The landscape of fantasy football has shifted. Wide receivers have supplanted running backs as the position of choice when investing high draft capital. Per Fantasy Football Calculator, just five running backs are in the top 12 in ADP for standard leagues while just 11 of the top-24 players being selected are running backs. Just back in 2013, those numbers were at 11 top-12 and 17 top-24 running backs, respectively. When looking at PPR scoring, the current numbers fall to just four backs in the top 12 and nine in the top 24. Drafting wide receivers early has become the way, and it’s here to stay until/unless the NFL and fantasy football structures alter course.
As a disclaimer, there’s no way around the fact that this is going to read as a Pro-WR Heavy column. But it’s intended to provide backbone to how and why that approach came to the forefront, and why it’s not going to fade under the current umbrella of the NFL and basic fantasy formats.
Whether you want to tie that lack of current early investment into the running back position as being more strategy based -- as Shawn Siegele has thrust Zero RB to the fantasy forefront -- or due to the fact that the most talented skill players at this time happen to be wide receivers, owners are investing less and less into running backs. I’d like to believe it’s a blend of both in conjunction with the trend of increased passing dependency by NFL teams in terms of moving the football.
Passing output remains on the rise, and it’s had an effect within the fantasy production of top producers yearly at running back. Looking back at the past 10 seasons from top-24 scorers in PPR leagues, you can see the impact of the reversal in dependency of distribution in fantasy scoring within the position.
*The same chart for WR production can be found here
I listed PPR here to show the impact of receptions themselves, but there’s the exact same overlap in hot and cold zones in standard scoring leagues, even though rushing statistics carry more non-PPR weight than they do here. It’s important to acknowledge that 2015 was a historically bad year for running backs. As Graham Barfield has pointed out, last season was abnormal for major running back injuries, so the bottom lines in 2015 were egregiously affected by sheer volume of missed time by stars. Even with that in context, the dark orange and red were already seeping their way into the upper left hand portion of the chart.
My biggest takeaway isn’t necessarily the shift to green in receiving output recently. Receptions and receiving yardage weren’t grossly out of line last season. It’s rather that rushing output is dwindling, largely in yardage and touchdowns on the ground. Rushing yardage is still the most important statistic in contributing to fantasy points, but the receiving game is contributing more and more yearly because those yardage numbers have dropped under the 25,000 yard mark in four of the past five seasons and three years in a row. As Barfield illuminated, ground production is shrinking for high-end backs because they have been steadily losing heavy volume.
Number of RB to Reach a Set Level of Usage Per Game Over the Past 10 Years
| Year | 15+ RuAtt | 18+ RuAtt | 20+ RuAtt | 15+Tchs | 18+Tchs | 20+Tchs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 14 | 4 | 1 | 21 | 16 | 5 |
| 2014 | 12 | 4 | 2 | 21 | 9 | 6 |
| 2013 | 18 | 6 | 0 | 25 | 17 | 8 |
| 2012 | 23 | 8 | 3 | 26 | 20 | 11 |
| 2011 | 21 | 7 | 2 | 24 | 19 | 8 |
| 2010 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 25 | 17 | 13 |
| 2009 | 18 | 7 | 4 | 25 | 13 | 8 |
| 2008 | 21 | 9 | 4 | 29 | 18 | 10 |
| 2007 | 23 | 13 | 4 | 29 | 21 | 16 |
| 2006 | 28 | 16 | 9 | 31 | 25 | 17 |
Last season, just 14 running backs averaged 15 carries or more per game (actually slightly up from 2014), right at half the amount from 10 years ago. In terms of touches per game, a 240-touch seasonal pace is still obtainable as a baseline, but backs pacing toward 285 touches has trended downward while backs pacing toward 320 plus touches has fallen considerably. Even on a weekly level, backs reaching those high-end watermarks in an individual game have taken a serious blow over the past decade.
Number of Times a RB Reached 20 Carries or 20 Touches in A Game Over the Past 10 Years
| Year | 20+ RuAtt | 20+ Tchs |
|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 123 | 198 |
| 2014 | 128 | 185 |
| 2013 | 141 | 227 |
| 2012 | 156 | 230 |
| 2011 | 150 | 227 |
| 2010 | 155 | 242 |
| 2009 | 164 | 255 |
| 2008 | 182 | 265 |
| 2007 | 209 | 295 |
| 2006 | 226 | 313 |
Over a full 17 week season, the average number of backs to see 20 or more carries in a given week has gone from 13.3 to 7.2 and the number of backs to see 20 or more touches in a given week has dropped from 18.4 to 11.6. The long story short from the tables above is that it’s hard to score fantasy points without the football, and individual running backs are seeing less tangible and higher-end usage than ever before.
Going back to the color coded table at the top, receiving touchdowns have been trending up for top fantasy backs, but it’s concerning that rushing touchdowns have been trending way down. Committees and the fact that those committees have become more specialty based have contributed to the movement in both directions, but it’s alarming that high-end backs are scoring less and less on the ground while NFL teams are scoring more and more touchdowns overall, and those ground scores aren’t naturally being carried along for the ride to any degree. Over the past 10 seasons, look at how NFL offenses have continued to score more touchdowns and the percentage of those scores that have been through the air versus the ground.
The dependency on rushing touchdowns has dropped for five consecutive seasons while scoring has significantly trended upward over the past decade. An average NFL game in 2015 featured 4.7 total touchdowns scored between the two teams with just 1.4 of those coming on the ground. There were 1,211 offensive touchdowns in the NFL last season -- 140 more than were scored in 2006. To illustrate that jump in a decade, there were just 80 more touchdowns scored in 2006 than 1996. 368 of those scores last season were on the ground (30.4 percent of all offensive touchdowns), with top-24 backs accounting for just 36.4 percent of those rushing scores. You’d figure that with touchdowns trending so greatly upward that rushing scores would carry along -- even if marginally -- but despite the dramatic amount of increased scores overall, there were 57 fewer rushing touchdowns last year than 10 years ago, when top-24 backs accounted for 52.9 percent of those scores on the ground.
The NFL is becoming less and less reliant on rushing to produce real points weekly. Touchdowns happen to be the lifeblood of winning and losing fantasy contests. Of course receptions produce yards and touchdowns after the fact, but going back to the opening chart, receptions all by their lonesome for top scoring running backs have held greater weight in the makeup of seasonal scoring than rushing touchdowns have in three consecutive seasons.
These numbers should all bottom out at some point, and maybe 2015 is in fact the year that we reached that floor. Flat circles and life are perceived cyclical, so everyone now wants to take advantage of running back costs being depressed as the zigging method this season, but is there really reason to expect, with the way the current NFL is structured, individual rushing totals to recoil tremendously? I definitely can see reason to believe there will be an uptick on last season’s totals, but will they be more in line with 2013 and 2014, or will we get a bounce all the way back to 2012 totals on the ground? I find it harder to invest into the latter given the way touches are dispensed at the position combining the fact that there are largely just more running backs available now than there are jobs for them in the NFL.
I agree with Barfield’s analysis that top running backs aren’t in true decay to the point they aren’t valuable in a team structuring context, but receivers are doing more than ever as the NFL itself continues to rely on production through the air. To me, that’s the biggest point of emphasis in vaulting high caliber receivers over high caliber running backs in a fantasy sense. It’s not so much the running back position itself, it’s that wide receivers now are superior fantasy options on their own merit. In fact, as a whole, we’re way late to party in that context.
Last season, the top-24 WRs outscored the top-24 RBs by 1,552 PPR points and 368 standard points. To a man, that’s on average 65 more points per top receiver than running back for the season, or roughly four points per week in PPR leagues. In standard leagues, that scales down to 15 points per receiver and nearly one full point per week. If we scale that down and only use the top-24 scorers at each position per given week to account for player fluctuation, receivers still outscored backs by 1,539 PPR points and 274 standard points. Those numbers aren’t strictly tied to 2015’s running back death, either.
From a seasonal stance, 2015 is the only time over the past decade that receivers have outscored backs in standard formats. That may prove an outlier given the aforementioned injuries, but you can see that the gap between the two was slowly trending in this direction regardless of 2015’s RB Apocalypse. Even with the removal of receptions, wide receivers have been trending upward in terms of scoring, so with that fact in conjunction with top running backs losing higher-end volume that we highlighted, full point PPR leagues are now massively exploitable through a wide receiver heavy approach.
The final noteworthy piece of the pie is that we’ve also been better at selecting wide receivers than running backs in either format. Here’s a look at all backs and receivers selected on average in the first three rounds over the past five years and their success rates in terms of yearly finish.
Success Rates from Players Selected Rounds 1-3 Over the Past 5 Years
| POS | # | Top-12 | % | 13-24 | % | 25-36 | % | Below 36 | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STD RB | 77 | 34 | 44.2% | 17 | 22.1% | 11 | 14.3% | 15 | 19.5% |
| PPR RB | 75 | 34 | 45.3% | 17 | 22.7% | 11 | 14.7% | 13 | 17.3% |
| STD WR | 55 | 32 | 58.2% | 7 | 12.7% | 7 | 12.7% | 9 | 16.4% |
| PPR WR | 61 | 32 | 52.5% | 13 | 21.3% | 6 | 9.8% | 10 | 16.4% |
While the cutoffs are arbitrary in terms of drafting players that end up in the top 24 at their respective positions, receivers have hit at a nearly three out of four clip while backs are near a two out of three mark. Even in standard scoring leagues, receivers hold an advantage in terms of paying off on investment.
Success Rates from Players Selected Rounds 4-6 Over the Past 5 Years
| POS | # | Top-12 | % | 13-24 | % | 25-36 | % | Below 36 | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| STD RB | 54 | 9 | 16.7% | 13 | 24.1% | 10 | 18.5% | 22 | 40.7% |
| PPR RB | 55 | 9 | 16.4% | 14 | 25.5% | 8 | 14.5% | 24 | 43.6% |
| STD WR | 80 | 17 | 21.3% | 18 | 22.5% | 13 | 16.3% | 32 | 40.0% |
| PPR WR | 74 | 18 | 24.3% | 19 | 25.7% | 11 | 14.9% | 27 | 36.5% |
Looking at the same data and using rounds four through six paints a similar picture. Things get much bleaker across the board, but receivers in PPR leagues over that grouping have a 50 percent top-24 success rate compared to just over 40 percent for backs with a much lower rate of falling outside of flex range status. Things tighten up in standard formats, but receivers still hold an advantage. Since this is past ADP and more receivers are now being selected in 2016, the market could correct itself to the point where running backs become a value. But any overcorrection has yet to occur with current ADP in completely tipping into that direction.
As mentioned early on, this definitely reads as a “Zero RB” endorsement, but it’s more of a suggestion as to where to spend your premium draft picks. I’m not telling you there’s a linear path you have to take during your draft. Often, the best teams incorporate multiple strategies as drafts change tone, and I’m more than positive that there will be running backs who help win fantasy titles in 2016. In standard scoring leagues, there’s still plenty of viability left in the position, even with wide receivers narrowing that gap. Also, as Brandon Gdula points out, it’s far less likely that you’ll net a tangible running back off of waivers than it’s perceived by the community.
That might read as half stepping, but you still need to draft running backs along the way and you can mix them in while still going in with a wide receiver heavy approach if you’re not willing to go all the way down the rabbit hole. If you have a chance to land Le’Veon Bell or another top back, you can definitely do that. You can take backs along the way as you see fit, but I’d still endorse going with an unbalanced tilt skewed toward receivers, steering clear of a balanced agenda early on. Going in with a balanced approach will likely let you down at both positions as you’re at the mercy of nailing your individual player assessments as viable resources naturally thin themselves out at wide receiver, where cost is being heightened in 2016 drafts.
There are definitive reasons that an early wide receiver approach is here to stay in casual leagues that haven’t altered scoring or required roster makeup, which is the bulk of fantasy football leagues out there. Wide receivers are scoring more points in a more predictable fashion than ever, and the majority of leagues require you to start and roster more of them than any other position when it comes to roster composition to cover injuries, busts and byes. When flex positions are added, those levels increase tenfold. Even with a revival at the running back position in 2016 as a group, the wide receiver position itself warrants the bulk of your top dollars.
