Fantasy Football Today - FFT Dynasty - Running Back Rankings Revealed! (05/28 Dynasty Fantasy Football Podcast)

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

Welcome to Fantasy Football Today Dynasty! In this episode, host Heath Cummings is joined by special guest Dave Kluge of Footballguys for an exciting and insightful discussion. Heath then poses three thought-provoking questions to Dave: What's one rule or setting (2:00) that is non-negotiable for your dynasty league? Favorite rookie RB (4:32) not named Jonathon Brooks or Trey Benson? And which veteran (5:58) RB should contenders be targeting? Heath reveals his RB rankings, breaking them down into three segments: RB Rankings 1-12 (9:02), RB Rankings 13-24 (17:40), and RB Rankings 25-36 (27:20). Tune in for expert analysis, valuable insights, and actionable advice to help you dominate your dynasty leagues. Follow our FFT team on Twitter: @FFToday, @AdamAizer, @JameyEisenberg, @daverichard, @heathcummingssr, @ctowerscbs Follow the brand new FFT TikTok account: https://www.tiktok.com/@fftoday Watch FFT on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/fantasyfootballtoday Get 20% off Fantasy Football Today merch: https://store.cbssports.com/collections/fantasy-football-today%20?utm_source=podcast-apple-com&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=buy-our-merch&utm_content=fantasy-football-collection Join our Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/FantasyFootballToday/ Sign up for the FFT newsletter https://www.cbssports.com/newsletter You can listen to Fantasy Football Today on your smart speakers! Simply say "Alexa, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast" or "Hey Google, play the latest episode of the Fantasy Football Today podcast." To hear more from the CBS Sports Podcast Network, visit https://www.cbssports.com/podcasts/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals, be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Welcome to Fantasy Football Today, Dynasty. I am your host, Heath Cummings. Joined today by Dave Kluge.

We are talking running back, dynasty, rankings. I will unveil my top 36. Dave will tear them to pieces. I'm sure you will in the chat as well. Dave, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to talking to you. Tell everybody what you've been working on and where they can find your work. Yeah, real simple. You can find all my work over at football guys, and I'm tweeting all that out from my Twitter page at Dave Kluge, but this is a great show to be on. I was just a few days ago on with Jeff Bell and Jagger May. And this is exactly what we did is kind of go through all of the top running

backs and kind of see where we differentiate. And I think we've all kind of as an industry and also dynasty players are getting a little bit kind of agnostic to the position. You know, we don't want to invest heavily at running backs. You see it now in startups where you can make it in around four or five and there's only a handful of running backs off the board. So it's, it's an important position and i think that i might have some

takes here that stray a little bit from the consensus but really excited to kind of dive in and talk dynasty running backs here yeah i was i think that's one of the more difficult things like i wrote last week that kind of the header for the wide receiver rankings and there were so many different things i could have talked about so many things that i wanted to discuss and you get to the running back rankings and like man do i even want to try to justify this it's probably gonna look different in two months there's four guys basically bijan robinson brie saul jameer gibbs jonathan taylor who we think are awesome and young and And everybody else is just like, I don't know.

Maybe if I'm competing, I will roster a few of them. Begrudgingly, no. We're going to get into the weeds here with the running backs. Dave's going to kind of give me his favorites at each price range. We will talk about some rankings dilemmas. Maybe he can help me polish my rankings up a little bit. But we always start with three questions for our guests. And the first question is always the same.

You are starting a new Dynasty League. What is the one non-negotiable rule or setting? And you're not allowed to say super flex because too many people before you would. Well, I hope this isn't kind of a cop cop-out but it's similar to super flex but mine is just adding another flex spot I think that that just always makes dynasty leagues better like I don't care if you've already got five flex spots add a six because you know the fantasy football can be kind of fluky at times and there's some luck and I think that the deeper the starting rosters are the more it favors the sharper player. If you're just starting two running backs

and three wide receivers, anybody can pick two guys that are in the top 24 running backs and three wide receivers that are in the top 36. But I think men are made playing fantasy football when it's week 14 and your guys are injured and there's a bunch of teams on by and you're sitting there looking like, do I want to start A.T. Perry in New York against the Giants? Or do I want to go with Justin Watson versus Los Angeles? And it could be shootout. Like those are what I think really make fantasy football fun and dynasty football fun. So the best leagues I'm in are the ones that have four, five, six, seven flex spots. And you got to get really, really weird with some weekly decisions. I absolutely love that. And it's kind of like a nice counter. Cause one of the things I say is, especially when I'm adding new dynasty leagues, I really prefer if they're best ball specifically in dynasty, because you can, you have the ability to put together a super team over the course of four or five seasons, unlike really in redraft where you might have just some terrible decisions between Derek Henry and Joe Mixon one week because you can only start three

running backs. And the best ball kind of takes that terrible out of it. You're just going to start the best one. But I also think that having the five flex spots kind of does the same thing. It rewards those teams who have accumulated a bunch of talent on their teams. You don't penalize them by trying to make them make difficult decisions that you and I don't even want to make, much less somebody who's not doing this for a living. Question number two, who is your favorite rookie running back, not named Jonathan Brooks or Trey Sermon? Trey Sermon. Trey Sermon is a good name. Trey Benson. Trey Benson, yes. I was just thinking about Trey Sermon there, Dan. I can't remember why. It was probably one of the immaculate grid games.

I was hitting him on the 49ers and the Colts, I think. No, go ahead. He's been around on a few different teams for having not done too much. But in this year, the class, I really like Blake Corum. He's just a motor that can just kind of keep an offense moving down the field. He's strong, quick feet. He's got that elite burst, the ability to push a pile, everything that I really like to see in a running back. And he's a bit small, you know, five foot eight, but he's just got a thick frame, low center of gravity, really tough to take down.

Not crazy about the landing spot with the Rams because I think it's going to be an uphill battle, you know, trying to get touches away from Kyron Williams after the season that he had. But if the opportunity does arise, if Kyron Williams goes down with an injury or he leaves after his rookie contract, something like that, I think Blake Corum has the skill set to be a three-down NFL back. I agree with you. I think one of the more interesting things, I don't actually expect the foot injury that Kyron Williams is dealing with right now to impact his playing time week one. I expect he's going to be perfectly fine. But I did think coming into the NFL that Corum was one of those running backs that coaches are really going to like. He is almost a professional running back entering the NFL. And now he's going to get this opportunity this summer to be working with the first team more often doing those things that

coaches are going to like so i do think this might put a little more pressure on williams just in that the coaches are going to fall in love with quorum maybe even a little bit earlier than they would have otherwise so question number three we'll switch gears we do have to have running backs to win championships sometimes so who is your favorite veteran running back to go trade for if you're a contender in dynasty? Well, I think we'll get into the weeds a little bit more, but I love getting these cheap veterans in dynasty because nobody else wants them and you can get them for close to nothing. And a guy that I find myself getting this off season has been Joe Mixon. He's never

really been a guy who has won on athleticism, even early in his career, his best traits are always kind of between the ears. He's a patient guy. He's really good at just kind of finding the crease and picking up those extra yards. And now in Houston with the run scheme that they have there, Bobby Slowik runs this wide zone blocking scheme. They're going to get him out in space. And that system requires patience and vision, which Mixon has. And I think we kind of saw that last year where Damian Pierce, who was just a bull in a china shop, really struggled with this run scheme. Well, Devin Singletary, who's small and relatively unathletic, excelled. So I think a lot of people are looking at Joe Mixon now leaving Cincinnati, you know,

just kind of thinking that this is the end of the road for him. I think that he's going to be great in this system. And we saw him consistently, even if it wasn't pretty, turning out RB1 seasons in Cincinnati. I see this move to Houston as a pretty lateral as far as the tempo and the high scoring potential and all those sorts of things. So Joe Mixon now, you know, going into his age 28 season, probably doesn't have a lot left in the tank, but wouldn't surprise me at all if he finishes as a top 10 running back this year. And we will talk about Mixon towards the end of the show, after our second break, because he's in my RB25 through 36 range. I was just going to look because I love the fact that we've got the full May ADP from Dynasty League Football.

Mixon checks in at RB22 there. So a few more, I think, contenders weighing in, maybe, than Rebuilders. Because he is one of those backs, and most of the veterans are. You've got to be a specific team. Probably only a third of the league, maybe half the league, should be rostering a Joe Mixon heading into 2024. Now there's probably three or four other teams that just haven't figured out that they shouldn't yet. But we'll talk more about veteran running backs.

We've got lots of rookies coming up right after the break. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? who knew you could give yourself the ick that's why bumble is changing how you start conversations you can now make the first move

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Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. We are back and we are ready for my top 12 running backs. I mentioned the top four at the top. I don't think anybody's going to have anything to argue about. I mean, you can rank these guys in a different order, but almost everybody has them top four, except maybe if Christian McCaffrey sneaks in there. We start with B. John Robinson at number one for me, then Brees Hall, then Jameer Gibbs, Jonathan Taylor, Christian McCaffrey. And there's almost a gap between Taylor and McCaffrey and then a gap between McCaffrey and everyone else. Because at least I know what he's there for. And then after McCaffrey, you've got Travis Etienne, Kyron Williams, Jonathan Brooks, Ken Walker, Devon Achan, James Cook, and Rashad White.

So it's Robinson, Hall, and Gibbs, Taylor, McCaffrey, and Etienne, Williams, HN Cook and White Dave you can frame this however you want you can be nice and just say it's your guy you could be a jerk and tell me I'm way too low on them but regardless like when you see this list who who's your guy who's the guy I'm either too low on or you're just a lot higher on um I'm going to kind of be in lockstep with you and alongside with you here and say that I love your ranking of Jonathan Brooks because I am there as well. And it seems like the consensus hasn't really moved Brooks up that high yet. You see him consistently outside of the top 12 in a lot of rankings. And I have Jonathan Brooks exactly where you do at RB8. So I just want to say that I think that is a great ranking. I'm glad that you are sipping the Kool-Aid as well.

You know, this is the clear RB1 of this class and was drafted as such, even coming off of a torn ACL. And you look at the situation that he lands in right now. I mean, Miles Sanders was awful last year. Chuba Hubbard, I guess you can say he was serviceable, but there was nothing about his game that was really tilting the field for Carolina at all. So I think it was very intentional for them to go out and draft a guy that can really help move this offense. And we've seen in the past that Dave Canales typically does like to lean on one running back. So we might not see it week one. It might be later in the year,

but I think that he's going to be, you know, it's probably too early to be thrown around the term league winner, but with as late as he's getting drafted and knowing that he could be back to 100% by the end of the year, I think we're going to see him on a lot of winning rosters. I'm just a huge fan of him. And if you look last year at running backs in college with over 135 carries, we're left with 48 running backs in the power five. Jonathan Brooks was graded as PFF's best rusher and also their best receiver. So he's got the floor to be a good rusher. He's got the ceiling to be a great receiver, logged a breakaway run on almost half of his carries. 43% of his carries last year went for over 15 yards. This guy really just does

it all. So I am a big fan of him. I'm glad that you've got him as high as RB8 because that makes me feel a little bit better about my ranking. I love it. And I do think that there's a couple of factors, you know, kind of working to keep him from being ranked as high as maybe he would have been. One of them is obviously the fact that he was behind B. John Robinson and Roshan Johnson earlier in his career. So he didn't have the early breakout that we'd love to see. And then the other one is the fact that he toured the acl and we kind of saw last year we had a couple of really young running backs coming off of acl injuries one of them breeze hall was basically fine after week four and finished the season as the rb2 overall don't worry about it all the other one giovante williams never really became giovante williams

again during the season so i do think that you have to approach it in redraft with just a little bit of hesitation. But if he gets to week three or week four and he's who I think he's going to be, I think RB8 is going to be too low. I would guess we'll be looking at Jonathan Brooks in that RB5 discussion, depending on what Christian McCaffrey at his age has done. Now, I want to talk about McCaffrey because he does, I think, even go higher than this a lot of times. He gets into that RB2, RB3 discussion sometimes, and he has been so much better than everybody else whenever he's been healthy. But he's a 28-year-old running back.

How risky do you view McCaffrey in terms of as a like a dynasty asset is it just like this guy could win you your league and he could also be worth zero next week that that's exactly what it is and uh such is the way of a dynasty running back right like you know we want to hold on to these guys especially when they're scoring the way mcafree does but an extremely volatile asset and what you do here trying to put these guys in a flat list of rankings i have to do as well because that's what people want to see but man it's so hard because like you know like you said mcafree could be drafted as the rb do if a team is trying to win right now he could fall even further than that so what i do is i kind of put players in buckets with other similar players

so like bijan brice jameer jt they're kind of in a tier themselves like the young workhorses who have shown they can do it in the NFL and then you've got your inefficient guys who stumbled into volume last year I couldn't group McCaffrey with anybody he's in a tier a bucket all alone and it's scary because like you said he could be the RB1 this year but look what happened to Austin Eckler last year I think that's kind of the worst case scenario this guy was getting drafted as a top eight running back and then one season where he didn't produce, picked up an injury, didn't look like himself. All of a sudden, he gets released from

the Chargers, signs with a new team, and now he's outside of the top 20 in most obviously rankings. That same fate could be a possibility for Christian McCaffrey this year. And I'm not saying it's going to happen. He comes out week one, suffers a catastrophic injury, then all of a sudden San Francisco can save $8 million moving on goingrey this year. And I'm not saying it's going to happen. Right. Comes out week one, suffers a catastrophic injury. Then all of a sudden, San Francisco can save $8 million moving on going into next year.

Then the view of Christian McCaffrey is a 29-year-old coming off an injury on a new team, just like Austin Eckler is this year. So extremely volatile asset. And I understand move and form if you're a contender, but this is a guy that I'm just not interested in trying to add on any teams right now it's which it's a it's a rare combination of like that type of risk profile that type of upside and just an extremely high cost like he's been so good that the dynasty world just decided we don't care that he's a 28 year old running back even though every other running

back we're selling at 26 because he's old not christ Christian McCaffrey. He's been too good. So I do want to finish it up. And I mentioned that rankings dilemma at each spot. And I know you liked Jonathan Brooks at eight. I've got him really close to Ken Walker. And I do think that Walker's almost like a little bit of a younger McCaffrey because he has immense upside. We've not seen him put it all together yet, but anybody that possesses the ability to hit the big home run plays like he does, he can definitely win you some weeks. And if he could hold it together for 14 games, he might win you a league as well. But another guy I really like, and I'm higher than everybody else on, Zach Charbonnet. We're going to talk about him in just a minute. There's a, there's a pretty big risk for Walker as well.

So do you have Walker in this range? I do. And, um, you know, as fun as it is to like, you know, disagree and push back on where we have differences,

our running backs are, they're really, really similar. Okay. I've got Kenneth Walker and Jonathan Brooks flip-flopped. And then've kyron williams a few spots lower so for me uh ken walker is my rb7 jonathan brooks is my rb8 so i have them back to back and the only deciding factor for that for me is that we've seen kenneth walker do it at the nfl level we haven't seen it from brooks yet if brooks comes out week one and he looks like the player we want

him to be and we expect him to be, I'm probably moving Brooks up a few spots, but he still does need to check that box. Can he do it at the NFL? Kenneth Walker already has done it. Of course, the risk here, which we're going to talk about Zach Charbonnet, another guy that I love and I know you love, that's obviously the risk is that Charbonnet does have the profile to be a three down back and he can cut into Kenneth Walker's workload. But we were expecting that last year and it didn't happen. So I'm pretty confident keeping Kenneth Walker up there. But really, for me, when you ask, like, do you like Jonathan Brooks or Ken Walker? The real answer is going to be whoever is cheaper, because if I flip one of these for another guy and add on an additional pick or something like that, that's what I'm doing.

So even though I have Walker ahead, if I can trade back and get rid of Kenneth Walker and bring in Jonathan Brooks and a third round pick, that's probably what I'm doing. I think that's a really good point. And you've talked about how you've been going through the rankings and the tiering process at all the positions. And this is one of those times where like, I like to tier players based on how I view their value, but there's also a lot of value in tiering players the way you were talking about in kind of like the same archetype and there is no other archetype for christian mcafree like that's just that's just what he is um but i i get i do think with running backs you could almost rank and tier in like four different ways because it'd be much

better to just have rankings for contenders and rankings for rebuilders. And then we wouldn't have to argue about how much we're valuing this year. But we do kind of have to look at them all, as you said, lay them out flat, one set of rankings, and then we will discuss from there. So let's move over.

When I had Kate Majuk on last week to talk wide receivers, the one through 12 went very similarly. Everyone in the chat was mostly agreeing. Everybody was on the same page with who the top 12 are. And then you flip the page to 13 through 24, and everybody says, Heath, you're insane. Or Dave, what are you thinking? And so let's take a look at Arby's 13 through 24 i've got josh jacobs saquon barkley isaiah pacheco giovante williams deandre swift

ramondre stevenson zach charbonnet zamir white tige spears tony pollard jaylen warren and trey benson not trey sermon at 13 through 24 who's your guy on this list you know i like a lot of guys here and i just want to say because we had this this discussion, like I said, with Jeff Bell and Jacker May last week. Basically, like RB9 through like RB20. I said you can just like throw in a Yahtzee cup and shake around. They're all so similar. Like we're splitting hairs here. It's, you know, do you prefer youth?

Do you prefer athleticism? Do you prefer the current situation? There's so many factors that you can weigh here. But the guy that jumps out to me on this list, and again, I'm going to agree with you, heath because i'm glad that you are also sipping the kool-aid on zamir white i'm a huge huge fan of zamir white and i was really beating the drum for him last offseason and we only got to see it in a little little taste but down the stretch when he started those four games he averaged 24 opportunities per game and 114 scrimmage yards per game. I mean, that is just unbelievable. Now, you can't just say that, well, he did that over four games last year, so he's going to do it over 17 games this year.

That's not how it works, but we did see the ceiling and the potential for him right now. And I've just been a big fan of Zamir White since he came out of college. I know he's got technically day three draft capital, but he was a very high fourth round pick. So just missed checking that box there. But this guy is a thumper. He's fast. He's 96 percentile speed score. And I'm just a big fan of him.

It's taken him some time to kind of carve out a role for himself. But when you're buried behind Josh Jacobs on a depth chart, that's going to happen. And we see that a lot of times. We're very talented running backs just kind of have to wait their turn. So I think Zemir White's turn is here now. And right now we're talking about him as the RV 20, but if he can maintain a similar workload to what we saw at the end of the year last year, he can instantly jump inside the top 15 inside the top 12. If he's still productive with it. I think you made a good point there because the biggest criticism I hear of Zemir White is more in redraft, it seems,

but in Dynasty as well, is that we elevate these guys only because they look like starting running backs. And if they aren't very good, it doesn't matter. They'll find somebody else is a little bit better. That's not what you're saying about Zemir White. This is not just about the opportunity. Like you like Zemir White, the player as well.

I do. And yeah, I mean, this is a guy we're talking about. He out-touched James Cook when they were playing together at Georgia. He can be a three-down back. I'm not sure why he slid the way that he did in the draft. I thought he was going to be a day-two pick. Like I said, he missed it by 17 picks. So unfortunately, we don't get to claim that. But I think that he is a very talented player. He's got the size the speed and the physicality to be a three down back and that's kind of the concern if you look at the current depth chart they did bring in Dylan Lauby who's a great pass catcher and they've got Amir Abdullah there as well so we might not see him get the same workload Josh Jacobs did where he's

getting 50 60 targets on top of the rushing upside but I'd be shocked to see zamir white get any less than 200 touches this year and like i said it's not just the projectable volume for 2024 i just think he's a good player so one guy i know like i think i'm probably higher on white than consensus as well we both are but i see zack charbonnet and his adp in may was rb31 so doesn't even belong on this screen according to dynasty adp and that makes sense because like i like ken walker as a top 12 dynasty running back as well but i think zach charbonnet is really good and he's got a new coaching staff who may really find things they value in his game maybe even over ken walker how high are you on charbonnet and can you talk me down a little bit? Uh,

no. Again, you said I was going to shred your, your, uh, your rankings and pick you apart and all that, but I really can't because you like a lot of the same guys I do. And,

uh, Zach Charbonnet for me is a guy that I find myself still trying to draft and still trying to get in trades here. And like I said, you know, we saw it last year with Zamir white and we saw with a bunch of other guys, we see these year two, year three breakouts for running backs all the time and I love Charbonnet last year when he was coming into the league um and unfortunately the only time we saw him with like

with a meaningful workload was just through a gauntlet I'm sure you remember that last year it was the the Rams the 49ers and um who was the other team? Dallas. Those were the three games that he actually got starting touches on. But you look at his profile, he had three times the target share in college that Kenneth Walker did. He's bigger and heavier, and he's got that stronger first step, so he profiles to take the goal line work. Right now, Walker has been the guy in Seattle, and it's impossible to predict what the workloads are going to look like this year, but Charbonnet has everything you want to see in a fantasy football running back, like the ability to catch passes and the ability to score touchdowns. That's what we want to see,

and he did both of those in college, so I'm still very bullish on Zach Charbonnet. Even if there is that hurdle of Kenneth Walker to get over, all it takes is Kenneth Walker to tweak an ankle. And then we're looking at Zach Charbonnet as a weekly top 10 running back. We've got a couple of comments in the chat here. Gingerbread man says the fall of Pollard over one season is wild. And I did, this is not to Pat Heath on the back, but I just, I've not dropped him that much. I keep my old rankings handy so I can access it. And a year ago, I had Tony Pollard at RB18 in Dynasty. I just wasn't ever as sure about him becoming a feature back and being really good in that role as everyone else seemed to be. Jerry says, what could have been? TyJ Spears, what could have been a little crying emoji there.

That is my ranking dilemma. I have Spears at RB21. I have Tony Pollard at RB22. I have no real strong take there. I can't decide which one to rank higher. Obviously, Spears is younger. We expect Pollard to be better

this year. Do you have a strong preference between these two? Keith, you're going to think I'm lying. I'm looking at my rankings right now. I have Tajay Spears at RB20 and Tony Pollard at RB21. So, I mean, again, like we couldn't be more on the same page here. I have these guys back to back in my rankings, just one spot ahead of where you have them both. And I give the slight preference to Tajay Spears because of the youth. And that's really it. You know, he's a little bit younger in redraft, which I know this show isn't about.

I prefer Pollard. But in Dynasty, I prefer Spears. But this is one where I've just been like pulled my hair out this offseason trying to get a read on what the Tennessee Titans backfield could look like. Because a lot of times we know how to project this. You know, like you look at Baltimore, for example, example they got Derrick Henry Derrick Henry's getting the early down work and then they've got uh Rasheen Ali or Keaton Mitchell who can kind of take the long distance like there's always the the thunder and the lightning and then you look at Pollard and

Spears and their skill sets just overlap so much like they do all of the same thing so are we going to see a 50-50 split are we going to see Pollard getting the work? Are we going to see Spears getting the work? It's really tough for me to get a read on. I'm thinking the money that they gave Pollard means that they want to use him this year, but long-term, I'm just such a huge fan of Tajay Spears. I think if he didn't have that knee injury coming out of college, we'd probably be looking at him inside the top 15 after what he did last year, but there are still concerns about his knee and his long-term availability um but still he looked great last year so i'm willing to put him slightly ahead of pollard and i do wonder like the ravens have done this for several

years and part of the reason is because lamar handles 30 of their rush attempts but we just really haven't seen a running back go over 15 touches a game on average very often and i i think there's reason with both spears and pollard to think maybe they shouldn't be workhorse running backs but they do have that overlap and skill that you mentioned and maybe that's a good thing maybe when we put tony pollard on the field and we put tige spears on the field the next play they don't gain any information by which running back is on the field because they can both do the same things. We'll give both these guys 12 to 15 touches a game. They'll both average better than five yards per carry.

And you'll just have a really good run offense. I think one of the points you made, and I would agree with it strongly, I expect Pollard to be better in redraft this year. I don't think that's a certainty. I could see, I could certainly see a situation whereby week nine, it's now 16 touches a game for Spears and 12 for Pollard. Right. And I mentioned the contract.

I tried so hard not to do that because I've been burned so many times in the past. Kenny Galladay, New York, John Smith and the Patriots. I try so hard not to follow the money. Yeah. Jake, how many times did I bring up Miles Sanders contract last year?

And I guess it's just dead money after like four games of poor production. They were absolutely done with him. Let's go ahead and take our second break. Then we will move into Arby's 25 through 36 and maybe see who the best running backs that I left off the list are. Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage. For more than 65 years, Securian Canada has been helping Canadians build secure tomorrows. Their insurance solutions are designed to help protect you and your loved ones financially,

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It's not just the law. It's a step to keep your team and community safe. Visit OntarioOneCall.ca and avoid unnecessary damages to get the job done right. Data sourced from the ORCGA 2023 Dirt Report. So you get into this, I mean, it's not the third tier, but it's going to be our third slide, Arby's 25 through 36, and you're going to see a lot of veteran running backs who rank much higher in dynasty or in redraft. And then you're also going to see a lot of younger backs

that maybe I favor a little bit that don't necessarily have any sort of job locked up this year because that's just the kind of nature of this beast. At RB25, I have Alvin Kamara. RB26, Najee Harris. Somebody was asking why he wasn't on the last slide. Maybe we'll talk about that in a second. David Montgomery, Derrick Henry, Jerome Ford, Joe Mixon, slide maybe we'll talk about that in a second david mcgumray derrick henry jerome ford joe

mixon chase brown jalen wright blake coram james connor jk dobbins and brian robinson again that's camara harris mcgumray henry ford and mixon brown right coram connor dobbins and robinson who's your favorite guy on this slide, Dave? I just love this group of running backs right here. I do. They're cheap, and that's the main thing that I'm looking for in running backs. We're kind of going through the rankings here. I haven't talked a ton about game theory and all that,

but I just really struggle to pay up for running backs with how volatile they are. We've seen so many guys just completely fall in value. We talked about Austin Eckler earlier. What about Javante Williams after his rookie season was like the overall RB2 in dynasty. And if I'm correct, he wasn't on the last slide, right? Is he outside of your top? He was, he is actually in my top 20. I'm, I'm higher on him than most as well. Yes. Well, good. You're, I think you're smart to hold on to some of that value, but a lot of people are just fading him into oblivion now after an injury. So this is where I like to operate because these guys are cheap. And if they do fall in value, it's not going to completely tank you. But one of the tiers that I had in my recent article, and again, these aren't really tiers, but like I

said, like buckets of players with similar archetypes. And one of them is buy with no plans to sell because you can get these guys for dirt cheap and just ride them till the wheels fall off and in that tier derrick henry alvin camara david montgomery aaron jones austin eckler james connor ezekiel elliott nick chubb some other guys that aren't even on this list but right i'm okay buying all of these veterans for super cheap because you know what you're getting you're not buying these guys with the intention of flipping them after this season for more value you're buying them because you're probably going to get better production over the next few years than you would from your third round pick in a rookie draft. And obviously, you're only buying these guys if you're contending. But I think the guy that jumps out to me more than

anybody is Derrick Henry. And it's crazy that this guy has just churned out RB1 season after RB1 season. And we're talking about him outside of the top 24 running backs, but it's understandable. He's 30 years old, but I think the situation for him in Baltimore is just what we want to see in fantasy. I mean, what did Gus Hudricks, I don't have it off the top of my head. I think he scored 15 touchdowns last year or 13 touchdowns. Whatever it was, was just unbelievable. But this Ravens offense, they don't trust Lamar Jackson around the goal line the same way Josh Allen and Jalen Hurts get touches around the goal line. When they get close, they just give it to their running back.

And we saw Gus Edwards. We've seen Justice Hill in spurts. I think Derrick Henry is just going to eat in this offense. And he's old, so everybody wants to get rid of him. But if you can get Derrick Henry for a third-round pick right now, which is possible in a lot of leagues, I'm a okay doing that. And I traded like I know I'm a little I'm a lot lower on Henry in terms of running back rankings and where ADP is. He's RB 18 by Dynasty League or May ADP, which seems really high.

I also have a contender that I just traded for Derrick Henry last week. And so I, I, I valued him right around a round two pick. And so I would agree with you. Like if you can get them at that cost, absolutely do it. I would also say, if you have Derrick Henry on a team and you look at it and say, you know, last year was probably my last chance. Um, I I'd be selling quickly, too. If you're not going to compete this year, get that guy off your roster. But again, I think a round two pick probably works pretty well there. I know you asked for one, but I'll throw Alvin Kamara in as another great buy right now.

I mean, people are talking about him. He's getting up there in age. What does he have left in the tank? I don't know if it really matters all that much. He was eighth in the league and weighted opportunities per game last year. He was the RB five in half PPR scoring. Like he is just still going to get peppered with targets here. So all of these guys have red flags, but I am okay buying almost every single player on this list for the right price. Okay. So I want to talk about nausea and he wasn't originally on our schedule to talk,

but somebody, somebody asked about him and I do have Jalen Warren, a couple of spots higher than him. It seems like in redraft, it's, it's almost set in consensus that people like Najee more than Jalen Warren, despite the fact that Warren was better last year. I don't know if that's because people think Arthur Smith's going to favor Najee Harris for some reason. I don't have any idea what Arthur Smith is going to do. I never did figure that out. But where do you stand on? Do you think Harris is a good buy as well?

Do you still have hope that he can be the guy that we thought he could be after that rookie season? I'm not sure. And after his rookie season, I was trying to sell Najee where I could because we just saw him eating so much in the passing game because Big Ben was incapable of throwing the ball downfield. Like all he could do was throw the ball to Najee Harris pretty much. So I think that really kind of skewed the perception on what Najee could be. Again, I don't have the top of my head. Wasn't planning on talking, but I think think he saw 90 95 targets or something like that his rookie season and we haven't seen him come close to that since um he's kind of an old school runner you know I think 10 years ago he would have been a lot better in the NFL than he is now um but there just isn't really a need for that type of running back in today's NFL somebody who's just going to get you three yards and not much more than that Jalen Warren seems like the spark plug and we've seen that Arthur Smith likes to swing for those big plays.

So I do have Harris ahead of Warren in my redraft rankings, but I think in Dynasty, trying to project long-term, I don't know if Najee Harris is going to do much if he goes with a different team. He was really just kind of propped up by the volume that he saw through his first few years in Pittsburgh. If I'm trying to get one of these guys in dynasty, I'd prefer Jalen Warren, just because I think that he is the type of guy that can succeed in any environment where Najee needs the volume to be efficient. Now we've talked about trading for these guys like Camara Montgomery, Henry mix,

and even James Connor. And there's some guys just outside. I mean, we haven't, I don't have Austin Eckler in my top 36, but he would fit that group of guys. You could change. You could go trade for on a win-now team if you think that Austin Eckler is going to have a little bit of a resurgence.

Are you okay acquiring guys like that this time of year, or would you prefer to wait until closer to the trade deadline to make sure they're still healthy? Yeah, I'd definitely wait until in-season at this point. I think there's a little buy window right before the NFL draft when people are worried about their veterans getting replaced. And then there's another little buy window right after the NFL draft if their guy doesn't get replaced. But I don't think this is the best time. You know, rookie fever has kind of calmed down a little bit. Draft picks have lost their value. So I think if you want to wait until the trade deadline, that's fine. But there's also going to be a buy window as soon as the season opens and you just try to sell after

a big game. Let's say week one, Austin Eckler somehow comes out and pulls eight, nine, 10 targets. People are going to go crazy over Austin Eckler and then you can try to sell them then. So I think that trying to sell running back between now and week one is just a lost cause. This is when trades kind of simmer down a little bit, especially with running backs and stuff. So I'm waiting until the season kicks off. And then if you can hold until the trade deadline and really squeeze some extra out of a contender, that's great. But at best, wait until week one. Yeah.

If I'm trying to acquire, like I've got a couple of rookie drafts going on right now. And so that's obviously a time that those types of deals can get done. I'm going to, like, you're going to have to take a discount. If I'm going to take your, like I just did, I'm going to take your Derek Henry or your James Connor right now, because I'm assuming a lot more risk than I want to. Well, I might only get half a season. If I trade for them in October, it seems much more likely if they're healthy in October, they're still going to be healthy in December. And there's a good chance if I've got a true contender, I don't need this guy to get to 6-2 or whatever to start the season. I need him to help me win playoff games in the only time of the year

that actually matters when we're trying to win championships. Right. So I do want to talk about a rankings dilemma because it's a couple of really different running backs, J.K. Dobbins and Brian Robinson. Robinson feels like a pretty safe bet that he's going to get 220 carries this year. He's probably going to get the goal line work for the commanders. Doesn't sound like Austin Eckler really wants to bang into the line anymore.

And Eckler's going to handle most of the passing downs work. So Robinson is probably like a high-end flex this year. If something happens to Eckler, maybe there's more upside Dobbins. I still believe in the level of talent he had. You mentioned Nick Chubb, who's also coming back from an injury, but older, he'd be on a later list, not in my top 36, but I think Dobbins had that type of talent. He's also had just some terrible injury luck. Now he's going to the chargers, paired again with Gus Edwards. How do you rank these two, Dobbins and Robinson, and which one do you prefer? Man, you're tugging at my heartstrings here because I love J.K. Dobbins. You talk about

being a believer in his talent. I was too. He is one of my favorite running backs in that, was it the 2020 class, I believe, where it was just loaded, so many good running backs in there, and everybody was going crazy over Jonathan Taylor and DeAndre Swift and Clyde Edwards and I found myself drafting a ton of J.K. Dobbins that year but it's tough to ignore what we've seen so far man the injuries have really been piling up what we've seen like the best case scenario for a guy coming back from an Achilles is Deonta Foreman. And it took him years to get back to a productive level again. So I want to believe, and I want to still have faith in J.K. Dobbins, but I'm going to prefer Brian Robinson here just for the sake that he's

healthy. And we know we can count on him this year. We might not see J.K. Dobbins ever really return to the prospect he was when he was drafted four years ago. So we've got some veterans who did not, and we've got a little extra time here. So I'm going to kind of add to the rundown. We've got some veterans who did not make my top 36, who are going to be drafted much higher in your regular redraft league. I just want to kind of list off some names here. And you tell me if you're interested at're interested at all if you're a contender in acquiring these guys or if you kind of like me just think it's probably mostly over aaron jones

now on the minnesota vikings is my rb 38 austin eckler now on the washington commanders is my rb 40 he's not quite old enough but i don't think he has a very long runway so i'll include him zach moss just 26 years old my rb 43 and probably the starting running back for the bingles this year raheem mostert 32 years old my rb 44 devin singletary the lead back for the giants my rb 45 like any of these guys that i i didn't have in my i'll throw in nick chubb who i'm very concerned about ever really being good again. But any of those guys you view as buys for contenders or just it's probably over? Zach Moss is the one that jumps out to me and he next to Nick Chubb is probably the cheapest of the bunch as well. I think anybody is trying to sell Zach Moss right now and talked about Joe Mixon, a guy who wasn't a great athlete,

but was able to consistently churn out RB1 seasons in Cincinnati. We saw Zach Moss last year with Indianapolis look great in a featured role, which honestly, I think brings up a different discussion. Like that and Singletary and Zach Moss both look great last year on new teams. What's happening in Buffalo that they couldn't figure it out with either of them? Either way, I think Zach Moss is the guy that kind of jumps out to me as a guy that I'm trying to buy. The volume is going to be there. And I like Chase Brown. And I know Chase Brown was inside your top 36, and reasonably so. He's inside my top 36 as well because of the age and the athleticism and the burst and the big play abilities. But when you start looking at projected volume for the 2024 season, Zach Moss could easily find himself in a role where he gets 200,

250 opportunities on a very good offense. So I don't even know what the going price is for Zach Moss right now. You could probably pair up like a fourth and a fifth rounder and bring Zach Moss in on your team. And I think he's somebody that can contribute this year. And he is, uh, he's RB 36 by recent dynasty league football ADP. So just ahead of most or ahead of Singletary ahead of Gus Edwards, ahead of Dobbins, but behind Austin Eckler behind the rest of the guys that we were talking about that group. And I did think it was interesting.

Like the guy that you chose was the youngest of the group, which is kind of what we do in the dynasty community. Like we don't necessarily want the guy who was RB1 a couple years ago. Give me the guy who might have just a little bit of tread left on the tires. There's a couple of younger guys who I have ranked in that same range with them that really haven't done. A couple of them are rookies, and a couple of them just gave us glimpses, but last year, Marshawn Lloyd, Keaton Mitchell,

Julia McLaughlin, and Bucky Irving. I feel like all those guys could be hyper efficient, but never see more than 12 touches per game. Julia McLaughlin is one that I am interested in buying. And I got to say Cecil Lammy over at football guys. I know you follow him on Twitter Heath and he keeps his ear to the Broncos beat he was shouting from the rooftops last offseason and preseason saying this kid Jaleel McLaughlin and I think everybody was reading those tweets

saying who like nobody knew who Jaleel McLaughlin was going into last year but yeah he looked great in his opportunity and you know again trying to kind of read the tea leaves here and uh as Chris Harris likes to say build up our mind palace but I'm trying to kind of read the tea leaves here and, as Chris Harris likes to say, build up our mind palace. But I'm trying to kind of understand what this Broncos offense is going to look like. We saw last year where they tried fitting a square peg into a round hole, making Russ Wilson be this timing quarterback, and it did not work out at all. You look at Bo Nix on the flip side, complete opposite end of the spectrum. I think he can run Sean Payton's offense, and that offense really funnels through passing targets to the running backs. They had a higher target share go to running backs than

any other team last year, and while I think Javante Williams might be able to recapture the magic now that he's two years removed from the ACL tier, Jaleel McLaughlin, he can catch passes out of the backfield. He can get downfield and catch passes as well, and he's just a spark plug. When you look at his breakaway run rate and all those fun efficiency metrics, he was off the charts. So the big concern, obviously, playing Dynasty is he's undrafted and doesn't really have any insulated value, but he could be had for so cheap. And if he ends up being the RB2 on this team in Denver, they're going to have enough passing targets going to running backs that Javante Williams and Jaleel McLaughlin could both be productive this year.

Did have one more question from the chat I wanted to get to before we finished up. Somebody asked me to touch on Jalen Wright over Blake Corum in my rankings, and it is like as close as it gets. One of these guys is RB 32. One of these guys is RB 33. So I'm not going to make a strong case. I will say the fact that right's going to be a year and a half, two years younger at the start of the season does matter quite a

bit to me. The fact that right landed in Miami and this Mike McDaniel offense does matter quite a bit to me. I think when you look at a 32 year old Raheem Mostert and you look at the questions that surround a chance potential for a, to be a true workhorse back, there's some real sneaky opportunity there. And Wright is the type of player. I know that you guys at Football Guys really loved him before the NFL draft. He has that big play game-breaking speed

to where you might give him 10 touches, and oh, wow, he can't put that back in the box. Yeah, and I think that's exactly it so you know we're talking dynasty here but i find myself drafting a ton of jalen right and best ball and redraft leagues as well and i think you hit it on the head you know rahi most are 32 years old surprised everybody last year probably the best pick you could have made in fantasy football but i think the writing is on the wall that his role is going to shrink a little bit. You also saw Devon Achan. I don't think he's a guy you want to lean on for 15, 18 touches a game.

So if you can kind of have two guys that do the same thing in Devon Achan and Jalen Wright and just give them each 8 to 12 touches per game with their efficiency and with the holes that are made in this offensive uh, this, this offensive line for Miami, that's all it really takes to kind of finish as a fantasy RB one, you rip off one 50, 60, 70 yard touchdown, and you've made your week right there. So I think that's what we'll see from right. And HN is both of them in a small role, but they're efficient enough that it doesn't really matter. Awesome. Awesome stuff, Dave Kluge. Thank you for being here. Thank you for joining the show. Tell everybody else like what you've got coming up and remind them season you can find that at youtube.com slash football guys fantasy we've also got a dynasty channel and then we've got the audible

channel with sigmund and cecil so depending on uh whatever it is you're looking for at football guys we've got you covered with three different um youtube channels there i want to thank you dave i want to thank everybody who was active in the chat thank you to all you were just listening to the podcast we will be back on fr Friday to talk tight end and quarterback rankings. We will talk to you on Friday.