Rookie Running Backs - Summary
Draft Recommendation:
Rookie running backs who were drafted in the top 12 in the NFL Draft
are the only ones that are undervalued 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 five million viewers in 2009. 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 67 rookie running backs since
2000, only 22 of them performed better than their average draft
position which is equal to only 32.8%. To put that in perspective,
non-rookie running backs with a similar average draft position
improve 41.3% of the time. This means that your chances of making a
good pick in your fantasy draft decrease by 8.5% 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 in the NFL Draft. All
other rookie running backs decrease your chance of making a good
pick by 11.2%. This difference is the equivalent to drafting your
running backs one full round 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 2009, Knowshon Moreno is
the only running back who was drafted in the first 12 picks. Other
rookie running backs such as Chris Wells, Donald Brown and LeSean
McCoy are likely to be overvalued but do not rule them out
completely because in some drafts they could fall lower than
expected.
See the complete analysis |
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