Fantasy football should see a return of running back-heavy drafts

In the first of a six-part fantasy draft preview series leading up the NFL season, Fantasy Insanity discusses the war-room game plan for the draft. Next week: Tight ends.

Everyone loves the “good ol’ days,” even if we don’t all agree when those good ol’ days actually occurred. Maybe you liked the bell-bottoms of the 1970s, the garish neon colors of the ’80s or the grunge trend of the ’90s.

The 2022 fantasy football season is primed to deliver a throwback of its own, to the good ol’ days of running back-heavy drafts. You know what, let the Madman amend that statement: It’s a throwback to the value of those days, even if it won’t be a throwback draft in practice.

Maybe it’s the need to be different, habit based on the assimilation to PPR scoring or just a lack of understanding positional depth, but many will opt for wide receivers early, or even embrace the zero-RB theory.

You can win by doing this, but you have to be lucky. You need the right players to get injured, to draft exactly the right “sleeper” picks or have enough to win free-agent bidding on the right guys at the right time.

On the other hand, if you go RB-heavy early, the only luck you need is to avoid catastrophic injury to one of your top two guys. By no means is that an easy hurdle to clear at that position, but it is a more likely achievement than landing on two direct hits later in drafts or on the waiver wire.

Which brings us to our most important point: The wide receiver position is incredibly deep. You can find quality, startable guys well into the middle rounds. That is much more difficult to do with RBs.

Josh Jacobs Getty Images

Thus, the Madman gives his endorsement this election year to early-round running backs. Our confidence in RB options starts to diminish significantly before you reach RB20 — Javonte Williams at RB18 is the last of those we feel comfortable relying upon, and we start to get nervous with James Conner at RB19.

To be fair, our “comfy” WR range begins to drop around WR28 with Gabriel Davis and Adam Thielen, before Treylon Burks and Tyler Locket. But, the caveat is, those WRs go a lot deeper in drafts than the RBs. Even if RBs don’t dominate the first round like they used to, they still populate a disproportionate amount of picks in the first 3-5 rounds.

Among the last of our comfy RBs to get drafted is Josh Jacobs, who has an ADP of 50.52. The last of our comfy WRs, Thielen has an ADP of 77.83, more than two rounds later.

Then let’s talk late fliers. We like RBs Rashaad Penny, Tony Pollard, Michael Carter, Chase Edmonds and Ronald Jones. But we don’t want to actually have to play them routinely.

Amon-Ra St. Brown, Rashod Bateman, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Russell Gage, Michael Gallup, Christian Kirk, Adam Lazard, Kadarius Toney, Elijah Moore, Skyy Moore — these are all players we feel comfortable added to our roster at their draft position, even if we would prefer to also not rely on them. But that list is much longer.

And if you’re thinking outside the box to tight end or quarterback with early picks, well, stop. There are just too many productive fantasy QBs. When you can get Matthew Stafford in the 10th round and/or Derek Carr in the 11th, you can get more insurance at the more volatile positions and still field a title-worthy team.

Rashaad Penny AP

And sure, the top tight ends are tempting. But we worry about defensive attention to Travis Kelce without Tyreek Hill, and potential age-related regression. Mark Andrews nearly doubled his production last season from the year before, so we worry about regression there as well. The rest? Injury concerns or other questions. We just might as well wait or even punt on tight ends.

So put on your throwback jersey, crank up the Evanescence, break out the DVD player and rewatch “Old School,” then grab several running backs early in your fantasy drafts.