosters? Would you rather have Joe Mixer or Todd Gurley? You know, that's a...

Even with that nasty start to the season, mix and outperform Gurley in terms of total fantasy points. Well, that's with Gurley getting 12 rushing touchdowns. I mean, that is an excellent number for a guy who, you know, 2857 yards on the ground. Yeah, that's, that was the problem. The problem was, it wasn't the touchdowns. It was a combination of all of a sudden his passing work started to evaporate by comparison to the previous two years. And his.

efficiency in the running game was terrible. Obviously, the offensive line was horrific. You know, he has been one of the most, you know, one of the players that is the most determinate upon their offensive line. Hmm. I can never remember. You finally did it. Think about when. Other Jason Morrison climbs up. Sure. When Jeff Fisher was there. Dependent? Is that the word you're looking for? Most dependent on their offensive line? Let's go with that.

I like the way that sounds. But, you know, the change. Al Barlin is laughing over here. The change. That's what he meant, right now? Yes. I think so, yeah. Okay. The change when McVeigh came in, McVeigh got all the credit, but Andrew Whitworth came in, and the offensive line changed from really bad to really good. Well, this last year, the offensive line went from really good to really bad. And.

You know, what if they go out and make a big splash in free agency? Go out and get... To fix the line? Yeah, to fix the line. And they have a better offensive line. Do you... He got the work. He, you know... Well, he kind of got the work. Yes. The workload went down. That is for sure. In 2018, 11 of his 14 games, he was on the field for more than 80% of the snaps. Last year, only three times. Did he see that workload?

Jason, you talked about the targets. They went way down. I have no idea why Sean McVeigh decided to do this. Only 10% of their passes. Only 10% of the Rams passes. And you have Tyler Higby, Mike. You don't ignore Tyler Higby. Apparently, because that dude turned into a beast. But here was the biggest eye opener for me. So Sean McVeigh's run with the Rams. 2017, the Rams offense scored 478 points.

2018, they scored 527 points. Last year, they scored 394 points. And Todd Gurley still had 12 rushing touchdowns. Like, it's going to be very difficult to be in on Todd Gurley. But if they can fix some of the offense. If they can low-key fix the offensive line, Todd Gurley may present himself.

as a draft value. I honestly have no gauge what the public is thinking about Todd Gurley moving forward into next year. But like my hunch is he could be of, he could be a value in the third of the fourth. Pop quiz, how many hundred yard rushing games did he have last year? I'm going with zero. That is correct. Yeah, I was, I'm just thinking, I'm thinking through this and realizing that the truth is with Todd Gurley is his season was saved by touchdowns because. But that's who he like.

That's also why he was so great. No, but if you told me, because there was so much Todd Gurley discussion coming into last year, the knee, Darrell Henderson, the workload, we don't know. But if you told me, he gets 14 touchdowns, I would say drafted him as a top five running back. He's the top five. He got 14 touchdowns, and he didn't finish as an RB1. And what's Darrell Henderson going to be next year? And so that's a good question. Are they going to use him? But of...

the running backs would double digit rushing touchdowns. They all finished top eight except for Todd Gurley. If you took the chance on Gurley over this past year, were you happy? I think, yeah. But where was he? He was a second round pick, right? Yeah, he fell, he fell pretty heftily. I think you were okay.

I like that one a lot. Heftly, is that even a word? Yeah, with the woozels. Yeah, it was heftilies and woozels. Very confuzzles. Heftilies and the hephalumps? That's where I went. Nice. He fell heftily, you were saying? Mm-hmm. In the drafts. I'm on a roll. Let's keep going. Oh, my goodness. All right.

Miles Sanders is number 15. Miles Sanders was 15 in Fantasy Finish. He was a consistency rank of 29. He's a rookie. I'm going to contrast him with another one that kind of jumps out. And so Miles Sanders finished there. But if you go down, hold on, let me scroll. Devin Singletary finished at 31 with a consistency rank of 27. So they actually had very similar consistency rankings. How do you look at these numbers?

You look at Miles Sanders and, you know, smaller sample sizes is how I look at these rookies. It's difficult to put those two guys together because I feel like the path forward for Devin Singletary is clear. Like Singletary is the guy now. I can't project that Frank Gore will be on that team. Devin Singletary is the primary running back for that team. That's how they used them towards the end of the season. Meanwhile, Miles Sanders kind of de factoed into that job.

What I didn't remember is Miles Sanders was basically given the starter job. At the beginning of the year, he was getting more carries than Jordan Howard. He was just super ineffective. He was averaging 11 carries for 35 yards in the first three games. Jordan Howard came in, took the job. Jordan Howard looked great. Was a touchdown beast. And then during those games, Miles Sanders was down to seven carries for 38 yards. Howard gets hurt.

Miles Sanders gets the job back and is actually pretty good, but he's really, really getting it done in the passing game. He was one of only six rookies ever with 800 rushing yards, 50 receptions, and 500 receiving yards. It's just 22 years old. What's difficult for me is you look at those two players, and you said the pathway is clear for Devon Singletary. It's ironic because we break these games down, their performances down into great games, good games, bust games.

Devon Singletary never had a game that qualified is great. Miles Sanders had two of those. He had five good games. He had five times that he finished inside the top ten on the week. So you almost saw, even if he fell more into the opportunity, you saw more sealing from Miles Sanders over the course of those games. Then you saw from Singletary. In the air, not in there, but through the air. Yeah. Miles Sanders was getting it done.

There's only three running backs last year that had 40 or more targets and a yards per reception over 10. Miles Sanders. Austin Echler.

David Johnson. Amazingly, David Johnson. But look, Miles Sanders did great with the opportunity he was given towards the end of the year. I think he's talented. The real question, it's all about opportunity. Because by the end of the year, not only was Jordan Howard injured, so he gets more rushing work, but every single receiving option on the team was injured. No Alshan, no Dijacks, no Nelson Agilor. I mean, they started using...

Boston Scott and Miles Sanders. So going forward next year, I don't believe Doug Peterson wants Miles Sanders to be the guy. I think...

He showed. It's tough because they took him in the second round. No, I didn't know that part, 53rd pick overall. I think that they know he's a talented guy and he will be involved. And I think the Eagles offense to compare it to the Bills and Devin Singletary is better. So the ceiling is there with Miles Sanders because I think more points are scored for the Eagles next year than for the Buffalo Bills. If you could pick a RB2, Sanders or Singletary today. I would take Singletary today because I believe.

Singletary will get the opportunity. And I don't know that Miles Sanders will get enough opportunity in the, you know, in just touches. PPR might change that for me. If it's PPR, I think I might go miles. It's so hard because, I mean, the targets were there for Singletary or getting there. And the reality is, is if Gore's gone, it's easy to say now because Gore's probably not back.

I mean, he's infinite. They're going to bring somebody else in. I mean, it's not just going to be singletary. I listened to Gore after the season. And he was asked the question, you know, I'm just 23 years old. You know, I'll be back. Why is he Charles Bark? I don't know. Do you want to? Is that what that was? It was terrible. It was terrible. I'm torn three years. No. No. Hale wants to play. And he wants to play for the bills. And forever. He wants to play for ever. I've heard that Carlos Hyde wants back on the Texans, Jason. Yes.

But I would not. Gore's not under contract. No, I know he's not. I would not be surprised at all if the bills bring back Frank Gore. And if that happens, I think that's best case scenario for Devon Singletary. I would agree with that. It would be best for Singletary. He already overtook Gore. Gore would be signing to be the bad. Been there, beat that. Until the playoffs. When you got an opportunity to get Frank Gore the ball in the playoffs. Only eight touches, but they were painful. They ruined the game.

All right, let's go here and you guys can pick out some names that you want to bring up beyond the top 15 here. You know, Kenyon Drake was 16 overall, 16 by consistency. That's impressive for a player that changed teams over the course of the year. I saw a very large Twitter poll where Gurley and Drake came up a dead heat in Dynasty drafts. So my hot stat for Kenyon Drake is more just about the Arizona running back. And I tweeted this out.

I said if you take the fantasy numbers from the starting running back for Arizona, you got 288 points. That's a running back three on the season. Yes, we got fooled. We got duped a few times of who would the starter be. Mostly that was on David Johnson, where you had the game where he came back. We thought he was healthy, and Chase Edmonds was the guy and had a monster game. Chase Edmonds kind of fell off, got hurt. They trade for Kenyon Drake.

You still think David Johnson's the starter because they just traded for Drake. But no, it was, Kenyon Drake was the dude for the rest of the season. So I am very interested. But the point you're making is that the Arizona Cardinals running back with Cliff Kingsbury is an extremely valuable role. If someone has that on lockdown. Because they go with one guy. This isn't.

This isn't an RBBC. By design. Right. And that was kind of the biggest rebuttal to the tweet. If you do that for a lot of teams, it's like, yeah, but Arizona wanted to feature one guy more often than these other teams. Just happen to be three different players over the course of the year on individual weeks. And that happens on teams that play fast. Right. We talk about.

playing fast for the Cardinals and how many snaps they get in every game. But part of the only way you can do that is by keeping the same personnel on the field. You don't have time to slow the game down and make as many substitutions. They're just going, going, going. They need that skill set feature all round back. And so, yeah, you know, Kenya Drake is interesting, but we don't have a clue where he plays football next year.

Levy on Bell ended up at 17 fantasy finish wise. He ended up at number 13 in consistency. Nice. Zero percent great game. So he never had a 22 plus point game. He was just very middle of the road. But only one bust. So he was. Yeah. I mean, he's going to get 250 plus carries next year. If you took him in the first, though. Oh, this is where you had, he killed you. But now he'll be adjusted. Now there'll be a settling of his position. And all I'm saying is next year.

unless people buy in more than I think they will, I love the opportunity to potentially get 250 carries on the ground because he's making all the money in the world at a better draft day value to be my running back too. That's all I'm saying. Because these weeks, you know, 11, 9, 10, 10, 10, 11, those are the kind of weeks that I'm really wanting from my RB2. It's just a matter of what are the new expectations for Lev Bell.