There’s a lot to be said for the zero-RB approach to drafting.
Receivers tend to be injured less often than RBs, so using your
early picks on wide-outs is a great way to concentrate your early-round
draft capital on the players most likely to contribute to your point
totals for the entire season. The underappreciated other side of
this injury coin is that backup RBs routinely become major fantasy
contributors as the season progresses, and backup RBs are the ones
that most zero-RB teams will be forced to gamble on.
The easy part of zero-RB is picking fabulous WRs early; the hard
part is figuring out which leftover RBs to draft in the middle
and late rounds. You don’t have to be right about all the
RBs you take, but you do need to be right about (or at least get
lucky with) two or three of them. Fortunately, if you start off
a draft with four consecutive picks at WR, it’s easy to
justify taking RBs with 6 (or even 7) of your next 7 picks. If
you only get 1 in 3 of those RB picks right, you’ll very
likely end up with a better-than-average starting lineup.
But there are challenges in both theory and in practice.
Let’s start with a theoretical zero-RB half-PPR draft based
on picking from the 6th slot in a 12-team league according to
Fantasy Football Calculator’s ADP (as of August 14, 2019):
Real drafts tend to be messier than this because they include
numerous reaches and steals, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ve
taken players with an ADP equal to or lower than the draft slots
of this fictional team following a bare bones zero-RB formula.
The strength of the team is obviously the receiving corps. The
least attractive WR on the roster (Robert Woods) was the 10th
most productive receiver in many scoring formats in 2018 and will
probably finish as a low-end WR1 or high-end WR2 in 2019, so this
team should definitely dominate in the receiving category.
The running backs are a different story. The only one worth getting
excited about for the entire season is White. Drake is losing
ground to Kalen Ballage in the preseason. Henderson won’t
be worth much if Todd Gurley stays healthy. Hunt could be important
after his suspension, but may have a hard time winning the starting
job from Nick Chubb even after becoming eligible to play. Hyde
has flashed in the past, but has never broken the 1,000-yard mark
in a season and probably won’t challenge Damien Williams
for the starting job in KC (unless Williams gets hurt). Barber
has such a low ceiling that he really doesn’t belong on
most zero-RB rosters. He does make some sense here, however, since
most fantasy leagues require 2 starting RBs. With Drake possibly
losing his starting role to Ballage by the beginning of the season
and the others already being backups, the owner of this team needs
SOMEONE to pair with White.
But will 2 of these 6 RBs hit? Only time will tell. White seems
very likely to succeed on the basis of talent and experience.
The others all need a break (injury to a starter or a change in
coaching attitude or the lifting of a suspension) just to get
a chance to perform. If White stays healthy and meets expectations,
then only 1 of the other 5 needs to catch a break for this fictional
team to have a serviceable pair of RBs supporting an awesome cadre
of WRs.
I wouldn’t bet on all 5 of those RBs getting the break
they need, but it’s not hard to imagine one of them working
out. If Gurley’s arthritis sidelines him for just a few
weeks, then Henderson’s value skyrockets. If Chubb disappoints
during Hunt’s suspension, Hunt will likely surge in the
weeks just before the fantasy playoffs. Things might go this team’s
way.
Or they might not. Rolling the dice on RBs is part of the zero-RB
package.
And now let’s look at an actual zero-RB draft that I conducted
from the 11th slot in the FFToday
Staff League (12-team PPR with 2 flex players, no kicker,
and 18 roster spots):
As with the theoretical team, this roster features a very strong
receiving corps, and the running backs leave a lot to be desired.
However, I would have to give the edge to the theoretical team
in the running back department because Lindsay is not as strong
an anchor (in my opinion) as White. White has a rapport with Tom Brady that virtually guarantees him a role as a mainstay in the
New England offense. Lindsay had a great campaign in 2018, but
concerns about his size and a crowded backfield suggest that his
workload is far from guaranteed. I like Lindsay, but I’m
not confident enough about his role in the Denver offense to feel
like I can count him to produce week in and week out.
Miller doesn’t inspire that kind of confidence either.
Short of injury, I don’t expect him to end up on the bench,
but his upside is definitely capped by Houston’s acquisition
of backfield receiving specialist Duke Johnson. Miller is sort
of like a revved up version of Peyton Barber from the theoretical
team in that regard. We’ve already discussed Drake and Henderson.
McKinnon is hurt; Davis was a sentimental pick (because we have
the same name); Edwards was just a 17th-round flyer who is unlikely
to repeat his 2018 performance based on the scraps that Mark Ingram
and Justice Hill will leave him.
Whereas the theoretical team just needs one RB to get lucky in
addition to White, the real team needs Lindsay to get lucky enough
to rival White in addition to at least one other RB getting lucky
too.
I love having Cook and Woods as my WR3 and WR4 (esp. since I
will be able to start 5 WRs in this league), but I think my team
would have been stronger if, instead of taking Woods in the 4th
round, I had snagged almost any of the RBs taken by my competitors
between 4.02 and 5.11: Josh Jacobs, James White, Chris Carson,
and Tevin Coleman.
My point here is that the zero-RB strategy isn’t as simple
as painting by numbers. Yes, you need to be comfortable swinging
for the fences (Lindsay) and gambling on backups poised for success
(Henderson), but you also want to have at least 1 RB that you
can rely on. If the only way to do that is to target an RB in
the first 4 rounds, then don’t let your commitment to zero-RB
get in the way of building the best team you can.
But it may not be necessary in most leagues. This was an expert
league with only 1 QB (Patrick Mahomes) drafted in the first 4
rounds. In most leagues, multiple QBs are taken before the 5th,
which has the effect of making RBs, WRs, and TEs a little bit
cheaper than they were in this league.
Reader Responses
I received a number of intriguing responses to my
column for July. Let’s start with the comments about
players that some readers feel like they should forgive for their
disappointing performances in 2018.
Bodio is looking to forgive Corey Davis (which makes a lot of
sense to me, since Davis is a perfect candidate for a textbook
third-year breakout season) and Marcus Mariota (which makes less
sense to me because the Titans appear to be determined to run
their offense through Derrick Henry in 2019).
Bryan wants to forgive Dalvin Cook, which I support completely.
Cook has struggled with injuries in his brief career, but I hate
to hang the “injury-prone” label on someone just for
getting off to a rocky start. Cook’s talent is undeniable,
and he’s part of an offense that stresses defenses in all
directions (with Cousins, Thielen, Diggs, and Rudolph). If Cook
stays healthy, I consider him a lock to finish as a mid-RB1 or
better.
Mike shared his thoughts about forgiveness among other things:
It is tough to forgive a player for subpar performance. If you
draft 2 years in a row it feels three times brutal vs two times brutal. I had Fournette and Gordon
at the back of the draft in one of my leagues. Fournette will not be drafted by me until 3+
rounds go by if he were still on the board (he won’t be). Gordon I would draft again (assuming
no contract issue) even though his missed time killed me.
I totally agree with your QB assessment. I would add one more
point. After trends come in, for several weeks, if you don’t see value at lower tier
RBs, I would investigate schedules on good performing QBs and perhaps pick up a second one. It all
comes down to what does the free agent pool look like. I strongly recommend drafting
approx. 150 players. It leaves some hope for free agents.
I haven’t played super flex, but would strongly suggest
equally weighting RB, WR, QB scoring by position. If the league is over tilted to QB scoring, simply
call the position QB2, not super flex. Would rather roll with RB, WR, TE flex and keep the QB out.
Flex helps water down the Kicker and D positions. D and K are
crap shoots but do add interest to the game. Owners have even discussed ditching
the TE position, you need TE since the elite end is scarce and adds to planning / intrigue
to the draft. Over time TE may become deeper or shallower via ebb and flow.
Thanks for the feedback, Bryan. I’ll respond to your final
point (about TEs) because one league I’ve played in for
years has always put WRs and TEs into the same category--and I
think it’s fine. I understand why some people resist this
(especially if they’re fond of TE-premium leagues, like
the Scott Fish Bowl), but after the 2018 season, it’s easy
to see why some people don’t miss the TE position. There
simply aren’t enough quality TEs for more than half the
teams in a league to be competitive at the position. Yes, the
dearth of TE talent can make for some interesting developments
(Kelce went in the first round of the FFToday Staff League Draft),
but allowing people to use either TEs or WRs as receivers can
also lead to interesting developments. Some folks like the “ebb
and flow” of talent at TE; others don’t like it; I
can go either way.
I also received a question from Andy about the construction of
the 36-team mega-league in which I have participated for years.
It’s a blast, Andy. The league has had as few as 24 teams
and as many as 48 over the years. It’s divided into multiple
conferences of 12 teams each. The scoring is the same across all
conferences, but each conference has its own “sub-commissioner”
with its own draft and its own playoff tournament.
The fun part is the mega-tournament that pits the playoff teams
from the various conferences against each other. If you make the
playoffs, you play two games each week (one to advance within
your conference; the other to advance within the league). In the
inter-conference game, you may end up playing against one of your
own players. I won my conference last year (with Christian McCaffrey
and Andrew Luck) but lost the league championship (against a team
with Christian McCaffrey and Aaron Rodgers).
When my brother was the uber-commissioner of the league, he actively
recruited an independent 12-team league to join the mega-league
as a new conference. The current uber-commissioner isn’t much
of a recruiter, but if you’re part of an established 12-team league
that wants to compete with us, I can put you in touch with him.
You can also start your own mega-league simply by putting 2 or
more existing leagues together. We’ve devised a few special rules
and traditions over the decades to make sure that there’s parity
between the various leagues; feel
free to email for additional details if you have specific
concerns on that front.
Mike Davis has been writing about fantasy football since 1999--and
playing video games even longer than that. His latest novel (concerning
a gamer who gets trapped inside Nethack after eating too many shrooms)
can be found here.
