Sean Koerner — FantasyPros’ 4x Most Accurate Fantasy Football Ranker — has put together his 2024 RB Upside Ratings, a comprehensive guide to fantasy running back rankings, top RB handcuffs, and sleepers.
This series is part of our 2024 Fantasy Football Draft Kit, which also gives you access to Koerner’s positional tiers, our experts’ fantasy football rankings, updated projections, and cheat sheet builders. Click here to get access now!
Note: The RB Upside Ratings sheet was last updated on Friday, Aug. 30.
Once the top 30 or so running backs are off the board, we’re typically selecting backup running backs to add to our fantasy football rosters.
In most cases, whether they meet value by the end of the season will come down to factors that are outside of their control, like whether the running back at the top of the depth chart stays healthy or not.
Backups who are given a chance to start in place of an injured, suspended, or benched teammate can win you your fantasy league, but hitting on these backs is largely a guessing game without deeper analysis.
That’s why I developed my RB Upside Ratings sheet to help identify the top running back handcuffs of 2024.
At this point in the draft, I consider a wide range of factors when determining which backups and rb handcuffs to target as potential fantasy sleepers. My RB Upside Ratings chart can be utilized as a visual guide for evaluating which backups have the most potential upside and paths to success from a fantasy football perspective.
How I Make My Fantasy Running Back Upside Ratings
Here are the factors I reference in my downloadable chart below, which you can access with our fantasy draft kit:
- Role: The type of role the RB is in — in other words, is he projected to be a workhorse, RB1/RB2/RB3 in a running back committee (RBBC), strict backup, or merely a 3rd down back.
- Start %: This metric serves as a gauge for a running back’s job security. It reflects the likelihood of a running back starting all 17 games in a season if every RB on the team remains healthy. A lower percentage for a starter suggests a higher risk of being overtaken (which significantly diminishes their value), while a higher percentage for a backup indicates a greater chance of them stepping into the lead role even without an injury.
- Health: This reflects the player’s current condition heading into the season. A backup positioned behind a starting RB who is dealing with an injury, holdout, or suspension gains additional value.
- ADP: Current ADP, as of August 20, 2024.
- Starter/Backup In: This shows where I rank the player player when everyone is healthy
- Starter/Backup Out: This shows how I rank the player when their teammate, the #1 or #2 running back (whichever one they aren’t) is out. Again, this is simply a guide but not necessarily exactly where I will have them ranked if the situation occurs in season. There are a hundred other factors that will be in play that could change the rankings if that happens. We are just trying to get a general idea as to what their injury upside is.
- Grade: The grade I assign a backup based on their ADP, rank with the starter in/out, while also factoring in the health, potential suspension, trade, injury history of the starter, and other factors. Again, the whole idea is to assess which running backs offer the most upside and odds of them actually getting there.
Related: Check out our Sleeper promo code before the fantasy football season kicks off!
2024 RB Upside Ratings & Top Handcuffs
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