RB2 By Committee - Footballguys

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Over the past few years, there have been several very popular articles written by myself and our very own Chase Stuart that look at an interesting approach to building a fantasy team with late value picks. Based upon the theory of using both Strength of Schedule ("SOS") and taking two players as a combination to build one very good player, Chase has discussed both Team Defense by Committee ("TDBC") and Quarterback by Committee ("QBBC") as a general fantasy league strategy. In general, I think that this is a wise move because very early on in fantasy drafts there are a ton of running back and wide receiver prospects to go after to build a great team. While there are a few studs at quarterback and also a few choice defenses, I do not see a huge need in leagues to pursue either too hard in the beginning stages of a fantasy draft.

So with this in mind, I started to think about what else can be done with the committee approach. Tight end? Perhaps. Wide receiver? A possibility, but it might be better to look at third wide receiver options than any other option. What about running back? Hmmm, that's really intriguing. What if you could grab two running backs later in the draft that could combine to perform on an RB2 - or even RB1 - level, based solely on their current projections and their schedule? Now we're talking. This really got my attention, so I went after this one first. Let's take a look at how I went about this and then we can digest and discuss the results.

THE GROUND(GAME) RULES

So how to begin? Defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to committee together. There's usually only one quarterback and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players/teams to try and pair up. When it comes to running backs, the line is not quite so easy to draw, but I needed some basis to pick which players it made sense to try and combine for a decent committee. I decided that I would use the following criteria to decide which players to start with for evaluating:

CRITERIA #1 - RB25 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up RB2 numbers, that means we want RB24 or better production - else we would just draft RB24 or higher and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

Table 1: Running Backs RB25-RB50 Based on ADP

Great, now we have 26 guys to pair up and see how they do. That makes 325 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before I go over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:

CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE RB FROM ROUND 5 AND ONE FROM ROUND 6

This could get tricky here, but understand the overall goal. The point of RB2BC is to free up the first four rounds of your fantasy draft to pursue three receivers after grabbing a stud running back in Round 1. This also gives you the flexibility of grabbing two receivers and a stud quarterback or tight end, depending on your personal preference, or even to get RB2 and have the RB2BC be your RB3. Flexibility is the name of the game here. We all want value in our drafts, and having the ability to grab two running backs in Rounds 5 and 6 to act as our RB2BC gives us that ability.

Here is the good news - nearly all the running backs on the list above has an ADP that is Round 6 or higher (later), but several backs fall in the Round 5-6 range that will be of interest. We will have to keep that in mind when we look at the results because it would not make sense to expect to get two Round 5 or Round 6 running backs in one of these combinations based on their ADP.

So what do we do now to figure out some running back pairs?

CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS RB STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the running back strength of schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 16 weeks based on the strength of schedule. I call this result the distributed fantasy points for each back.

After I had all 26 running backs with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, I just compared all of the possible running back pairs to find the best duos for RB2BC. So here we are - time for some results.

Table 2: Running Back #2 Committee Pairs

I apologize for the lengthy list in Table 2, but as you can imagine, we have a lot of choices this year. That's a good thing, but now we have to trim that list down to get some very good pairs to select from for RB2BC. There are some tricky situations this season with two backs either already suspended for a few games (Mark Ingram of the Saints) or another back who could also be facing disciplinary actions (LeSean McCoy). Both are right near the RB24 ADP spot, and that could impact this study. For now, we will eliminate both as options, but I a may readdress one (or both) later this summer as the start of the season nears and when we might have more clarity towards these situations. With so many options this season, I need to be thorough as the ADPs tend to get very fluid as preseason wears on, and we need to make certain we have the very best pairings in case our draft plans go awry. So digging in, there are 108 pairs that are worth more than or equal to Tampa Bay rookie Ronald Jones II by his lonesome, so it looks like there will be a number of options. Let's also take a look at how often some of these guys show up on the table:

Table 3: Running Back #2 Committee Pair Appearances by Player

As we can see from Table 3, Frank Gore and Bilal Powell dominate the list with four others appearing four or more times. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, Powell is projected to be worth more on his own than either Christian McCaffrey (ADP of RB16), which means Powell is a huge steal based on projections. This tells us that this tier of RB15-30 is pretty up in the air as far as who will do the best. All the more reason to get a favorable pair when it comes to strength of schedule.

As we can see from Table 3, we have a rather extensive list of options to put together RB2BC this year. Nine different running backs appear 10 or more times on this list, with four of them appearing 22 times or more. Clearly, these are the backs to target for the committee approach this season, but which ones? Some of that will come down to personal preferences of these nine backs, but some of the math in the study can help us out. Keep in mind that these are all based on projections at this time, and a single touchdown can sway the results significantly. With so many backs on this list with such frequency, it tells us that the ADP list in the RB20-RB36 range is pretty up in the air as far as who will do the best. All the more reason to get a favorable pair when it comes to strength of schedule.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Now that we have 108 possible pairs that are better than Ronald Jones II, what exactly does that mean? Should Jones be the basis of our comparison? Of course not. Remember our goal - find a pair of running backs that can combine for RB2 (or better) fantasy production. To figure that out we need a better metric, so here are the projections for RB1 through RB24 (and beyond):