Transcription
We've had trades and injuries since last time you saw a running back rankings video. So, let's go ahead and let's dive into everything.
Tier one, we've talked about these guys all offseason. I am not going to fault you if you want to put Gibbs at one, if you want to put Barkley at one, if you want to put Bejon at one. Now, I am personally going to be putting Bejon Robinson. Could be a little bit biased. Hookham Horns, but regardless, if we look at all three of these running backs, they were the RB1, RB2, and RB3 in points per game last season. Saquon Barkley at one with 22.1 points per game. You had Bejian Robinson at three with 20.1 and you had Jamir Gibbs at two with 21.3.
Now projecting them out going into this next season, Sigma Barkley's situation remains relatively the same. Now, the concern that I'm going to have and the overall scary thing is if you use the range of outcomes tool on flockfantasy.com and you go ahead and just take a little sneak peek of running backs that had a similar age 27 season to Saquon Barkley and we're looking at the total stats, not the per game stats. You'll see that Adrien Peterson in 2012 also dropped 347 points at 27 years old and he declined to 232 the following year. Nick Chub scored 281 points. He gets injured the following season. Marshon Lynch was able to maintain that large workload and actually get better, but Christian McAffrey got injured in his age 28 season. Dvin Cook got injured in his age 28 season. There were only about two to three running backs on this list that were actually able to improve from age 27 to 28. So to see the large amount of carries that Saquon had last year, both in the regular season in the playoffs. That type of workload at his age is going to be a concern and why he won't be my running back one overall.
Now he's going to be my running back one in the flock league. And my guy, I'm going to be riding on you. You better come through for me. But I'm a little bit nervous given the injury history that we have with these older running backs coming off this massive workload. And then if we go ahead and if we look at the final nine weeks of last season for both Jamir Gibbs and Bejian Robinson, Bejian actually jumps up to 21.3 points per game. And he was top five in the NFL in total yards per game, total touchdowns per game, top 10 in the NFL in rushing attempts inside the five per game, rushing yards per game, rushing attempts per game, his snap rate. So Bejan was a true three-own Bellcow running back. He is an elite level prospect. And looking at Jir Gibbs in comparison, I'm a little more concerned that the Detroit Lions regress given the fact that you have no Ben Johnson. And at the same time, the offensive line should be a little bit worse with the center retiring.
Now, let's move over to our next tier, and we're going to be looking at McCaffrey, Genty, Devon Achan, and Derrick Henry. Now, the first thing I need to discuss is Ashton Genty potentially starting a little slow as a rookie because I know I've seen a lot of people saying, "Oh, don't you remember that Bejian Robinson was drafted in round one as a rookie and he disappointed that means he shouldn't draft Ashton Genty?" In my opinion, that's a very backwards way of looking at it. If we look at every running back that has had as good of a prospect profile to Ashton Genty since the year 2016 using the prospects page on flockfantasy.com you will see that there was Ezekiel Elliott, Christian McAffrey, Saquon Barkley, Leonard Fornette. Now if we're using the player comparison tool here, sadly we don't have Fornette loaded into the side anymore, but we can look at Ezekiel Elliott his rookie season. He averaged 21.7 points per game. Christian McCaffrey averaged 14.3. Saquon Barkley averaged 24.1 and Bejian Robinson averaged 14.5. So running backs with this prospect profile, we've seen the ceiling be top three in the NFL and fantasy and we've seen the floor be a mid RB2. I would expect Genty steps into 300 touches year one. My only concern is going to be the surrounding offense and the trips to the red zone being limited because of offensive struggles.
Now, looking at the other running backs in this tier, yes, you have Brian Robinson getting added to San Francisco. And you'll see with my rankings here, I didn't move McAffrey down my running back rankings at all. I did move him down my overall rankings just slightly when we're looking at him in comparison to guys like Amanra St. Brown, Nico Collins, Puka Nua, Malik Neighbors, that tier of wide receivers that goes at the end of round one. Now, in some of your league formats, like if you're in a 10 team, two wide receiver, one flex, I would still think that you need a draft McAffrey at the 107 there. However, if you're in like a double flex, full PPR league, you have 12 teams in your league, so wide receiver depth matters there. Maybe you push McCaffrey down to being a late first, early second round pick. But obviously, if you need help adjusting for your exact league format, we have 50 draft sheets posted on flockfantasy.com, and those are going to be updated every Friday until the start of the season. And you will actually get to see exactly how you should be valuing players in your specific league format. And also on the site, we are going to have rest of season rankings and weekly rankings updated every single week until January 1st. And if you wanted to get access to all those, plus all the tools on the site, including Trade Calculator, Tradefinder, My Teams page, it all comes with the 2025 season pass. In my opinion, this is the number one tool that's going to allow you to win your fantasy league this year. And at the same time, it's the cheapest. It's only $34, a one-time payment. And if you use code Flock, I'm going to be answering your start set questions and your trade questions in the live streams that we're doing every night during the year.
But if we look at McAffrey, the last time we had him fully healthy, he averaged 24.5 points per game. If we look at Devon Han, when Tua was fully healthy this past season, Han averaged 22.6 points per game. And then looking at Derrick Henry, Dererick Henry having the best year of his NFL career by a decent little margin this past season and he averaged 19.8 points per game. Again, make sure that you are adjusting to your league format. the rankings that I'm making this video of will be a full PPR league. But if you're playing in a half PPR format or especially if you're playing in a nonPPR league, Derrick Henry would obviously slide up dramatically because there it wouldn't matter nearly as much that he was 61st in the NFL in targets per game among all running backs last year and 46th in the NFL in receiving yards per game among all running backs.
Now let's go over and let's look at our next tier. We are going to have Chase Brown, Bucky Irving, Jonathan Taylor, Josh Jacobs, and Kyron Williams. These are the last running backs that you could feel comfortable drafting in the second round of fantasy drafts.
If we go ahead and look at Chase Brown in the final nine weeks of last season once Zack Moss got injured, you had Chase Brown averaging 20.6 points per game. That was good for the RB3 mark. He was third in the NFL with his snap rate during this stretch. He was third in the NFL with his targets per game. He was third in the NFL with his receiving yards per game. He was third in the NFL with his total yards per game. And he was also top five in the NFL in rushing attempts inside the five yard line. So Chase Brown when he was a starter was a true workhorse. Not only was he a workhorse, but he also had usage as a receiver and at the goal line, which is the main thing you want to look at. I think that Bucky Irving looks to be very appealing given the fact that we have Rashad White getting banged up. I understand that a lot of people are concerned with Liam Cohen leaving and going to Jacksonville, but ultimately I think that you actually have room for upside with Bucky Irving this season because even in the second half of last year, he still was only playing 45% of the snaps for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And in the preseason this year, we saw them actually willing to use Buck Irving as a true threeown player.
Then with Jonathan Taylor, I'm actually going to be giving Taylor the slight bump over Jacobs. Now that we know Daniel Jones is the starting quarterback, I would be less concerned about Anthony Richson stealing rushing touchdowns at the goal line. And I would assume that Jonathan Taylor does have slightly more usage as a receiver this year with Daniel Jones. And then we are going to look at Josh Jacobs as a running back that's been a top 12 running back every season of his NFL career if we are going to be looking at points per game outside of his final season with Las Vegas. Now, I just traded for him in the Flock League. I personally view him as a top 12 running back this year and I'm super excited to have him alongside Mr. Saquon Barkley. Also, we have Josh Allen and Tiggins on the team. Don't ask me how we did it. I mean, uh, use those draft sheets is all I got to say.
Going over and looking at Kairen Williams. Kairen Williams in comparison to the other quote unquote true Bellcows in the NFL, you can see that he really shines. Like Derrick Henry last year played 59% of the snaps for the Ravens. Kron Williams over the past two years has averaged 87% of the snaps. We go and look at McCaffrey when he was fully healthy two years ago. Even when McCaffrey was averaging 24 and a half points per game, he was still only playing 83% of the snaps in comparison to Kairen at 87%. So ultimately at the end of the day, you are looking at Kairen Williams as probably the number one running back in the NFL with his workload. The concern is in a full PPR format, you're not going to have the receiving usage, and obviously he's not nearly as talented as what you have with a running back like Derk Henry.
Now, going down to our next tier, we're going to have just a small little trio of players here. We are going to be looking at Amari Hampton. I would like to be more aggressive with Hampton in these rankings because it looks like at this point Nieras may just straight up be blind and he may not be relevant at all ever again in the NFL. Now, with that being said for Amari and Hampton, um the offensive environment does look a little bit worse for the Los Angeles Chargers now that you have Slater out for the season. So, I'm going to be a little hesitant to just immediately put Hampton as a top 12 running back. Even though he is an elite prospect, if you go over to the prospects page on the site, the running backs that he was closest to comparatively were Jonathan Taylor, Joe Mixon, Javvante Williams, Travis CTN, Naji Harris, Bree Hall, Jamir Gibbs, Dvin Cook, and Alvin Kamara. most of whom had great rookie seasons.
Now, if we're looking at Alvin Kamara, I understand that Kamara averaged almost 19 points per game last season, and I know people are going to think that we are way too low on him here, and I completely understand where you're coming from. Now, with that being said, Alvin Kamar is going to be playing his age 30 season this next year. And while I understand that Derrick Henry has been able to hold on going into his age 31 year, that hasn't been the case with all these old running backs. We know there are a lot of other guys like Leonard Fornette, Dalvin Cook, Ezekiel Elliott that have been washed out of the league from that same time period. So age does matter. Just because one player's been able to hold on doesn't mean you should pretend that it's a completely irrelevant number. Like if we go through and look at every age 29year-old running back that had the closest comparable season to Alvin Kamara since the year 2008, there was only one running back that got better from age 29 to 30 and that was Derk Henry. And obviously you had a massive change with the situation there, but now with Kamar, the situation really hasn't changed. It's exactly what it was a year ago. But like Matt Forte fell from 21 points per game down to 16 1/2. LT fell from 17 1.5 to 12 1/2. Steven Jackson hovered around 12 1/2. Rashad Jennings fell to 10.3. Lean McCoy fell to nine. David Johnson fell to 6.2. And Jamal Charles fell to five. And I understand that Alvin Kamar is a very good running back, but so is Matt Forte. So is LT. So is LSA McCoy. So is Jamar Charles. Trust me, age does matter.
Now, James Cook is only getting better with age. Or at least that's what has happened so far. James Cook is a rookie, running back 56. James Cook is a year two player, running back 19. James Cook is a year three player, running back 11. Now, where did the change occur? Was it all of a sudden James Cook became a much better rusher? No. he actually averaged fewer rushing yards per game this year than he did in 2023. Was it that he had more usage as a receiver? No, he actually averaged fewer receiving yards per game. Like James Cook fell from 92 yards per game in 2023 down to 79 the following season. But it went from that he was 32nd in the NFL in total touchdowns per game to second. He went from 0.29 29 rush attempts inside the 5 yardd line per game up to 0.94. So all of a sudden this coaching staff determined, yep, we can run the ball at the goal line. We can use James Cook. And then obviously um he just went out there and he scored 16 touchdowns. Now if we are going to be looking at what we have for this next season, I wouldn't expect him to regress back to where he was in 2023 with no involvement at the goal line. But it does really look like 2024 could potentially be an outlier.
Now going over looking at what we have with tier five. Trevon Henderson is an elite running back prospect that has done everything you want to see in the preseason. Plus, this is a really good situation where this coaching staff doesn't have the investment into Readadre the same way that they have into Henderson. And at the same time, this is a team that is a great schedule and Vegas is projecting out to be the most improved team in the NFL this season. We look at the Trevon Henderson prospect profile and the similar prospects are Dalvin, Kamar, Jonathan Brooks, Dererick Henry, Kenneth Walker, Nick Chub, DeAndre Swift, Judkins, and Charbanet. from a prospect score perspective.
Then going over and looking at what we have with Kenneth Walker and Bree Hall, it's actually really surprising to see the improvement that we've had with the Kenneth Walker receiving usage from 2023 to 2024. Like if you're looking at Kenneth Walker's target share, he actually jumped up from a 7% team target share up to a 14%. And we recently had to move him ahead of Bree. Even if I'm going to be honest with you, I think the Bree Hall is a better running back, but I'm a lot more concerned about the Bree Hall receiving usage knowing that now we are seeing Brillin Allen actually get snaps on third down over Bree. And if we go ahead and we look at the projections for these offenses this next year, you do have the Seattle Seahawks projecting out to be a better team and a better offense than the New York Jets. So, I'm worried about the potential committee that we have for the Jets. And at the same time, I am impressed with the usage that we've had from Walker.
Now, dropping down to our next tier. I understand RJ Harvey is at the bottom of the Denver Broncos unofficial depth chart, but at the same time, R.J. Harvey played the snaps with the starters in the preseason. So, how concerned should we really be? Now, when you see my week one rankings that will come out next week, don't be surprised when R.J. Harvey is not startable at the beginning of the season. R.J. Harvey is going to fall in the class of rookies that I'm not putting him in my lineup week one. I'm not putting him in my lineup until we see the breakout. But realistically, given how good this Denver Broncos situation could be, R.J. Harvey may indeed just be a top 12 running back in the second half of the season.
Now, our next RBs that we're going to be looking at will be DeAndre Swift, Tony Pard, and David McGomery. So obviously McGomery was the best running back out of this group this past year, but at the same time we can say, well, you had the overall offensive regression, the center's gone, the offensive coordinator's gone, and at the same time, we have reasons to believe that Jir Gibbs is going to get used slightly more this year than what we've seen in the past. Then you combine on the fact that you have David McGomery being another year older. And if we're looking at DeAndre Swift, Swift's situation has improved tenfold. You have completely new offensive coordinator. Not only do you have that, but you have arguably the most improved offensive line in the NFL. You have Caleb Williams going into year two. This is a coaching staff that really prompted up Jir Gibbs and David McGomery as some of the best running backs in fantasy over the past few seasons. And DeAndre Swift's been a top 24 running back every year of his NFL career.
If we look at Tony Pard, I'm actually concerned that Spears or I was concerned that Taj Spears was going to take a lot of his work. Um, so in those underdog drafts I was doing early in the offseason, like to be honest with you, I wasn't drafting a lot of Pard, but now that you have the high ankle sprain for Spears, it does really look like Pard just going to be the three down running back here. And at the same time, you're in a situation in which this offense could be one of the most improved in the league with Cam Ward under center.
Now going over and looking at Isaiah Pacheco. Pacheco fell from 15 points per game to 8.1 points per game in year two to year three. with Pacheco as well. His juke rate fell from 15% to 8%. His yards per attempt fell from 4.6 to 3.7. So Isaiah Pacheco was horrible across the board last season. The question is, was it just the injury? The question is, is he fully healthy now? Can he get back to being the same player? because the first two weeks that he had before he was injured, I mean, this is a running back that was sitting up there. Week one, 79% of the snaps against the Baltimore Ravens, he was the RB 20. Week two, he was the RB 16 with 19 carries, 90 rushing yards, and he had five targets out of the backfield. So, Pacheco before the injury was actually getting used a ton. I didn't draft him a lot last year. I kind of got lucky because it looked like he would have crushed me. and you just have to figure out if Isaiah Pacheco is going to be healthy and if he'll be good to go.
Now, Caleb Johnson is a running back that very similar to RJ Harvey. There is no way in hell I am telling you to start him week one like it's not happening. Now, with that being said, I believe that long-term he is going to be the most talented running back in the Pittsburgh Steelers backfield. I'll be a little concerned that he's not going to get a ton of receiving usage, but ultimately at the end of the day, I do think that he has more juice than Jaylen Warren. And in the second half of the season, he could very easily be a top 18 running back.
Um, Aaron Jones, yes, is another year older, and I know we talked about age just with Alvin Kamara. But Aaron Jones, if we go through and look at his similar age 30 seasons to running backs that then followed it up with an age 31 year, the only RBs that improved from 30 to 31 with a similar Aaron Jones age 30 season were Raheem Board and LT. You had Matt Forte getting worse, um Frank Gore getting worse, Justin Forset getting worse, Mark Ingram falling off a cliff. Now, the one thing that you can say is the offensive line's a hell of a lot better than it was last season. and maybe the offense is even better with McCarthy. It's just too early to know. Now, with that being said, um, if we are going to be looking at Jordan Mason as an addition to this backfield, I will be concerned that Jordan Mason potentially goes out there and actually gets some involvement when it comes to the goal line and short area fields.
Now, going over to our next tier, we're going to be led off with Tyrone Tracy. And if we are going to be looking at Tracy, this is a running back that is more likely than not the starter for the New York Giants early in the season. However, my concern is I do believe that Cam Scataboo is a much better prospect than Tyrone Tracy. And I would be worried that even if Scataboo doesn't take over as the starter, is Tracy talented enough and is this offense good enough where you could start Tracy if this turns into a running back by committee? So, you may be looking at a like a best baseball play where he's going to give you some random usable weeks, but just figuring out when they're going to come is going to be almost impossible.
Now, Jaka Crosky Merritt will be our next running back. I took him in the last round of the Flock League. Y'all know I'm hoping this dude turns into the full-blown starter for the Commanders. And in the preseason game, they actually decided to rest Jakori Kroski Merritt and instead throw out just Chris Rodriguez. And then obviously, they're resting Austin Eckler. He's 1,000 years old. He's pretty much in the nursing home at this point. So with JCM, he would be my long-term bet to be the starting running back for the Commanders. Because realistically, if they loved Chris Rodriguez, why didn't they get rid of Brian Robinson last year? If they loved Austin Eckler, why didn't they get rid of him last year? Why is it all of a sudden that JCM comes and then they go, "Yeah, we don't need the dude anymore."
Now, with Quinn Sean Judkins, should you take him in the fifth round of your fantasy football draft? Hell to the no. I would not recommend doing so. However, where you can take them is if you're allowed to put suspended players on the IR. I know some of y'all are playing in formats where you can. Um, that's a really interesting spot because he is a phenomenal running back prospect. I mean, as a player, Quinnon Judkins is right up there with some of the other topend running backs that we've seen over the past few years. And realistically, he would have been the RB1 in last year's draft class. Now, with that being said, if we are going to be looking at the situation he could potentially step into, um, what best case scenario is, the starting running back in the worst offense in the NFL. So, even if he is that talented, you miss all of training camp, Dylan Samson and Jerome Ford to get all the reps. I'm going to be concerned.
Going over and looking at Joe Mixon, if you use the range of outcomes tool on the site, you can see that almost every running back that had a similar age 28 season to Mixon got worse at age 29. Darren McFaden fell off a cliff. Chris Thompson fell off a cliff. Demarco Murray fell off a cliff. Fred Jackson got slightly worse. Marshon Lynch fell off a cliff. Mark Ingram fell off a cliff. Aaron Jones got slightly worse. Steven Jackson got slightly worse. The only running back to get better was Jamal Charles from 2014 to 2015. and the offensive line's worse than it was a year ago. So, you have age concerns, offensive line concerns. They bring in Nick Chub, they bring in Woody Marks, so you're going to get squeezed for touches. And frankly, we just have no idea if the dude's even healthy or not.
Now, going over and looking at Travis ETN, we recently got him in a package deal that we made. And obviously, I am really hoping that Travis ETN is the starting running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now with that being said, all signs point to this being a split backfield with Tank Bsby where Belle Tutin could have the upside to make a difference in the second half of the year. Why I would prefer ETN in this split backfield is ETN's at least demonstrated the ability to draw targets where we go back to 2023 and he averaged 4.3 targets per game. Like realistically, if we go ahead and get Travis ETN's 2023 stats on here, you'll see that there's a reason he was going in round four of fantasy drafts last season. I think he was actually going earlier than that, but he was sixth in the NFL with his snap rate. He was eighth in the NFL with his targets, seventh in the NFL with receiving yards per game, and top 12 in almost every relevant volume metric. Now, obviously gets injured last year. Horrible efficiency, but I'd still probably prefer him over Jaylen Warren, even if Jaylen Warren will probably be higher in my week one rankings, depending on what the matchups look like, because Warren's probably going to be the straightup starting running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers week one. The issue is obviously with a player like Caleb Johnson, you would expect that Caleb Johnson just expands his role as the season goes on.
Um, Jordan Mason, I think that if you're playing in best baseball, you can get some usable weeks like when he just randomly scores a touchdown. But in your regular fantasy football league, like I don't know if you're ever going to be able to confidently put him into your starting lineup outside of if you were to get an Aaron Jones injury, but based on the improvements that this team's made to the offensive line, I would say that if you do get that Aaron Jones injury, Jordan Mason probably turns into a top 12 running back. Now, we know that if Kenneth Walker were to go down, Zack Sherman doesn't just turn into a top 12 running back. Zack Sherman turns into a top five RB. Like, you actually had no Kenneth Walker for week two, Zack Sherman 18 fantasy points. No Kenneth Walker for week three, Zack Sherman 25.7 fantasy points. No Kenneth Walker for week 14, Zack Sherman 38 fantasy points. And no Kenneth Walker in week 15, he scored 13.5. We can go back and we can look at 2023 and in the three-game stretch Kenneth Walker missed. You had Zack Sharpet over 80% of the snaps on average. So Sharp is a true three down bellcow if you have no Kenneth Walker. But if Kenneth Walker plays, I don't think you can start him.
Um Javvantee is a little more interesting now that Jaden Blue is banged up. But ultimately at the end of the day, Javvante has not been an efficient running back since his injury in 2022. You can actually see his first two years in the league, a juke rate over 30% and over four yards per carry each season. He gets injured and then this past year he was at a 14% juke rate, 16% the year prior, under four yards per carry both seasons as well. So, the efficiency falloff's been horrendous. Clear path to be the starting running back in Dallas, but it's probably just going to be a messy committee and I don't know if any of these running backs are talented enough to start in that messy committee.
Now going over and looking at JK Dobbins. With Dobbins, my hesitation is while yeah, he probably has a decent little workload early in the season, I would expect R.J. Harvey to have a larger role than Caleb Johnson early in the year. So, while JK Dobbins could possibly give you random usable weeks in basketball drafts and your regular ESPN league, I don't know if I'm going to be suggesting that you start JK Dobbins early in the season because if Dobbins is split in the backfield close to 50/50 with RJ Harvey, I would probably rather not start JK Dobbins week one. Just kind of see what happens. And then if you were to have RJ Harvey get injured or maybe they don't use Harvey at all at the beginning of the year, then obviously you can get excited about putting JK Dobbins in after that.
going over and looking at Tank Bsby. Big Bsby could be the straight up starting running back for the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now, as somebody who has Travis ET on their fantasy team, I'm really hoping that's not the case, but it is a um a real outcome that could happen this year. But why I'm not going to be that excited about BGsby is while he can be the short area goal lineback. If we look at the receiving usage, I mean, we go back last year and he had two games with more than seven routes run. We go back to 2023, he had zero games with seven or more routes run. So Bigsby just going to get nothing as a receiver.
Looking at Brilen Allen, Brilen Allen actually got the third down work with the starters in the preseason over Bree Hall. And Brilen Allen has the size to be the goal line back. Now, obviously, you can tell by these rankings here that I would expect personally that Bree Hall is the running back that you're going to want in this backfield. But with that being said, I would expect Brilan Allen to have a weekly role that if you were extremely desperate, you could get him in your lineup. Now, my team in the Flock League is a little bit too good. I'm not going to be starting Brillin Allen. However, if Bree Hall were to get injured, Brilen Allen turns into a league winner. If Bree Hall were to get traded, Brilen Allen turns into a league winner.
Um, Trey Benson kind of the same thing. I'd expect Benson to probably have a role in Arizona, but it's not going to be a large enough role where you're going to be able to put him in your starting lineup. You just have to bank that you really like the um prospect profile coming out of college because he did legitimately nothing as a rookie. And if you were to get an injury to James Connor, potentially could be a league winner. Like realistically Austin Eckler is probably going to have more points per game than Trey Benson, Brillan Allen, Tank Bsby in a um PPR format. He'll probably have more points per game than like Cam Scataboo as well. The reason we're going to have Eckler down this low though is just because I don't know what the realistic ceiling is. You've seen the massive fall off over the past two years. The past two seasons has been his first two years with under a 20% juke rate since um his rookie season back in 2017. older, dusty veteran running back that's gonna have a week- toeek role. But like if Jakory Crosky Merritt got injured or turns out to be nothing, like am I ever putting Austin Eckler in my top 12 running back rankings? No. But if James Connor were to get injured or Bree Hall were to get injured and then Brilen and or Trey Benson blow up, I could see them turning into last year's Chase Brown.
Now Raandre Stevenson will be our next back. Um, with Raadre, he's not good enough um to have a large enough role at the beginning of the year to ever be startable outside of the case of maybe a Trevian Henderson injury.
Rashad White um now he is banged up. I think Rashad White actually could have the highest ceiling of any running back in this tier if the starter were to go down in front of him. Like you go back and you look at Rashad White in 2023, he averaged 15.7 points per game and was a top 10 running back.
Um, Brian Robinson at this point is just a premium handcuff back. There's nothing else. I mean, I would expect him to have a very small role in San Francisco and if you were to have McAffrey injury, then obviously he has the upside to turn into an every week starter, but more likely than not, he's just total dust and he's nothing.
Um, Nick Chub looks like he is the starting running back for the Houston Texans week one. I don't know why everybody in the flock league's making fun of me for taking him, saying that the dude's going to get cut, blah blah blah. They just rested him the final preseason game. They look like they are gearing up for Nick Chub to be their week one starting running back. Now I have him in the flock league. Am I going to be putting him in my lineup? Probably not. My running back room's too good. I'd love to trade him to a team that needs a running back. But the hope is that Nick Chub performs well early in the season and then you get some trade equity. I've drafted so much of him in underdog drafts mainly before the Joe Mixon injury news. So we got him at a cheap cost though.
Um, Taji Spears I like a lot more than some of the running backs ahead of him. The issue is you are dealing with the high ankle sprain so it's going to be a little tough to get behind him.
Bshell Toutin I think is a very strong running back prospect but outside of the potential Travis ETN trade to the Dallas Cowboys which trust me I would love that you're in a spot with Tutin that if you were to have Tank Bixby turn into a zero well Tutin's probably split in the backfield with Travis ETN if Travis ETN were to turn into a zero then Tuton's probably split in the backfield with Tank Bixby and that's assuming that he is able to carve out himself a nice little role in this offense.
Um, Jerome Ford will be our next RB alongside Dylan Samson. Um, if you were drafting in like a baseball league where you don't have access to the waiverwire, I'd probably opt to go Samson over Ford. But the thing is in your regular reddraft league, I mean, at the end of the day, you're going to be looking at Ford probably as a starting running back week one where Dylan Samson by the time he comes away to be the real starter here, you could be in a situation in which Judkins is coming back. But I think that's all I got for you. I really appreciate you and really hope I was able to help you out in some way with this video. Again, if you want help adjusting to these rankings, whether it's a half PPR, full PPR, nonPPR, we have all those draft sheets posted over there on the site. And again, you're also going to be getting updated weekly and rest of season rankings and tiers every single week on flockfantasy.com until January 1st. Plus, if you want to get access to all the tools, including trade calculator, my team's page, range of outcomes tool, player comparison, whole nine yards, it's all flockfantasy.com. A onetime payment of $34 gets you the 2025 season pass and you get access to legitimately everything until January 1st. And if you use code flock, I'm going to be answering your start questions and your trade questions in the live stream that we're doing every night during the season. But I really appreciate you. Really hope I was able to help you out in some way and really hope I get to see you out in the live stream later.