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RBs: The State of the Position and Draft Capital Bias

RBs have been my calling card for the past 20 years. My scouting of QBs and WRs has caught up with this longstanding reputation I have with RB play--at least among scouts and trainers at the positions. 

Still, one thing that has remained consistent with the Rookie Scouting Portfolio's (RSP) track record with RBs has been the identification of Day 3/late-round running backs who deliver value. 

Rhamondre Stevenson, Arian Foster, Spencer Ware, Isaiah Crowell, LeGarrette Blount, Peyton Barber, and Khalil Herbert are among the several RBs who have delivered roster-worthy, if not starter-level, fantasy production over the years. Jaleel McLaughlin showed signs of being next. 

As Broncos head coach Sean Payton remarked this spring, there's a talent glut with RBs. The position is also one of the most physically taxing -- career spans are shorter than most positions in the NFL. 

RBs are also prone to NFL coaches segmenting their roles in modern offenses. The intent is to lessen workloads and leverage the glut of talent entering the league. 

What makes a good fantasy RB? Draft capital is the most common answer among the spreadsheet-only jockeys in this space. 

Draft capital is a reflection of the process NFL teams use to value talent. Draft capital also dictates contract size. The blowback of draft capital is that most NFL organizations use the number of zeros in the player's contract to dictate roster spots and opportunities for playing time. 

It's the hidden advantage of being an early-round draft pick. It's why Raheem Mostert got cut from seven teams before earning an opportunity to prove himself. It's also why Doug Marrone had to seek permission from the Jaguars' front office to give UDFA RB James Robinson more training camp reps.  

Draft capital is a nice shortcut for identifying potential fantasy RBs of value when the spreadsheets are nice and neat. When the bodies start flying and the lesser-known RBs jog into the huddle for playing time, that's when we need analysis beyond draft capital.

Cliffs Notes

Lacking time, but you want to see what makes good fantasy RBs and then see which RBs you should consider or avoid late in 2024 fantasy drafts? 

Here are the main points, and you can skip the next seven sections until you want to learn the "why." 

• 71 percent of RBs you'd consider starting or flexing in most leagues (RB1s through RB4s in 12-team formats) possess the minimum skills at a starter level in the NFL to break tackles and push/pull tacklers for yardage. 
• Brute strength can be a factor with power, but technique and a conceptual understanding of angles are far more important. That's why RBs like Alvin Kamara and Christian McCaffrey are adept yardage gainers on par with Nick Chubb and Derrick Henry. 
• Winning north-south collisions with defenders isn't as important to fantasy performance as bouncing off glancing shots. RBs that can't deflect glancing shots from DBs and at least stalemate them from LBs only have a 10 percent chance of earning RB1-RB3 success during the past six years. 
• If RBs fumble the ball more often than every 61 touches in college football, their likelihood of earning fantasy value as an RB2, RB3, RB4, or RB5 during the past 6 years is no better than 10 percent. The chances of earning RB1 value is 3 percent. 
• It's more important that RBs possess a minimum threshold of speed than significantly beating that threshold. Faster isn't necessarily better. 
• How fast RBs can reach their top speed is more valuable than how fast their top speed is. 
• Only 5 percent of fantasy RBs had acceleration times below the contributor-level minimum threshold of a 4.4-second 20-Yard Shuttle, and/or 7.1-second 3-Cone.
• 68 percent of the relevant fantasy RBs displayed at least the minimum threshold for vision, processor speed, and game management. 

You can skip to "Late-Rounders to Pick, Monitor, and Avoid" if you need to save time.   

Skills and Traits That Make Good Fantasy RBs

To answer this question about RBs, we're going to dive into the process-driven analytics of the RSP. We're going to use some of it to separate the signal from the noise at the position. 

If you want to know what I mean by process-driven analytics and how it differs from results-oriented analytics, you can read the introduction of this Footballguys article on WR Attack Techniques and its correlation to fantasy value. 

The RSP has 20 years of data that correlates on-field skills to fantasy performance. The scouting reports use 115 points of criteria to evaluate the technical skills, conceptual acumen, and physical traits of RBs. This is to determine "what RBs can do." 

After studying several games, the RSP groups these criteria into broader categories to determine "how well RBs do it."

• Power
• Direct Balance
• Indirect Balance
• Ball Security
• Speed
• Acceleration

There are more categories in the RSP that are worth investigating, but these are the six we're examining in this article. It's not important to know how the RSP defines them right now -- we'll get to that as needed. 

Each category contains tiers of projected value. The RSP places RBs in specific tiers based on defined guidelines and stack ranks these players. 

• Star
• Starter
• Committee
• Reserve
• Free Agent

This ultimately generates the Depth of Talent Score used for the publication's rankings. We're going to use these six categories and five tiers to identify the skills and processes driving fantasy value at the position. 

We're also using the top 60 RBs every year between 2018-2023. 

Note: These are grades from pre-draft evaluations and players can improve when they get into the league. 

Power  

The majority of NFL RBs with fantasy value can do the following: 

• Break tackles
• Earn yards after a collision
• Stay on their feet when wrapped high so they can pull/push an opponent or wait for help from teammates

At least 71 percent of the RBs deemed usable during a fantasy season during the past six years possess all three skills -- that's 71 percent of the RB1s-RB4s from all six years. These are players who would have been on every fantasy roster by the season's end. 

Here are the rates for each tier or fantasy RB: 

• Elite (top 3): 89 percent
• RB1s (top 12): 79 percent
• RB2s (13-24): 69 percent
• RB3s (25-36): 69 percent
• RB4s (37-48): 71 percent
• RB5s (49-60): 54 percent

The percentage of RBs possessing the minimum requirements to run with the power of an NFL starter drops between the Elite Tier and RB3 Tier. The slight rate increase among RB4s is likely due to limited appearances from skilled players who are emerging or got hurt. 

What's the difference between running with the starter power and elite power? For the RSP's criteria, it's all three points listed above plus the ability to break multiple tackles within a play and with notable frequency.

Here are the rates for the top 60 fantasy performers when including all four criteria for power. 

• Elite (top 3): 28 percent
• RB1s (top 12): 32 percent
• RB2s and RB3s (13-36): 25 percent
• RB4s and RB5s (37-60): 14 percent

The RSP defines power as the ability to work through tackle attempts and push/pull through wrap-ups for additional yardage. Many average-sized RBs possess starter or elite power because they have strong technical skills for setting up defenders and working through tackles. Brute strength can have value, but Alvin Kamara has been a great tackle-breaker and he's no Derrick Henry or Nick Chubb in the weight room. 

Contact Balance: Direct and Indirect

Often touted as Yards After Contact, this widespread metric form of contact balance is a messy statistic for RBs. The method for measuring Yards After Contact is prone to giving Saquon Barkley 79 yards of credit for a defensive end slapping his thigh pad at the line of scrimmage during a breakaway run that goes untouched for the rest of the way. 

In contrast, Nick Chubb can gain five yards and show much greater contact balance because he did it with two linebackers wrapped around him for four of those yards, not to mention Chubb first had to bounce off a 300-pound defensive tackle's hit to his chest three yards behind the line of scrimmage. 

This is common sense 101 tracking for RBs. 

This is why the RSP separates contact balance into two categories: Direct and Indirect. Direct measures the RB's effectiveness against north-south collisions. Indirect measures the RB's effectiveness against shots arriving from angles of pursuit that aren't north-south. 

Direct Contact Balance is not a huge differentiator among RB fantasy performance. A vast majority of the Elite and RB1s -- 85 percent -- can at least win direct collisions with defensive backs and stalemate a linebacker until the officials whistle the play dead or teammates arrive to generate a push of the pile. 

Indirect Contact Balance isn't a differentiating factor among the tiers of fantasy RBs, either, but it's a valuable metric. Every elite performer in fantasy during the past six years could at least bounce off a glancing shot from a defensive back. This was also true of 89 percent of the RB1s-RB3s and 90 percent of RB4s and RB5s. 

If an RB can't consistently bounce off glancing shots from a defensive back and/or stalemate a linebacker, his chances of delivering fantasy starter value are less than 10 percent according to this six-year-span of data. 

Ball Security

If RBs fumble the ball in college at a rate worse than 1 per 61 attempts, they have no better than a 10 percent chance of delivering fantasy production commensurate to an RB2, RB3, RB4, or RB5. The odds of delivering RB1 production with this track record is 3 percent. 

Most RB1s (81 percent) had a ball security rate of 1 fumble per 121 attempts, nearly twice as good as the demarcation line between fantasy success and failure. 

Speed

Speed is a huge misnomer in the football community. The pervasive thought is that the faster the back is the better he’ll be. It's more important that RBs possess a minimum threshold of speed than significantly beating that threshold. 

There's not much difference between RB1s and RB5s when correlating speed to fantasy production: 

• Elite (top 3): 83 percent
• RB1 (top12): 68 percent
• RB2 (top24): 68 percent
• RB3 (top36): 68 percent
• RB4 (top48): 60 percent
• RB5 (top60): 59 percent

It's worth noting that the measurement for starter-caliber speed in the RSP is a 40-Yard Dash time ranging between 4.46-4.55 seconds. Nearly one-third (32 percent) of RB1s for the past six years had slower times than 4.55 seconds -- 10 percent of them ran between 4.61 and 4.65.

Acceleration

Acceleration—the ability to get to top speed in a short distance—has always been a far more valuable trait for RBs. Jim Brown introduced acceleration to the public with his commentary about the position in the 1970s and 1980s.

The 20-Yard Shuttle and 3-Cone Drills do a better job of revealing acceleration than the 40-Yard Dash -- even the initial splits measured during the 40.

Acceleration matters. Only 5 percent of fantasy backs had acceleration times below the contributor-level minimum threshold of a 4.4-second 20-Yard Shuttle, and/or 7.1-second 3-Cone.

A significant 61 percent of the elite fantasy RBs during the past six seasons had star-caliber acceleration measurements: at least a 4-second time in the 20-Shuttle and/or 6.9-seconds in the 3-Cone.

The rate for RB1s drops 40 percent and 30 percent for RB2s, RB3s, and RB4s. 

Seeking an elite back, you should know that 94 percent of them in the six-year sample had 20 Shuttles no worse than 4.3 seconds and/or 3-Cones of at least 7 seconds. RB1s had those marks at a rate of 87 percent. RB2s and RB3s had those marks at a rate of 70 percent. RB4s and RB5s were at a rate of 78 percent. 

How fast RBs can reach their top speed is more valuable than how fast their top speed is. 

Vision

A real differentiator in performance is Vision -- how well RBs process information and manage the game with the ball in their hands.

At least 68 percent of RB1s-RB5s have no worse than contributor-level vision. Here are the criteria for that level of performance:

• An understanding of how to run at least one of the three most common blocking schemes in the league. 
• Sticking with the play design when down-and--distance, game scenario, and field position are important factors.
• Reading defender-blocker leverage points and setting up blocks.
• Decisive action that is based on logical processing of action.

These are the RSP's guidelines for Contributor-level vision -- the third tier of quality behind Elite and Starter.

If one of these four guidelines is missing or the RBs demonstrate significant flaws, it’s less likely they will have fantasy value as a weekly contributor without improving their games.

Here's how each tier of fantasy RBs during the past six years has performed to this minimum standard for Vision:

• Elite RBs (top 3): 94 percent
• RB1s (top 12): 97 percent
• RB2 and RB3s (13-36): 70 percent
• RB4s and RB5s (37-60): 78 percent

As former GM Rick Spielman shared a few years ago, the NFL is discovering that the closer a player begins in the middle of the field, the more efficient he must process information. QBs and RBs are dead-center in the middle of the field. 

Late-Rounders to Pick, Monitor, and Avoid

These RBs are on these lists based on the criteria outlined in this article. I'm defining the late rounds as the final 40 percent of a 20-round draft--from the 12th round on.