Too often when preparing draft strategy for the year ahead, owners spend their time assessing last season’s cumulative output. The really proactive ones develop their own projections for the current season (or eyeball those of others). Both approaches fall short.
[This post appears as part of our free 2014 Fantasy Football Draft Guide with all the tools to help you dominate]
[Overall Startable Weeks] [QB Consistency] [RB Consistency] [WR Consistency] [TE Consistency]
Most fantasy pundits will push hard for an early round back strategy, and most have been banging that drum for years on end. I’m no different, and therefore I think the consensus approach is not wrong. Beyond the notion of just drafting a back, though, you’re looking for an early round running back who offers you consistency. A player who can serve as an anchor in your weekly lineups with, an anchor offering a certain floor number of points any given week that allows you to take chances elsewhere on your roster. Running backs are designed to give this to you, with the top of the class netting a virtually guaranteed 15-25 touches every week the floor remains fairly high. With that in mind, lets explore the concept of RB consistency.
Here, we’ll assess the top 12 backs on a fantasy points per game basis from 2013. Looking for something deeper? Check out last week’s post on RB startable weeks. Note that the data pulled comes from only the ‘fantasy relevant’ weeks’, 1-16.
X: player game number; Y: fantasy points – click to enlarge (note: Charles: big Week 15 skews the scale on fig. 1)
X: player game number; Y: fantasy points – click to enlarge
X: player game number; Y: fantasy points – click to enlarge
2013 RB Consistency
As pointed out in the image caption, Jamaal Charles’ monster Week 15 ruined my fantasy championship aspirations throws off the data relative to the other charts, and it also makes him seem like an inconsistent back but aside from that one significant spike, Charles scored within an acceptable range pretty much all season. He scored under 10 points just twice, (once by a hair) and came within five points of his average of 20.5 in every game but six (three times on the high side).
As far as fantasy football goes, Charles was as close to plug and play as it gets. And therein lies the argument for selecting him specifically, and running back generally early in your draft. Concerns over his offensive line are warranted, but provided Charles remains healthy he is again projected to be an every down workhorse for an offense that features the back heavily in both the run and pass games. With volume and scoring opportunity, Charles was a great weekly bet for 16+ points and someone you could build a roster around in 2013.
Of course, only one guy gets Charles (the next gets Shady, who was a little more sporadic in his scoring, missing his average of 17.3 points by more than five in nine games, but scored less than 10 just three times and is a great bet for another strong season) so we’ll have to look a little more deeply at the numbers. Beyond them, a pair of rookie rushers proved to be reasonably consistent as well.
After netting starters reps a few weeks into the season, Eddie Lacy kept a fairly steady flow of production, scoring under 10 points just twice in games 4-15. During that span, he rushed for under 75 yards four times but scored in two games giving owners important value even in down weeks. His ability to do so is an important reminder regarding backs who get work in the redzone as well. All the opportunities you like between the 20s do little for value relative to a player who has a nose (and opportunity) for the end zone. Le’Veon Bell scored similarly, with one of the straightest lines of the group. He had a rough go of it in his second career game, but, kept it between the buoys from there, never missing his average by more than five points again (that is easier to do on the low side when the average is 13 FPPG as compared to Charles’, but alas…).
As a general rule, you have a sense of a player’s relative overall production heading into the season… or, you do if you believe our season long draft rankings, anyhow. A strong argument could be made for a preference for Bell over Chris Johnson, despite a fairly minor disparity in their FPPG output (13.04 vs. 11.87). Johnson had a similar cumulative output on a per game basis, and yet his chart has many more peaks and valleys.
CJ scored fewer than 10 points nine times last season, meaning that he produced his average by really coming through for owners in some weeks but leaving them wanting in terms of production more often than not. And therein lies the point. A player like Bell with a steady workload, pile moving skills and goal line opportunities is one I value more than a player like Johnson at the end of the day because I know what I’m getting, and I can work to build a roster around it.
The post Consistency is king: RB consistency from week to week among the top 2014 options appeared first on Fantasy Sports Locker Room.
