886: Reframing the Running Back Dead Zone

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Speaker 1: This is the Lady Podcast with your host JJ zacheris JJ zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zacharyesen in this episode eight hundred and eighty six of the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast sponsored by Underdog Fantasy. Thanks for tuning in. The running back dead zone is one of the most popular talking points in all of fantasy football. Every analyst will bring it up in their podcast over the summer, everyone talks about it. I've done episodes on the topic through the years plenty. If you're unfamiliar with the dead zone, it's an area of fantasy drafts where two things are happening. The first is that running back value stinks. The dead zone consists of running backs who fail to reach expectation at a really high rate, and they're not giving you a ton of fantasy points. But all the while, and this is the second point to make, all the while, they're pretty good wide receivers that you're missing out on in that dead zone range. It's not only is the running back, but there's an opportunity cost component to it as well, and that opportunity costs side to the running back dead zone discussion can't be ignored because In today's fantasy football landscape, drafts have become really wide receiver heavy. When wide receivers get drafted earlier and more frequently, running back costs naturally get cheaper. And when running back costs get cheaper, the opportunity cost equation shifts all of a sudden. The wide receivers were foregoing in a draft. When we select a running back, those wide receivers aren't as good, and that makes it easier to draft the running back, even if that running back is in the dead zone. Right, Not so fast. We need to have a deeper conversation about what the dead zone really is, and that's what today's episode is all about. Now, before digging in, I wanted to send another reminder to check out Underdog Fantasy. 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When you do that, you'll not only get a deposit offer, but you'll also get a free Late Round draft guide. That guide will be emailed to you on July first when it launches, and all you have to do is sign up with promo code late Round and make it a posit. That's Underdog Fantasy dot Com promo codee Late Round. So what is the running back dead zone? Where does it occur? What does it all mean? The gist of my dead zone research has revealed the following. In a twelve team league, when you reach the middle of the third round, running back production takes a hit, meaning the running backs you're taking in the late third round into the fourth round. There's a dramatic difference between those backs and the ones that you're getting in the first and second rounds of your draft. Now. All the while, if you look at how running backs are performed historically in round six round seven, their production isn't that far off of running backs draft in round four or five, So it should make you question those round four and five running backs. Why draft them when you can get that production later. The opportunity cost side of things come into play here too. Wide receivers have been a little bit more attractive in that round four round five range through the years, so not only are you drafting inferior running backs, but you're also missing out on a chance at a wide receiver, making that running backs selection even worse. With today's wide receiver heavy approach, that opportunity cost equation then shifts. Running backs are now going later dead zone backs. Instead of going in late round three and into round six, they may not go until round five and into round seven or maybe even round eight, especially on underdog. Underdog drafts are insanely wide receiver heavy, where top twelve running backs will fall into the fifth round. Best ball drafts lean wide receiver just naturally, but that's unheard of in a regular redraft league, in a home league. And look, it's early June at the time of this recording. The drafts that are happening are for best ball leagues, not managed leagues for the most part. So I do think our minds are a little bit skewed into think that this is the way our home league drafts are gonna go. But there's no doubt that leagues will be more wide receiver heavy this year and potentially next year in the year after that, at least compared to what we've seen over the last decade. And that to many means that the death of the running back dead zone concept. But I don't agree with that. As I've said now multiple times, there are sort of two things happening with the running back dead zone. Number One, the running backs are just not great producers. Number Two, there's a cost involved in drafting them. You're missing out on good players at other positions. Now, for argument purposes, let's just remove number two from our minds right now. Forget the fact that running backs are going later, which lowers opportunity cost. Let's just look at how running backs produce because When you look strictly at how running backs produce, you're able to take the concept of the running back dead zone and truly apply it to any league format that you're in. Now, let's start by looking at some data. I use fantasydata dot COM's Average Draft Position data, which dates back to twenty fourteen, so we have ten years of information here. I then took all of the running backs from that ADP, so all running backs is twenty fourteen, and I put them in groups. I looked at high end RB one's, or backs who were drafted as the RB one to the RB six. Then I looked at low end RB ones or guys drafted as the RB seven to the RB twelve. I did this all the way to low end RB sevens, so we have fourteen total groupings. I also only focused on running backs in these groups who played at least eight games in the season. That's important because I'm going to be looking at points per game numbers and we don't want small sample sizes wharping our results. Now, these groupings are not small. The number of high end RB ones who played eight or more games since twenty fourteen, for example, that ended up being forty eight. There were fifty six low end RB ones. There were fifty four high end RB twos. Most of the groups had around fifty to fifty five running backs in them. I then took these groups and just wanted to see how well they performed. I know I often look at how players performed versus expectation, but for this research, I just wanted to see how they did in PPR points per game. I looked at the percentage of players in each bucket who scored fourteen or more or sixteen or more PPR points per game. Now, those are kind of arbor Curry numbers, but for everyone's understanding, fourteen or more PPR points per game will usually yield a mid range RB two season. Sixteen or more PPR points per game. It's almost always going to get a running back into RB one range, and that's what we should be caring about most usability and ceiling. The high end RB one group absolutely crushes. They're just really good bets in fantasy football. They've scored fourteen or more PPR points per game at a seventy five percent rate. They've gotten a sixteen or more PPR points per game at a fifty eight point three percent rate. When you look at the low end RB one group, or guys who are drafted in that RB seven to RB twelve range, those numbers start to fall a little bit, which isn't a surprise because they're not being drafted as high in your fantasy drafts. Their rate of getting to fourteen or more PPR points per game is actually pretty similar to the high end RB one group at seventy three percent, but they don't provide the same kind of ceiling. Thirty seven and a half percent of them got to sixteen or more PPR points per game. That's a drop from one group to the next of over twenty percent. Now, I kept looking at these groups to see the difference from one group to the next. The high end RB twos, for example, their rate of hitting fourteen or more PPR points per game was forty four point four percent. Their rate of getting to sixteen or more was twenty point four percent. The idea here is to see where big dropoffs occur and to see if there are any groupings who get drafted later that compare well to groupings that get drafted earlier. Because similar to what I said earlier, what if the low end RB two group really doesn't have different outcomes than RB four's by ADP. Why would you consistently draft low end RB twos just generally speaking, Well, it's not that clean necessarily, but there are definitely some trends here. First off, RB ones just in general give you by far the best hit rates. I'm talking top ten top twelve running backs. They're the ones providing the best ceilings at the position. Top twelve running backs as a group, so I'm not splitting them up by low end ones and high end ones. Top twelve running backs give you sixteen or more PPER points per game at roughly a forty seven percent clip. High end RB twos are giving you that at a twenty percent rate. Low end RB twos a fifteen percent one. It's just not even close. RB ones are really good in fantasy football. This data does show a very clear separation between RB ones and the rest of the position by ADP, and while there is some separation with RB twos, it's just not nearly as much, hence the running back dead zone. But I will say you're still getting better outcomes when you draft RB twos compared to RB three's compared to RB fours, where there's really no difference between one group to the next is when you get into the low end RB four range, low end RB fours to high end RB fives all the way to like RB six's, there's really not that much difference in terms of out like at all. That's because not a lot of those guys are emerging and becoming every week starters. But let me give you an example. Since twenty fourteen, we've had thirty four RB twos give you fourteen or more PPR points per game. Eighteen of them gave you sixteen or more PPR points per game. When looking at RB threes, the number of guys giving you fourteen or more PPR points per game falls from thirty four in the RB two range to sixteen in the RB three range. The RB four area has fourteen, and then RB thre's aren't giving you better rates of getting to sixteen or more PPR points per game either. Eighteen of them did it in RB two world, but that was just four and seven when looking at RB thre's and RB fours. Basically, if you didn't follow any of that, RB twos are providing better ceilings than RB three's and RB fours. But doesn't that sort of contradict the idea of the running back dead zone. Kind of yes, but also kind of no. A lot of the success stories in the RB two group are coming from high end RB twos. For example, forty four percent of them are hitting fourteen or more PPR points per game. That gets cut by more than half when you go into the low end RB two group. In other words, the dead zone has historically really really started. When you get into the RB eighteen to RB twenty four range. Those are the guys who have really burned fantasy teams. So where we're at is sort of the following. You've got these RB ones who do great in fantasy football, high end RB one smash low end RB ones. They're still pretty good. And then you get into the high end RB two group that does okay, though there is a drop off, but they're almost in their own tier. Once you get into low end RB two range, those guys are not significantly better than high end RB threes or even high end RB fours. But there's also another dynamic to this that needs to be added, and it's a topic that I've spoken about before. It's on beating the running back dead zone. It's beating this area where the huge drop off appears to occur in that mid RB two range. I've spoken about this in the past, but when you have young running backs in the dead zone, those running backs actually perform really, really well. Now. I've been a big proponent of drafting rookies and second year players in redraft leagues throughout your entire draft, and this data makes it even more apparent. You know those groupings that I talked about earlier, Let's take those exact same groups, but remove all players who aren't in their first or second year in the league. Let's focus only on year one and year two players. Obviously that lowers are sample sizes. Rather than having forty eight running backs in our high end RB one group, now we only have eleven. We've had eleven first or second year running backs get drafted as top six backs in a given year since twenty fourteen. Most of the groups at the top instead of consisting of like fifty players, now they have about fifteen to twenty of them. There were sixteen low end RB ones within these parameters, sixteen high end RB two two, and so on. As we just learned, when looking at the entirety of the sample, RB ones are way better than RB twos, but high end RB twos are a good bit better than lower end RB twos, and then lower end RB twos aren't that much better than most RB thres and some RB fours. When you focus solely on the first and second year players, that changes completely. It's kind of shocking. Get this, you, guys. Since twenty fourteen, we've had twenty six first and second year running backs find themselves in the RB two group. So twenty six first and second year backs played eight or more games in the season and they were drafted in the RB thirteen to RB twenty four range. Thirty eight percent of them scored fourteen or more PPR points per game. Thirty one percent of them scored sixteen or more PPR points per game. Those RB two rates of getting the sixteen or more PPR points per game, they're not far off compared to what we see with all low end RB ones, meaning a rookie or a second year player in the RB two range in the hypothetical running back dead zone, they're giving you a ceiling that's really not that far off from low end RB one territory. Now, their rates of getting to fourteen or more PPR points per game. Those rates are still a good bit lower, but if we're talking about ceiling league winning ceiling young players in the dead zone can absolutely get you there. This is why I was in on Breise Hall as a rookie. Unfortunately that was cut short or Jamir Gibbs last year. Because those young players they're not really dead zone backs. Even if they're getting drafted in the running back dead zone, they hit at a much much better rate than other RB twos. Like I said, thirty one percent of these young RB twos scored sixteen or more PPR points per game. When you look at older RB twos guys past their second year in the league, that number is thirteen percent. It goes from thirty one percent to thirteen percent. This plays into the story that I've always told about the running back dead zone. There are only so many bellcow running backs in the NFL projectable bell cows. There aren't twenty four of them. They are usually like eight to twelve of them at most. When teams are drafting, they have to fill roster requirements. Usually have twelve teams in your league, and if each team is starting two running backs, then twenty four running backs at least are being started, but we know there aren't twenty four belcow running backs. Once those bell cows are off the board, teams start to panic. They roster phill. They say to themselves, I've got to get a running back because a lot of them have flown off the board, and I have this requirement to start two of them. The demand for the position is so high because they're not a onesie position, so teams force the issue a little bit. They draft backs who might appear to be bell cows, but they're often fake bel cows, players who may not be as talented. That's why they're getting drafted in the RB two range, But maybe there's a lack of competition in their backfields. Remember Mike Davis, Miles Gaskin. Those guys didn't really have a ton of talent, but they were in backfields that lacked alternatives entering the season until they didn't. The difference between those types of RB twos and rookies and second year players is ambiguity. If a rookie is being drafted as an RB two a top twenty four running back, that actually should tell us that he's probably pretty talented that without having stepped foot on a football field, he's still a top twenty four running back in fantasy football. There's a lot of potential there, and the same could be said for a second year player. We may not have a ton of information on that player. Maybe he split a backfield as a rookie, which is why he's not being drafted as an RB one, But that ambiguity is a good thing, not a bad thing. There's talent there, and that talent can lead to these monster league winning seasons. We collectively need to reframe the way that we look at the running back dead zone. These dead zone backs, they aren't just any running back that gets drafted in some certain round or set of rounds. They're veteran running backs who could draft in a certain spot within their position. A veteran running back who's getting selected as the RB eighteen, the RB nineteen, his outlook is not that much different than an RB three or an RB four. Ignore opportunity cost, ignore what you could draft instead of that RB eighteen. I'm simply saying that within the position that veteran mid range RB two by ADP, he's more than likely not gonna give you that much higher of a ceiling than a player that you can get later. So from that perspective, it actually doesn't matter where these running backs are getting drafted, whether you're playing on underdog where running backs go a lot later, or you're playing in your home league where the two is getting drafted in the middle of the third round. Within the position, that veteran running back is still a bad bet. It's just an even worse bet when the opportunity cost is high. It's an even worse bet in your home league where you're passing up on some really, really good wide receivers. It's a little bit easier to take on when you're drafting on underdog. But just because the opportunity cost equation shifts from one league to the next, it doesn't mean the running back dead zone idea is all of a sudden irrelevant. There's a running back dead zone in every single draft that you do. That's it for today's show, though, thanks to all of you for listening. If you yet subscribe to the Late Round Fantasy Football podcast, make sure you are by searching for it pretty much anywhere podcast can be found, and don't follow me on Twitter at Late Round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I gotta becoming a best ball bro. Episode dropping this week, as well as a late round Perspectives. Talk to you then,