Rookie Running Backs - Summary
Draft Recommendation:
Rookie running backs who were drafted outside the top 12 in the NFL Draft
are very overvalued in fantasy drafts.
The National Football League
Draft is an annual event that takes place at the end of April and
was watched on ESPN by over seven million viewers in 2010. Once the
draft is completed, the analysis begins as to which teams won or
lost the draft and which players will have the biggest impact with
their new team for the upcoming season. In terms of fantasy
analysis, rookie players are amongst the hardest to analyze because
all we have are college statistics which are often flawed by the
varying quality of opponents, the system of play or the talent
surrounding the players. I was curious to find out whether rookie
players were overrated or underrated by the average manager in
fantasy drafts.
For this analysis I decided
to look at running backs drafted in the first four rounds of the NFL
Draft since the year 2000. Of the 74 rookie running backs since
2000, only 24 of them performed better than their average draft
position which is equal to only 32.4%. To put that in perspective,
non-rookie running backs with a similar average draft position
improve 42.6% of the time. This means that your chances of making a
good pick in your fantasy draft decrease by 10.2% when you choose a
rookie running back over a non-rookie running back.
Our data shows that the only
rookie running backs that perform better than non-rookie running
backs are the ones drafted in the top 12 picks of the NFL Draft. All
other rookie running backs decrease your chance of making a good
pick by 14.3%. This difference is the equivalent to drafting your
running backs about a round and a half before their average draft
position.
The data presented in this
article makes it quite evident that the only rookie running backs
that might be worth drafting in your fantasy drafts are ones drafted
in the first 12 picks of the NFL Draft. In 2010, C.J. Spiller and
Ryan Mathews are the only running backs who were drafted in the
first 12 picks. The problem with Mathews is that he’s currently
being drafted as the 11th best RB and no rookie RB has
ever been drafted this early. Spiller, on the other hand, is being
drafted around number 30 and could be worth selecting based on this
data. The four other rookie running backs that you might consider
this year are: Jahvid Best, Montario Hardesty, Ben Tate and Toby
Gerhart. They are four players that we highly recommend to stay away
from unless you can get them about 20 picks after their average
draft position.
See the complete analysis |
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