Fantasy Football 2018 - The TRUTH About Fantasy RBs in 2017, Part 2

They will need a possession guy. That's fair. They're not afraid to spend money. Hey guys, if you finish the league, second, third, seventh, and third in total offense per game, you don't come back. Todd Haley, offensive coordinator for the Steelers, will not be brought back. We have heard a lot about Haley and the Steelers. I've been saying, look, they kind of get in their own way right now. I mean, they have so much talent on that team. But with Martavis.

coming back and then demanding the ball and then saying he's going to leave and then some of the off the field stuff with other players. It just seems like there's a little more controversy there than other franchises that are trying to win. And now Todd Haley, your established offensive coordinator is leaving. What do you guys make of this? Well, for the fact that he's leaving, not overly surprising. Todd Haley long, long has a reputation of being. He wears people down. Yes, tough to work.

Tough to work with. This is a Jim Harbaugh situation. Look how successful the 49ers were with Jim Harbaugh, but. Good coach, tough man. Conflict of interest or personalities between people in the upper management, they had to, Harbaugh had to leave. So this is the similar thing. Yeah, that's fair. The nice thing for Phoenix, he will get a job really quick though. Absolutely he will, as he should. The nice thing, though, for the Steelers is it appears so far that the quarterback coach.

is most likely to take over that offensive coordinator role. I love that because you have a team here who's been consistent. You just read the numbers. You know, there was second, third, seventh, and third the last four years in offense. So I want consistency here. This is what I was hoping that the Atlanta Falcons would do last year when they lost Shanahan was take their quarterback coach, promote him, keep that train chugging along. All right. Reminder, playoff challenge. Make your...

Changes to your lineup. RIP, my team. I like what you guys have done. You guys were like, okay, the teams you had chosen to get there. Seven Saints. Yeah, exactly. And so now, now that you're like, okay, I'm out of it, the only way you can win.

is to go the exact least likely thing possible. Oh, yes. What are your team? Lowest ownership percentage players on the team's not expected to win the game. I'm all. I'm all on Jags. Jags and Eagles. I've got them up and down. Yeah. That's the Super Bowl I'm expecting. Bortles v. Foles. Oh, you play to win the game. Give it to me. All right. Without, uh, I don't think we have any other news we need to get into. So let's talk running backs. You want answers. I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth.

You can't handle the truth. Just a reminder, when we talk consistency at the running back position, we talk in terms of great games. That's when a player scores 22 or more points. That's a top 5 on average performance for that week. Good games, which are more than 10 points, that's a top 24 average, and bust games that are fewer than 7 points outside of the top 50 on average. That's how we define a good, great, or bust game, and then that factors into what we think. Their consistency.

ended up as. So last Tuesday, this past Tuesday, we talked through Todd Gurley, Lev Bell, Alvin Camara, Kareem Hunt, Melvin Gordon, Mark Ingram, LaShaul McCoy, Leonard Fernette, Carlos Hyde, and Ezekiel Elliott. And today we're going to go as far as we can into the rest of the running back position. I think we should try to, you know, get deep in the running back position because there's a lot of...

Interesting information here from a consistency standpoint. Right off the bat, you start with Christian McCaffrey. Christian McCaffrey was the 11th ranked running back in fantasy. But his consistency rank was 23rd in the league. He busted 25% of the time. So seven or fewer points, 25% of the time. This is another rookie, right? And as with Camara and Hunt and others of that nature, you do have this establishing a role, finding a...

You know, there was a trade of Calvin Benjamin, some things in the offense. Take the, what's your read on Christian McCaffrey from this past year and moving into next year? 80 reception, 651 yards, and five touchdowns. That's where he made his money. It'll be interesting to see, you know, North Turner coming in. Maybe they can get him a little bit more involved. It's a new coordinator coming to a team that.

now already has this asset in McCaffrey. So I think they can scheme for him a little bit better. But what happened this last year, and unlike some of these consistency numbers where, okay, he wasn't as consistent as the other top guys, sometimes those numbers are skewed because they got up to a slow start, or they were dealing with injury in the middle, or, you know, at the end of the year, they...

you know, the team was sitting guys or whatever. But this wasn't the case with McCaffrey. McCaffrey had, you know, a bad week two, a bad week four, a bad week 14, a bad week 16. It was kind of spread out where it made it a little bit hard to trust him. And here's what I find fascinating. We're going to talk next about Jordan Howard.

Jordan Howard makes sense to me because he doesn't catch the ball. He can be game scripted out where his games aren't that great. But McCaffrey, being a past catching running back, is really surprising to me to see that he was not as consistent with giving you weeks where he's not hurting your roster as some of the other top backs. Yeah, it's fair. I mean, he was somebody that it seemed like every time he gave you a good performance and you wanted to count on him.

He would let you down a little bit. He'd be game scripted out for some reason. Going into next year, you know, Jonathan Stewart just kind of hangs around. Obviously McCaffrey can't be the feature between the tackle guy. He won't be a three-down guy. And even if Jonathan Stewart is forced into retirement or cut from the team, I think that the Panthers will draft a Jonathan Stewart type. They'll get a bruiser. Maybe they bring back.

Cameron Artist Payne who had some success. Go ahead. I just want to point this out because we have this awesome, awesome article series, the 25 stats article on our website. And we just released the 25 stats. These are just like mind cool stat nuggets. And we just released Michael Winrich put out the one on running backs. And he found this one on McCaffrey. He says, remember the preseason narrative that the Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton doesn't know how to throw to a running back?

It may actually... Oh, I remember you guys talking about that. Yeah, well, he says it may actually be semi-accurate because McCaffrey led all running backs with 113 targets, although he was only able to catch 71% of them, which is the fourth lowest catch rate among the top 30 most targeted running backs. And obviously, McCaffrey has unbelievable hands. Great hands, yeah. So this, I mean, it's like if you had a quarterback that could...

Put a little touch on a short screen. So they needed to do it, but he isn't great at it. Cam, yeah. Cam being, you know, so interesting. Jordan Howard comes into number 12 with a consistency rank of 25. Jason just mentioned. It doesn't catch the ball, only 23 receptions, ran the ball 276 times. He was their offense. Be nannas. 1,122 yards and nine touchdowns. How do you have a line like that?

And end up as the 25th most consistent. Yeah, he still was a top 12 guy. So that's how. I mean, he had big time games, nine touchdowns. That's impressive on a team that struggled the way they did on offense. 1100 yards, again, not bad. He was good 50% of the time, but he busted 38% of the time. And he struggled when they got behind and they didn't give him the ball. And you had Tariq Cohen's involvement. Now you have a new offensive coordinator. Now you have a new offense. Now you have a new head coach.

What can we really expect from Jordan Howard? Do you feel more confident? Let's say you had a dynasty half-point PPR league, and you had to decide whether to keep Jordan Howard or Christian McCaffrey on that team heading into next year. Where do you go? I would go McCaffrey. Okay. Yeah. It's just too much change. I mean, Howard could end up being an absolute beast with a new coordinator, the offense. I like what Chicago is doing. Or they could say, you know what? We don't need to be this, you know, give.

Howard at the ball 25 times. Let's get Therick Cohen more involved. There's just too many questions for me there. Yeah. If I have to pick between Howard and McCaffrey, I lean McCaffrey, draft pedigree. But that's so tough, though, because I love Jordan Howard. I really believe in the talent. But the, I'd be going with the team that I think is going to have success sooner. And that would be McCaffrey. Yeah. And I'm still, the jury is still out on Mitchell Trebisky of.

Can he turn into one of these good quarterbacks in the league? I'm still not convinced he can't. Yeah, I am skeptical as well. All right. Before we get to Devanta Freeman, definitely want to thank today's sponsor Squarespace, especially not just because they're sponsoring, but because it's a great product. I know so many people that they have their big idea, they have their dream, and they don't know who to hire, who to get, to build a website. It's like, you can do this yourself. You can really do it.

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performing defenses. So he is negative 7.6 fantasy points per game when he faces a top half defense. And that's Devon to Freeman. He played 14 games this year under 200 carries with 196 and 860 yards, 865, I'm sorry, and seven touchdowns. Caught the ball 36 times for 317 and 1. Overall, just kind of a down year.

in proportion to what happened to Atlanta. Now, Atlanta had a down year on offense in comparison to their otherworldly year last year. You would say that they regressed past the mean. So this wasn't just a, we're going back to what we are capable of or have done historically. You know, Matt Ryan, we'll talk about him on a QB truth show. He regressed beyond the mean. Had a struggling year. Now, Freeman, you expected more from him, did you not? Oh, certainly. You did. I mean, you drafted him.

usually as the fourth or fifth running back off the board. But this is one of those things where I think the disappointment level, people feel in Freeman, is more emotions as to when it happened than how he actually was. He finished, you know, as the 13th running back 14th in consistency. He was still very good. And, you know, it came out after the playoffs that he has been dealing with, what was it, an MCL and PCL sprain. Yes. You know, and he didn't.

look the same, like watching him run. You know, every time I watch Falcons, I see Kevin Coleman, who's a very good runner, and I see Devons Freeman, who's on another level. And, you know, if you look at the last couple games, especially the last playoff game, it was the exact opposite. It was like Freeman just didn't have something there. He's still a young guy. And, yeah, I really like Freeman. I do worry about the home road splits historically and the