Top 10 RB Rankings + Duke’s Out, Chubb’s Up

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Oh, welcome in. Welcome in. Thank you, Mike. It's me. That was a great Vader you did before the show, Mike. Thank you. You're so talented on so many levels. I'm a voice artist. Welcome in to the fantasy footballers Thursday, August 8th. You know who forced their way out of some places? Duke Johnson. He did with extreme prejudice. Yes, we will.

We'll talk about that momentarily. Some breaking news. Duke Johnson traded. We'll get into that with the quick question on the show today. It is a running back rankings episode. Look, I actually won. I applaud him for getting that news in right before we start recording the show, gave us enough time to adjust him, Nick Chubb, all the players involved. Normally these people, they wait until our show is released. It's extremely convenient. Yeah, so.

Thank you, Cleveland. Yeah, the ultimate draft kit. We appreciate it. Already updated with all the teams. You got how's it? We added all the NFL teams. We added them all this year. We only had four teams last year. But you got, you know, how does it affect Deshaun Watson? Yeah. Everybody. Yeah. No, we'll talk about it. A couple of quick reminders as we start the show. Make sure you check us out on YouTube. YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. We just posted the beach race that took place in California.

from our staff. Oh, man, it's good. There was a couple of things that we left out of the video. You're welcome. First, that Brooks, while he won, and you can watch this on the YouTube channel, Brooks... Whoa, you're spoiling it for the people who didn't watch it. Well, no, I mean... Poor form. If they're not on YouTube, then they didn't see it when it came out. And Brooks won. He also spent...

Well, he came into the office yesterday or two days ago and said he's never been more sore in his entire life. Right, which is excellent. Which, surprisingly, you don't do beach races often, Brooks? Nah. Okay. Surprised because you dominated. And then secondly, he spent most of that evening throwing up on the beach. So that was another highlight that I left out of the video. Worth it. Nothing like sleeping next to a bucket. Yes, but no, that was really fun. You can check out.

the YouTube channel. You can see that. Every episode's on YouTube. And we'll be posting some other fun stuff this year. Al Borland is going to be making sure our water bets get paid out and hit social media. So follow us at the FF Ballers. We make bets each and every week. I've never lost. So once again, another season will continue of perfect projections.

The fantasy footballers.com is the website. You can also subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and ad free on Stitcher Premium. And, yeah, as Vader said, the ultimate draft kit available at ultimate draft kit.com. That's right. That's so good, Mike. Just. It's spot. I can't even tell that you're not James Earl Jones. Exactly. I'm expecting to see James Earl Jones. It was weird. Whoa. That's unbelievable. Guys, it's me. Mike.

It's me. Surprise. Fool you. All right. Quick question is, look, it's all related to the implications of this trade. Duke Johnson traded from the Browns to the Texans in exchange for a 2024th round pick. Duke Johnson, this pick up by Houston, it could go really, really well for them. He's a very talented past catching running back, 4.3 career yards per carry, even though he didn't.

have a lot of opportunities between the tackles. But Duke Johnson's an upgrade on what they had in Deonta Foreman, who they let go. And it helps Deshawn Watson. Yes. Yeah, Deshaun Watson has never had a specialist in the passing.

in the passing game, and you've seen the fantasy success that comes with like the Drew Breeze who can get yards by dumping it off to Alvin Camara. You know, part of the reason I love Cam this year is Christian McCaffrey. Deshaun Watson was already my number two quarterback, so he didn't move up and bypass Pat Mahomes, but I do think this is great for him. That being said, we do not recommend in a single quarterback league to take one of those early quarterback draft picks, so somewhat irrelevant. I mean, not irrelevant.

and also completely irrelevant. Well, dude. For Deshaun. Yeah, I mean, and the thing is is people will make a, I mean, Twitter's the buzz trying to project what things will look like in Houston. Duke Johnson's a great pass catching running back. Not good. And last year, people said, I mean, when Cam Newton didn't throw to the running back and Christian McCaffrey was drafted, the refrain was, he doesn't throw to the running back. He'll never throw to the running back.

Well, when you have one of the best players in the game and you acquire them, you throw them the football. So I'm not saying that Duke Johnson is going to be this prolific superstar, but they will target the running back more now that they have a great pass-catching running back. Yeah, and look, they clearly wanted him. They went and they traded for him. It's a fourth-round pick that can become a third-round pick. I mean, that...

That's pretty expensive to trade for a running back in today's NFL. After cutting Deont de Foreman, they knew what they needed. And the reports came out pretty early. They're not going after Melvin Gordon. They won a third down back. Obviously, they are wanting to get him the ball in space. But the Cleveland side is the far more interesting side to me. Real quick. By the way, Alfred Blue saw 170 touches last season. Yes. So there is some room for Duke to emerge. Yeah.

Sorry about that. Go on. Go on with the Chubb side. Thank you for apologizing. No, yeah, so I have been pretty low on Chubb relative to expert consensus rankings out there for two reasons. One is the few touches that will be stolen in the second half of the year, and we stat these guys for the whole year by Cream Hunt. The other side was the past catching work.

Nick Chubb was not a pass catching back in college. That's not his specialty. That's not his skill set. He is a bruiser, a beast of a man between the tackles. But that has to fall on his shoulders to some degree. Don Trell Hilliard is there, and you're saying who? Maybe he's better than you think just because you don't know the name. But the point is Duke Johnson is gone, and he was the past catching back.

Hunt isn't there for eight weeks. So Nick Chubb will be involved in the passing game. It's just about, you know, impossible for him not to get a major tick up in receptions, at least for me, considering I didn't have him with very many. And to be fair to Nick Chubb, he was definitely serviceable, if not good, in the receiving game last year, especially once he started, you know, once he became the full-time guy.

He had multiple games of three targets. He had a game of six targets. And he's not, what I'm saying is he's not bad. He's not bad. He's not bad. He's just not. So if you project even just a slight uptick, let's say he gets 15 more targets, maybe even 20 more targets than he was slated to get, that's a big deal for his fantasy floor. It is. And if you believe in the Cleveland offense, if you believe they're going to move the chains, maybe a similar.

You can think about how we thought about the Saints and their backfield. And, okay, Camara's got it to himself and then Ingram comes back. Well, it's a great backfield. I'm not, like, Chubb is in my top 10. We have a top 10 consensus rankings on today's show. He didn't make it in by consensus rankings. But I'm not too scared off about Hunt's return. Now that Duke Johnson's gone, I think it makes it a little, the safety of Nick Chubb is a little bit more secure.

uh in that offense certainly uh he is he is worthy of being a top 10 pick especially look the first half of the year when top 10 pick uh top 10 running back okay he is definitely worthy of being a top 10 running back in the draft because you're going to get off to a hot start here it's week 10 before cream hunt is back and he could be i mean nick chub could easily be a top five back through the first half of the year if i'm undefeated when can't when k when kareem

Hunt comes back, I'll be very happy. Yeah. Because I had Nickshed. At that point, you're in your playoffs. Yeah. So I do think this is a little bit bad, you know, obviously not drastically bad, but I did move Baker down a little bit. And ironically, as some of those targets went over to O'Dow Beckham and Jarvis. Say Jarvis. Yeah, Jarvis got the biggest bump from me as far as taking some of that role that Duke Johnson will be leaving behind.

I think it's really fair to take a little bit away from Baker there because Duke is just a really good pass catching back. I took a passing touchdown away that I don't know if Hilliard will pick up the slack for or Chubb Will. So I'm with you on that. Anything you want to add to that, Mike, or should we get into our main event here? Let's get into it. Running bags. All right, top 10 running backs on the show today are consensus, half point per reception rankings.

And you can see all of our rankings on the website, the fantasy footballers.com. You can see all of our projections for each and every player stat it out over the course of the year. And you can see that in the Ultimate Draft Kit at Ultimate DraftKit. The running back position, you know, you spend so much time talking about the value of taking a quarterback late. Well, one of the reasons why you do that is because you want to put yourself in a strong position at the running back with running backs on your roster. You play two every week.

They can anchor your team and guys get hurt. You need to stack players up. You need to build depth at this position. Last year, seven of the preseason top 10 running backs, according to average draft position, finished in the final top 10. Does that number surprise you? No, I mean, it's usually when I've been tracking things, the bust rate is around that three or four guys or so. So this year just bounced a little bit better.

And the truth is one of the three that finished outside was Lev Bell. So he didn't fail on the field. Right. Well, and then Kareem Hunt was one of the three who certainly did not fail on the field. He failed off the field. And then there's four net. And he failed both on and off the field. That is true. He was like, I'm going to be consistent. He stuck the double. And we do have a pretty good injury history article up on the website by Matthew Betts, our injury guy.

And so he talks about round one running back injuries historically. So let's start at the top. Sequin Barclay is our consensus running back one. Jason and I have him one in our rankings. Mike, you have them at two. And I don't know which discussion to have on Sequin. Probably not the one about him being good or not. He's pretty good. Yes. I think most people want to know, is he bulletproof?

regardless of the offense this morning. I believe it was Evan Silva tweeted Cody Latimer is likely the wide receiver two to start the year. That makes you throw up a little bit. I think this offense may struggle, but Sequin, he seems bulletproof to me. He seems bulletproof, yes, as far as is he going to be all right? If the offense is...