Photo: USA Today Sports

Thanks in no small part to our Matt Waldman, the Zero-RB strategy has gained a great deal of popularity. In it, you eschew running backs early in your draft. Instead, you build with wide receivers, tight ends, and quarterbacks. In short, the theory suggests this is optimal because of the inconsistent nature of high-priced running backs.

We asked our staff to expound upon the Zero-RB drafting strategy. Are they looking to employ this technique in 2020? If so, do they have any specific running back targets in the later rounds?

Here's what they said.

Matt Waldman

Most reasonable draft strategies work if you’re astute at assessing the value of players that will exceed their current ADP.

If your strength as a fantasy player is identifying skilled running backs, this strategy is worth trying because you’re leveraging your skills to the maximum so, in theory, you can make easier picks at the rest of the starting spots in your lineup.

This was a great strategy when most fantasy leagues used lineups with no more than two runners and 3-4 receivers.

With so many leagues adopting a wider range of starting lineup variations with flex combinations that often go to the extreme of 1-5 backs, 1-5 receivers, and 1-5 tight ends, this strategy doesn’t offer a clear advantage the way it did when fantasy football was still a five-card or seven-card poker game without multiple wild cards thrown in.

So if your leagues still model starting lineups closer to the realism of skill-player distribution, you will benefit from leveraging your league mates’ desires to acquire last year’s top running backs when they aren’t thinking about the high rate of churn from one year to the next and the fact you only need one decent back in these lineup types to field a high-scoring contender.

In these setups, I can wait until the fourth round to select my first back. And, if the max number of backs for a lineup is two versus 4-5 receivers, I have fielded winners with my first RB choice in the fifth or sixth round.

In leagues using flex lineups with 2-3 backs versus 3-4 receivers, I will often prefer to stray from the hard-line tenets of the strategy and consider taking the back on my list with the greatest value-to-ADP from the first 3-4 rounds.

If I have an early spot, it often means I am taking a top-three back in the first round. If I am drafting at the middle or late turn, it means taking a back I am projecting much higher than his ADP earlier than his ADP.

This year, that player is James Conner. He’s considered a late-3rd/early-4th value but I believe he’ll earn volume and production commensurate with his 2018 season, which translates to top-five production for me this year.

Because I believe different from my peers, the prospect of taking Conner as early as the late first of mid-second still represents value for my analysis.

Clearly, a move like this has to be based on you using a sound process where your major early-round outliers are few but notable so you’re not just making a convenient excuse for wild and unsound reaches.

It means, taking blue-chip options at the non-RB spots and not getting too risky there.

I love to use this strategy when I am at the turns (spots 1-3 or 10-12) in a 12-team league. You don’t want me drafting at the back turn because it is an easy way to stay ahead of positional runs and snipe players everyone agrees will be values/good but they are trying to maximize value.

Because the principle of the strategy is to take backs later, you want a variety of upside picks and proven starters with high floors. Where I wouldn’t consider a player like Sony Michel in other scenarios, he has more value with this strategy because if you build a high-scorer elsewhere, you can win with a steady enough fantasy RB2.

Adam Harstad

I just did a two-hour podcast with Scott Barrett of FantasyPoints on positional values in fantasy football, so needless to say I've got some thoughts.

The executive summary is this: when you're drafting, a player's value is a function of three things.

1. How much of an advantage does this player provide over his peers?
2. How scarce is this position / how easy is it to gain a comparable advantage with less resource investment?
3. How predictable is this position / how confident can we be that this player will in fact provide the advantage we think he will?

A position needs all three factors working in its favor to be worth drafting. If a position isn't giving you a relative advantage, it's not helping you win. If a position isn't scarce, there's no reason to invest a lot of resources because you could get by spending those resources elsewhere and acquiring production on the cheap. And if a position isn't predictable, then there's no sense spending a lot of resources because the team that spends fewer resources is just as likely to do well.

The running back position historically has the largest differential between the top performers and the rest of the league, and it's not especially close. I estimate that since 1985 there have been 55 running backs who have outscored a waiver-wire replacement in PPR leagues by at least 200 points, compared to just 34 such seasons by a wide receiver, 2 seasons by a quarterback, and 2 seasons by a tight end. (Raising the threshold just increases the size of the running backs' edge.)

Running back is also the scarcest position in fantasy football-- in any given week, there are maybe 32 quarterbacks, 40 running backs, 80 wide receivers, and 40 tight ends who are featured in teams' respective gameplans. In a league that starts 1 quarterback, 2 running backs, 3 wide receivers, 1 tight end, and 1 flex, you might see about a third of those quarterbacks and tight ends started, about half of the wide receivers, and more than two-thirds of those running backs. Add in the fact that fantasy teams want to carry quality depth and is it any wonder there are rarely fantasy-viable running backs available in the later rounds or on the waiver wire? (In leagues that only start two wide receivers, such as standard ESPN leagues, this disparity becomes even more glaring.)

Finally, running back is essentially tied for the most predictable position in fantasy football. After Week 4 of every season going back to 2013, I have taken a look at how well preseason ADP predicted end-of-season finish the previous year. Here's my look from last year. Over that span, here are the correlations I've found between preseason ADP and stretch performance at each position:

• Wide receiver - 0.505
• Running back - 0.488
• Tight end - 0.375
• Quarterback - 0.314

(Correlations range from 0 to 1, with a correlation of 1 meaning something is perfectly predictive and a correlation of 0 meaning something carries no predictive value whatsoever.)

Wide receiver has a tiny edge over running back in terms of predictability, but for all intents and purposes, the two positions are essentially tied. (Caveat: I have ignored injured players for these purposes, and running backs do have very marginally higher injury rates than wide receivers. But the effect is very small, maybe equivalent to an extra 0.5-1 missed games in expectation.)

High predictability means two things. First, it means that highly-drafted players are more likely to live up to expectations. Second, it means that late-round players are less likely to overperform expectations. This is why predictability matters; the New England Patriots defense provided a massive edge last year, but you're just as likely to get the next New England Patriots if you're the last team to draft a defense as you are if you're the first team to draft a defense.

So, to sum it up: running back is the position where the top performers give you the biggest edge. It is essentially tied for the most predictable position. And it is far and away the scarcest position. Therefore, running back is (by a large margin) the most valuable position in all of fantasy football. And any strategy that focuses on deliberately avoiding it seems fundamentally flawed to me.

With that said, in fantasy football you don't draft positions, you draft players. Just because running back is the most valuable position doesn't mean *all* running backs are more valuable than *all* wide receivers; There are quite a few running backs I'd take Michael Thomas ahead of. If you're in a draft and you feel like all the value at your picks happens to be at wide receiver or quarterback or tight end, that's fine. Waiting on running back won't hurt you as much as taking inferior players just to get a running back early.

I've certainly drafted some teams that might fit the "Zero-RB" definition in hindsight. But the big difference is I never entered the draft intending to do so. I entered the draft intending to take the players I thought gave me the best chance to win, and it just so happened that when I was on the clock those players largely weren't available running backs.

But as a premeditated strategy, something you're doing intentionally because that's where you think the value is, Zero-RB seems to me to be exactly wrong. The value at running back isn't late. More than any other position, the value at running back tends to be extremely early. Which is why so many running backs get drafted in the first few rounds in the first place.

Jason Wood

Adam threw a lot of information into the discussion and leaves me nodding my head in agreement. I know we're a fantasy football company, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who started my fantasy endeavors in baseball. Ron Shandler owns BaseballHQ and many years ago dominated the prestigious expert leagues including LABR with a strategy he coined as L.I.M.A., which stood for Low Innings Mound Aces. Basically, he concluded that there was extreme value in finding pitchers very late (or cheaply in an auction) who had exemplary underlying skills but weren't projected as key starters or closers. By targeting these players, he could allocate a massive amount of his draft capital (or auction budget) to offense, which is more predictable, and then he would still be competitive in the ratio pitching categories. It worked. For two seasons. And then other league mates noticed the value arbitrage and started capitalizing on it, too. Eventually, Ron had to abandon L.I.M.A. because the advantages it targeted no longer existed.

Ther Zero-RB concept was football's equivalent. When Matt and a few others started doing it, it worked because most fantasy participants were unaware of the value disconnect. But eventually, once it got talked up after a few seasons of success, the arbitrage closed -- as they always do. In Zero-RB's case, it actually went too far the other way where more than half of most leagues were proudly professing adoration for the strategy, which made it ridiculous to the point where great running backs were falling too far, and other positions -- particularly receiver -- were being inflated.

Many of us begged friends and subscribers to re-focus on the running back position early in drafts, and that proved fruitful.

Today, Zero-RB is a broken strategy in most leagues. You have to be flexible and understand that the relative difference between position values has been fully understood and built into ADP patterns.

As Matt said, many leagues have veered away from traditional formats and it makes gimmicky strategies risky. As Adam said, running back is -- and likely always will be -- the most valuable position. For every Zero-RB league champ you can find, you'll find 20 others who waited at the position and ended up playing catch up all season without a real shot at the trophy.

Matt Waldman

Adam's data highlights why the strategy worked well in the past. Wide receivers were nearly as predictable as running backs and in traditional lineup formats, you had two or three more receivers in your lineup than running backs.

In combination with less savvy fantasy players who weren't as good at keeping up with timely news and ADP changes, this is why the strategy was such a strong advantage in traditional setups.

To Jason's point about strategy: Any strategy that's predetermined without truly following the way a draft unfolds is an unsound strategy. This is what happens with "the 20 others" who didn't succeed--whether it's this strategy or any other recommendation.

When you find a loophole that exploits a system so markedly well, it's going to lose that effectiveness when a significant minority of your league begins adopting it. This is the nature of trends and "following convention." Once something becomes conventional in the sense that many people go that route in a competitive environment, it's no longer safe.

Editor's Note: This might be the best sentence you'll read this week, so here it is again.

When you find a loophole that exploits a system so markedly well, it's going to lose that effectiveness when a significant minority of your league begins adopting it.

Phil Alexander

Adam did a terrific job laying down the science. My contribution is more anecdotal, but hopefully relevant nonetheless.

• Scoring format matters here. Zero-RB was never intended for standard scoring and almost assuredly will not work in non-PPR scoring without an absurd amount of luck.
• Game format matters too. I'm willing to bet if we scoured Zero-RB championship rosters, late-season waiver wire pickups played a crucial role in their success. In Best Ball leagues, there is no waiver wire, and therefore one fewer pathway for the strategy to pay off.
• On the topic of contrarian strategies not working once they're no longer contrarian, if there were ever a year to go back to the well with Zero-RB, this would be it. In most drafts, 15 running backs are selected within the first 20 picks. Will I be trying it myself? No, because Adam proved it's a bad idea.

Devin Knotts

Zero-RB really depends on the league that you play in. There are still some scenarios where Zero-RB leagues can work. In your typical competitive league, I'm of the belief that you need to get lucky for Zero-RB to work as everyone is trying to grab/predict the next guy, so you will need some injuries and bounces to go your way.

Where it could work are your more casual leagues. In a league where four or five people may not check their team until each Sunday, it greatly diminishes the competitiveness for the up and coming running back that you need for Zero-RB to work. Even in these scenarios, I'm a fan of a modified Zero-RB strategy where you take a running back in the first round if they are the best player available and then stack your other positions.

Dan Hindery

A big part of deciding on an early-round strategy is looking at ADP for the middle rounds and identifying your favorite players to target in those rounds.

We recently did a series here where we all went in-depth on our favorite picks in the 4th, 5th, and 6th rounds. We also identified our least favorite picks in the 4th, 5th, and 6th rounds. All of my favorite players in these rounds were wide receivers and my least favorite players were mostly running backs.

My current strategy is pretty simple -- I want to be in a position where I can use my mid-round picks on these wide receivers where I see a ton of value. If I can land a pair of running backs I believe in by round three, I feel great about waiting until the 4th round to start loading up at wide receiver.

Chad Parsons

I second a key point Dan made regarding any macro draft plan. Looking at the mid-rounds (and possibly the late rounds) and see what position(s) you have the most players highlighted as targets. This will generally guide what tiebreakers and positional preferences (or freedoms) you will have in the first few rounds.

The player pool is also a big consideration. Running backs are king but ideally, there is a robust group of backs with starting jobs who are in their prime window for peak seasons. This varies based on NFL season. We are blessed at present with a bevy of 25-year-old and younger backs with quality profiles, pedigree, and starting projections (or in short order), making running back a priority in the early rounds an easy decision. Also, going running back early does not prevent a drafter from adding their favorite stash backs later in the draft, especially if going 'lean and mean' at wide receiver in terms of overall roster spot allocation.

David Dodds

These theoretical discussions are amusing, but sometimes things just happen and the next thing you know you are either starting the draft with four non-RBs or you are overpaying for the running backs on the board.

So let's look at a real scenario from an FFPC best-ball draft where I started without running backs to build a dominant team by the draft's end.

• Start 1 QB, 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 TE, 1 PK, 1 Def, and 2 flex each week.
• RB/WR = 1 point per reception, TE = 1.5 points per reception.

I picked 10th.

• 1.10 - WR Davante Adams, GB
• 2.03 - WR Tyreek Hill, KC

With the goal of taking running backs my next two picks, I stare down and see Patrick Mahomes II is still undrafted. I know he won't be available at 4.03, The teams drafting after me have taken RBs already so I pull the trigger with the goal of getting a running back in round 4.

• 3.10 - Patrick Mahomes II, KC

My worst scenario happens. The next four picks are running backs. The top back left on my board is Raheem Mostert. It feels like I would be massively overpaying and I refuse to do that.

• 4.03 - Kenny Golladay, DET

and the table is set. I don't have any running backs. But I also have four outstanding players to build my team from. When this situation presents itself, just remain calm. My priority is at running back, but I am not going to play into the madness.

• 5.10 - My choices at running back include Mark Ingram, Ronald Jones II, and Kareem Hunt. I select Mark Ingram, BAL.
• 6.03 - Kareem Hunt was picked by the player who has now selected a running back every pick and I pull the trigger on Ronald Jones II, TB.

I am able to land James White at 7.10 and Derrius Guice at 8.03.

So after 8 rounds, I have:

• QB: Patrick Mahomes II
• RB: Mark Ingram, Ronald Jones II, James White, and Derrius Guice
• WR: Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, and Kenny Golladay

It's not a typical running back build, but it is sufficient with the talent I have at quarterback and wide receiver.

Andy Hicks

Chad brings up an interesting point about the majority of key fantasy running backs this year being younger. In some years it skews the other way. So in short, depending on the year, the players and the options available Zero-RB can work or fail spectacularly.

Locking yourself into any strategy seems a doomed way to draft though. Without dumbing it down too much you need to have the highest possible scoring lineup feasible. Passing on Christian McCaffrey with pick one doesn’t seem the best way to maximize your scoring potential. If you end up with Michael Thomas or another receiver in the first round then the dilemma of possibly not having a running back becomes real. You could easily end up with Michael Thomas, Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes II, and another receiver with your first four picks. It’s a matter of trade-offs. Key opportunities can be found at running back later on and you can heavily draft this position to compensate or with a little luck have players fall to you.

Like all drafts, you adapt to the players available at your selection and make long term strategic decisions to give your side the best balance possible. Casting aside individual positions deliberately is a very risky strategy.

Jeff Haseley

The bottom line to making a successful strategy work in your favor is execution. Most leagues require you to start at least one running back and in some cases two. In order to stock up on other positions and successfully navigate around the running back position, you are going to need some skill in identifying which running backs to target, and when. You'll need some luck as well, not only on the execution side once drafted but also with other teams not ruining your strategy selecting the backs that you want to target. There are times when zero-running back can work out brilliantly, but there are also times when it can backfire. We don't tend to hear about those stories, except we see them in the loss column of the league standings. If your plan does backfire, you still have options. You can trade (if allowed), attack the waiver wire, or there's always good old fashioned hope. Below are some tips if you want to try the zero-running back strategy.

Who to target?

1. Target those who get a lot of receptions. Running backs who are more active in the passing game tend to produce more points than those who are not, especially if you are using PPR scoring format. James White, Tarik Cohen, Nyheim Hines, Dare Ogunbowale, Duke Johnson Jr, Boston Scott, Phillip Lindsay, and Jamaal Williams fit this bill.
2. Target backs on good offenses. This is true for several reasons but it all comes back to more points being scored by the team which means more pieces of the pie for others, as well as more chances for success if a full-time role becomes available. Darrell Henderson, Ronald Jones II, Latavius Murray, Carlos Hyde, Tevin Coleman, and Darrel Williams are examples.
3. Target rookies where the lead role or percentage of involvement hasn't been determined yet. Jonathan Taylor is a prime example, but his ADP is creeping up. J.K. Dobbins, A.J. Dillon, Cam Akers, DAndre Swift, Zack Moss, Josh Kelley, and Antonio Gibson also fit.
4. Target handcuffs. Preferably without having the lead back on your roster. Don't waste roster space. Alexander Mattison, Ryquell Armstead, Kareem Hunt, Chase Edmonds, Tony Pollard, and Benny Snell are examples.
5. Take a chance on a flier. Damien Harris, Devonta Freeman, DeAndre Washington, Qadree Ollison, Malcolm Brown, Lamar Miller, Mike Davis, and Justin Jackson are examples.

Jeff Pasquino

When it comes to the Zero-RB strategy, it all starts and stops with our resident expert and biggest original proponent, Matt Waldman.

Along the lines of what both Matt and Jason mentioned earlier, an advantageous strategy only provides an edge until the majority start doing the same. At that point, a counter-strategy has to be adopted.

In very traditional leagues with just two RBs, three WRs, and no flex, waiting at tailback can be adopted - but with 4-5 stud backs this year, anyone drafting in the first half of the first round has to take one of them. A full Zero-RB can only be contemplated by those drafting at 1.07 or later, and even then it gets tricky. A start of Michael Thomas and either Travis Kelce or George Kittle provides a great start, but waiting beyond Round 4 for your first running back is a dangerous take this season. Roughly 20 backs are viable on a weekly basis as projected for Week 1, so waiting too long to fill these crucial spots will be tough - and as I mentioned in the 7-11 drafting article last year (new version coming soon), Rounds 7-11 are usually full of values at non-RB spots, which strongly implies that you better have two starters before the end of Round 6.

As for who to target if you wait until Rounds 3 and 4, I tend to look hard at Chris Carson, Mark Ingram and David Johnson in that range, with Ronald Jones II in Round 5 or 6 as a solid third RB3 pick.

Jordan McNamara

Phil is absolutely right on contrarian strategies: they are best used when they are contrarian.

One of the key benefits of a contrarian strategy is the contrarian strategy can benefit from the systemic collapse of the assumptions of the prevailing strategies. For example, if 11 out of 12 teams go early at the running back position and there is a string of injuries at the position, the one owner who did not take running backs early benefits. Put another way, if everything goes wrong, the person that made the opposite bet wins. If the contrarian strategy went early at wide receiver and selected a high volume of one injury away running backs, that is an extremely high upside roster construction when the elite running backs underperform or are injured.

When Zero-RB became popular it lost that benefit.

While I understand Adam's arguments above, the numbers miss two critical points. First, on average about 40% of running backs in the top 24 of preseason ADP suffer an injury where they miss four or more consecutive games during the season. That is more than nine running backs on average per season, missing at least a quarter of the season in a single stretch. When we exclude the injured players from the data, it does not reflect real-world impact.

Second, wide receivers and running backs function much differently. When the WR1 on a team is injured the target share gets spread around to other receivers, tight ends, and running backs. These injuries tend not benefit a specific player on a one for one basis. Running backs on the other hand are significantly more likely to have a one for one replacement of workload of an injured starter. This is how Latavius Murray finished as RB1 for weeks 7 and 8 in 2019 when Alvin Kamara was injured, and these situations are more easily identified.

Ultimately, the decision to go Zero-RB matters on the year. There is a chance of systemic failure with the early running back strategy this year with COVID-19. The risk of COVID-19 and conditioning injuries from a lack of an offseason program creates a potential for high volume of running back injuries.

This year, if you can get Michael Thomas in the middle of the first round of a draft, employing a Zero-RB strategy is attractive. You can create a core of two wide receivers or a wide receiver-tight end core in the first two rounds. Going early at the wide receiver position is critical to the strategy as it allows you to be lean at the position and load up on one injury away running backs. If you decide to go Zero-RB, make sure to go the whole way, selecting high-end wide receivers, and only roster one more than the minimum starting lineup requirement. This allows you to conserve roster spots for running backs. Ultimately, I think the optimal landing spot this year if employing the strategy is a modified approach selecting one running back in the first three rounds while otherwise employing Zero-RB principals in the top five rounds.

Dan Hindery

To piggyback off of Jordan here, I think a watered-down Zero-RB approach can be a great strategy if you land a star running back in the first round.

For example, if you are picking 1.01 and take Christian McCaffrey, you can build a roster with extreme upside if you hold off taking your RB2 for a long time. It is easier to get through the early part of the season when you just have to worry about being weak at one lineup spot (RB2) while having strong options everywhere else. Then, if at some point in the season there is an injury and one of your late-round running backs is suddenly an RB1, your team is absolutely loaded for the stretch run and fantasy playoffs.

Adam Harstad

I like Jordan's stat that 40% of top-24 running backs (by positional ADP) miss four consecutive games to injury, but stats like that don't mean anything without context.

I've seen research that, for instance, from 2009-2017 running backs drafted in the first 100 picks of fantasy drafts played on average 13.2 games, while wide receivers drafted in the same range played 13.9, a difference of 0.7 expected games per season. I've seen separate research that found that from 2009-2015, 92 running backs taken in the first 100 picks missed at least 4 games to injury (consecutive or not), while 70 wide receivers did the same, translating to serious injury rates of 38% vs. 29%, respectively.

The elevated injury risk factor is real. But the absolute rate increase is just 9% there, and this study was performed immediately after 2015, which was the worst season for running back injuries in modern NFL history and likely skewed the results some.

Jordan is also right that when a running back misses time, his backup replaces a substantial fraction of his original value, while the same effect doesn't really happen at wide receiver. This is an advantage for Zero-RB teams if and only if they're able to get that backup. But given the scarcity of running backs in fantasy football, I'd say their chances of landing the backup aren't really any better than any other team's.

Finally, Jordan's point that zigging when others zag sets you up well in case of a catastrophic failure in our assumptions is apt. In 2015, the running back position was decimated and wide receivers dominated. All of the Zero-RB teams were basically competing amongst themselves for the title (which, if there was only one Zero-RB team in the league, was a pretty easy competition). Years like 2015 are the exception, but if there's even a 10% chance of stars aligning like that in any given year, it can make sense to bet the longshot odds as long as other owners aren't following suit. If this is a normal year, Zero-RB might leave you at a slight competitive disadvantage. If this is a bizarre year, it might leave you at a heavy competitive advantage. Especially if it's genuinely a contrarian strategy. (The more Zero-RB teams there are in your league, the less of a structural advantage you'll have if the year winds up being unusually favorable to receivers.)

But by and large, I don't think a 5-10% heightened chance of serious injury or an extra 0.5-1.0 games missed in expectation are enough of a disadvantage to offset the substantial advantages the running back position offers.

Bob Henry

I'll eschew the strategy component as I don't think there is anything I could possibly add or refute that Adam, Matt, and Jason didn't cover right out of the gate. On the whole, I've not used the Zero-RB Strategy often over the years, but as David showed - sometimes it just happens and you can't let yourself get thrown into a blender chasing players. Remain calm, stick to your board, and let it come to you.

David's example draft unfolded similarly to how many of my best ball drafts have gone when things didn't go as I anticipated. A lot of that has to do with where you are drafting from and the players you select in the first few rounds. What I share with David is that I am targeting Ronald Jones II and Derrius Guice like crazy when I get into those rounds and I'm sorely lacking running backs.

Throughout the summer I've seen some backs in this range ebb and flow as whatever scant news we have come out. I was initially getting a lot of Kareem Hunt, but then his window of value closed. I am certain the same thing will happen now that Bruce Arians is all but anointing Jones as his featured back.

I wouldn't exactly say that waiting until the third or fourth round is Zero-RB, but if I get into the third round without a running back, I'm assuredly looking at James Conner. In the fourth, I'm looking at David Johnson. In the firth, it's Raheem Mostert and Hunt. In the sixth, it's Jones, but I think you'll have to pay up into the fifth now and that's where his value starts to diminish. After Jones, Guice is my next back up and I've been on him all summer long like a good sipping whiskey on a Friday night pontoon ride. Getting into the seventh round or so, Tarik Cohen continues to be a value pick as a bounce-back candidate who is without question a better player than his efficiency stats showed last season.

Once you get into the middle rounds or back half of the draft, I'm prioritizing my draft strategy to make sure I can get A.J. Dillon as my RB5, or another rookie like Zack Moss, Darrynton Evans or Joshua Kelley.

Another offshoot or variant of a Zero-RB is when you take an absolute stud like McCaffrey, Barkley or Elliott and then go after as many elite options at other positions as you can - Mahomes/Jackson, Kelce/Kittle, load up on receivers and then fill out your RB2 and depth options with the players listed above.