524: Breakout Running Backs

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Speaker 1: This is the Labor Podcast with your host JJ zacher Resa j J. Zacher reson What's up everyone. It's JJ Zachares and the editor in chief at fandelin at number fire dot com. And this episode five and twenty four of the Late Round podcast. So many shows that are part of the FanDuel podcast network. Thanks for tuning in. A handful of years ago, I did a couple of studies on finding breakout running backs and wide receivers in fantasy football. I then rehashed those last year, bringing forth some new data and some new ideas, and I ended up doing a tight end study as well. People really like them. The article series actually won a Fantasy Sports Writers Association Award for Best Football Ongoing Series last year. So over the next three weeks, I'm gonna do episodes on those studies for each position. I'll look back at what the studies told us, whether there's new information that we should be considering, and then I'll give some breakout picks for the twenty twenty one season. 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You're able site credit that expires in seven days Max bonus ten dollars. Restrictions apply c full terms at Sportsbook dot Fandle dot com. Gambling problem called one hundred and five to two forty seven hundred Colorado, one of a hundred bets off in Iowa, one hundred and nine with it in Indiana, one hundred two seven zero seven one one seven for confidential health in Michigan. One a hundred gambler in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Virginia, Tennessee redline one one hundred and eight nine nine seven eight nine, or visit one hundred gambler dot net in West Virginia. Last year's study on spotting breakout running backs went a little bit like this. I went back and looked at all running backs drafted since twenty elevens. This doesn't include players who went undrafted in deeper leagues, and I plotted overall average draft position on the X axis versus points scored on the Y axis. I then made a trend line that helped us show expectation. That trend line is the number of points we'd expect a running back to score at a particular average draft position. From there, I wanted to see which running backs exceeded expectation most. But since we're talking about breakout running backs, I'm not as interested in early round running backs. I want a list of running backs who were drafted in the middle in the late rounds who exceeded expectation by a whole lot of fantasy points. So I looked at all running backs who were drafted at after round five, where opportunity costs tends to become less significant, and I looked at running backs who outperformed their ADP expectation by one hundred or more fantasy points across the season. That gave me thirty nine breakout running backs when I did this study last year, but we had five more in twenty twenty, so we're now technically working with forty four running backs. I then looked at the thirty nine running backs from last year's study to find trends in the data. What type of qualities did these running backs share? What are the things that we should look for when trying to pinpoint middle and late round running back selections. What I found were four common trends. The first is at the breakout running backs, they're rarely handcuffs. Only six of the thirty nine running backs had a running back teammate with an average draft position in the top twenty four, and that represents the first two rounds of a twelve team league. I'll get to more on this in a second. The second trend, which plays into the first, was that these running backs came from what I call ambiguous backfields. This makes sense intuitively, since the majority of them aren't handcuff. That means a lot of them are coming from backfields with non elite running backs. What's interesting, though, is where their teammates are typically getting drafted. So again, we have thirty nine running backs in our sample. It's forty four now, but I'm just going off of what the study said last year. In our sample, thirty of these running backs had a teammate drafted ahead of them. That's not surprising since they're middle to late round picks. The average top running back in these breakout running back backfields he was selected at pick fifty nine. So think about what that means. You've got these breakout running backs and they're coming from teams where the top running back is basically a fifth to sixth round pick in a twelve team league. Hence the ambiguous backfield thing. I'm going to dive deep into the ambiguous backfield stuff on today's show, so bear with me. The next trend was that breakout running backs they're usually pass catchers. They had a larger proportion of their touches come via the air than on the ground. And then the final point was that age didn't seem to be a big factor. We had plenty of breakout running backs who were older in age, so I wouldn't let that specifically deter you from picking a running back and a tiebreaker, I'd go with the younger player, but older running backs can exceed ADP expectation as well. Now, like I said, we had five more running backs join this sample in twenty twenty. Those players were James Robinson, David Montgomery, Mike Davis, JD. McKissick, and Nahim Hines. For the record, the ADP data that I'm using is from Myfantasy League dot Com. Generally speaking, these players followed the trends. You've got running backs of all ages there, and four of the five were part of fairly ambiguous backfields, and each player was involved heavily as receivers, with two of them being strictly pass catching backs. But there was a handcuff. I know you guys are all screaming listening to this saying, but JJ Mike Davis was a handcuff. He worked out, But just because the trend says that doesn't happen all that often doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Of course, it can happen, and that's the first thing I want to get to. I think the ambiguous backfield portion of this study is the most important to grasp. It's also something I feel like people have taken away most from that study. I get questions about it all the time, So let me dig into the concept a little bit further. We've now seen seven breakout running backs come from teams with a running back who was drafted in the top twenty four for the first two rounds of twelve team leagues. Four of them came from round one. So it's not that handcuffs can't happen. It's just that number one, it doesn't happen at as high of a rate as a more ambiguous backfield. And number two, the handcuffs who do pan out aren't the ones you think they are. The four true running back handcuffs that have panned out have been James Connor, D'Angelo Williams, Fred Jackson, and Mike Davis. None of those players had very high ADPs the year that they broke out. Fred Jackson had the highest, and he was being selected at pick one hundred and thirty two, so we're talking not even the early double digit rounds for these guys. There was a study done recently by my good friend Rich Reebar from Sharp Football Analysis. I'm gonna reference this study on the show a lot today because it really gives a different perspective on all this break out running back talk. The study came at running back value from a different perspective. Instead of looking at running backs who far exceeded ADP, Rich analyzed top twenty four seasons and top twelve seasons at the position, so RB one and RB two seasons. His research found similar results about running back handcuffs that they don't hit very often. He looked back to twenty ten and since twenty ten. He noted that seventy one running backs had an ADP in the first round of fantasy drafts, and of those seventy one, eight had RB twos on their teams by ADP that gave us a top twenty four season, and just three of them had top twelve seasons D'Angelo Williams, James Connor, and Fred Jackson, the three I just talked about. Essentially, you're not getting a high end season from one of these traditional handcuffs very often. But not only that, the typical high end handcuffs that the fantasy community seems to cove it every year, they don't tend to pan out at any better of a rate than some random ones later in the draft. As Rich put it, having a running back picked in the top one hundred that also isn't the first running back selected on their team and asking them to hit that's rare. He's got data in the study that backs that up as well. Of the fifty two running backs who were their team's RB twos since twenty ten who were also drafted in the top one hundred, only thirty one percent finished the season higher than their positional ADP. It doesn't mean that Alexander Madison or Tony Pollard can't work out. It's just that historically those types of players haven't especially compared to other random handcuffs that you can get later. Now comes a really interesting part. I've been talking about ambiguous backfields for some time. We may be able to dive a little bit deeper into that concept and be more accurate. Rich found that the hit rate of team RB ones who are being selected outside the top twenty four at their position that they were also better than the typical team RB twos drafted outside the top twenty four at their position when focusing on top one hundred picks. To put this another way, let's say you've got to pick in the middle rounds, in that round seven or six to ten range. That's generally when the top twenty four running back a gone. If you go after a team's RB one instead of a team's RB two, you're increasing your odds that that player is gonna pan out, and that aligns with my data as well. With my data since twenty eleven, I have eighty one running backs who are drafted between picks sixty one and one hundred and eight, so around six through nine, who were their teams RB one of those eighty one eight finishes a breakout running back or a running back who exceeded ADP expectation by one hundred and more points. That's a hit rate close to ten percent. If you look at team RB twos or worse, who were drafted in that same range, we've got a hit rate of three out of sixty two. That's less than five percent, So you're twice as likely to find a breakout running back in the middle rounds if that breakout running back is the RB one on his own team. Now we can then break this RB one thing out by RB one who have teammates that are drafted later and RB ones who don't have teammates drafted later. And what I mean by that is what happens if the backfield is true truly ambiguous, as in, what if you had a running back drafted in a round six through nine who also had a teammate an RB two teammate drafted in round six through nine. But then what if you had an RB one drafted in round six through nine without a teammate drafted around there. Now I'm interested in this because these types of backfields, while they're both ambiguous, they're pretty different. One of these backfields says, we don't seem entirely sure who the RB one on this team is. The other one is saying, oh, we know who the RB one is. We just don't think the situation is very good. Let's start with more of the standalone RB ones, the guys who are being drafted in those middle rounds but don't have a teammate getting selected in the middle rounds with them. This has happened sixty four times since twenty eleven, so sixty four running back since twenty eleven have been drafted from picks sixty one through one hundred and eight, and they don't have a teammate drafted in that range with them. Of those sixty four instances, we've had four breakouts. We've had four players who exceeded xpectation by one hundred and more points. That's a six point three percent hit rate. On average. RB ones who fit this criteria have exceeded expectation by less than one fantasy point, so it looks like there's not a whole lot going on there. That six point three percent hit rate is still better than the hit rate from Team RB twos being drafted in that range, but it's still not that great. The thing is, we know that team RB ones have a breakout running back hit rate close to ten percent, so that means the truly ambiguous backfields like San Francisco this year, those backfields must be bringing the gold, and they are. Since twenty eleven, we've had seventeen instances where running back was drafted as the RB one on his team in round six through nine, but he also had a teammate drafted in round six through nine in one case, which was Miles Sanders. In twenty nineteen, he had two teammates drafted between picks sixty one and one hundred and eight, again round six through nine. So, of those seventeen instances where you get these teammates that are close together in ADP, the RB we one exceeded expectation eleven times. That's a sixty five percent hit rate just in terms of exceeding expectation. But get this on top of that, the average difference between expectation and result was plus thirty six fantasy points, meaning these RB ones on average exceeded expectation by a fairly significant amount. We have four breakout running backs from this seventeen player sample. That's a hit rate of twenty four percent. Now, on the flip side, the RB twos on those teams didn't fare very well. The average expectation difference is a decrease of fourteen points, which makes sense because the RB ones are panning out at a high rate. The RB twos probably aren't. Guys, I can't even explain how excited I was when I saw this data, when I realized all of this. Here's what we know about ambiguous backfields now, breakout running backs tend to come from them. We want running backs in the middle and late rounds from m big as backfields more than running backs who are handcuffs from there. We want running backs in the middle and late rounds who are the RB ones on their own team. And then from there, we want running backs who are the RB one on their own teams who also have teammates who are being drafted in the middle rounds with them. Some may be wondering why the data is screaming this at us. Why is the data saying this. Why do these really really ambiguous backfields seem to produce breakout running backs more than the backfields that have more separation between RB one and RB two. And I think the answer to that is because if a running back is being drafted in the middle rounds and if he's clearly the RB one on his own team, then there's likely something going on with that team situation itself that's turning people off, like Michael Carter this year. I don't mind Michael Carter, because we do know that if you're looking for a breakout running back, RB ones are better than RB twos. But the hit rate of these clear cut RB ones in the middle rounds is not great, so he's a better option than RB twos in his range, but it doesn't make him an ideal option despite the fact that he's got the pass catching angle on his side. An example of a true ideal option given this data is someone like Chase Edmonds. He's being drafted in that pick sixty one to one hundred and eight range, he's got the pass catching side down, and James Connor is often drafted before round ten hits. Javonte Williams is trending away from being part of this group, but he sort of fits this as well. With Melvin Gordon being the RB two that you'd want to avoid. Travis Etn is another player who's sort of on the fringe here, but he definitely fits most of the criteria, and he has James Robinson still as a top one hundred pick in his backfield. Robinson then is someone that you probably want to avoid, and Trey Sermon's another one that you could be targeting. He's the most obvious one given all this data, I think we typically just don't see the RB twos from those types of teams hit at nearly as high a rate as the rb ones, and I think this really gives a that's a good glimpse to the fact that while ADP is not everything, the fantasy community does do a pretty decent job at sifting through these ambiguous backfields. We should give ourselves a little bit more credit. We spot the rb ones far more often than not. You know, this is one of those studies where I sat down and I really spent a lot of time sifting through the data to try to come forward with a cohesive way to present this data. And it's one of those studies that's truly changing the way that I viewed some players this year. A month ago, I wasn't all that into Chase Edmonds. I thought he was just fine. But I think this data is really telling us that Chase Edmonds is a good pick right now. There shouldn't be anything wrong with that. We should change our opinions with new and better information, and hopefully that'll happen with some of you after listening to today's show. That's going to do it for today's sho though. Thanks to all of you for listening. If you've got subscribed to the Late Round podcast, make sure you are by searching forward pretty much anywhere podcasts can be found, and don't forget to follow me on Twitter at late round QB. Thanks for listening everyone, I'll talk to you late during the week.