Last week, I wrote the first part of this series on quarterbacks. Here were the main takeaways:
- Quarterbacks at home and favored by Vegas historically provide the most value, but home underdogs could be intriguing tournament considerations.
- Quarterbacks with massive negative road splits like Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger don’t always see a massive ownership discount.
- High-priced quarterbacks like Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers may have huge upside, but their salaries make it tough to hit value consistently.
- Garbage time, poor game script, and a rushing floor can provide quarterback consistency at low ownership — especially when those players are cheap.
In Part 2, we’re again using our Trends tool, but this time we will focus on the running back position.
Perhaps there’s value in examining patterns with home/road splits (and the further impact of Vegas favorites/underdogs) that can help us uncover value or contrarian situations to target in the future.
Baseline Trend and Floor Projections
Our signature metric at FantasyLabs is Plus/Minus, which shows how players perform in the context of their salary-based expectations, but we’ve spent a lot of time working on our ceiling/floor projections for NFL based on similarity scores.
At the running back position, opportunity is everything, but different types of players have different ranges of outcomes. Floor takes into consideration a player’s median projection, matchup, and Vegas data, and then matches each player to the 30 most comparable situations in the past. From there, we can see the actual results of how those players have performed; floor is the 15th percentile of that range of outcomes.
Floor helps maintain as much relevance as possible while also expanding the sample size of each player pool. Further, it’s also important to visualize the potential range of outcomes each player has.
For the purpose of this study, I filtered down to running backs with a floor projection of 5.0 DraftKings points or higher. Those players have traditionally performed above expectations:
What happens if we break things down by home/away splits and favorites/underdogs according to Vegas?
Like quarterbacks, running backs playing at home on teams favored to win provided the most value — but they carried nearly twice the ownership in tournaments.
Home underdogs carried the lowest ownership — with the second-most value — but the biggest edge on a macro level might be to fade road favorites at high ownership.
Home RBs
When the season starts, be sure to keep an eye on our NFL Matchups Dashboard as well as our NFL News feed to see which running backs should see volume. Let’s start with those given a floor projection of five or more DraftKings points but also five or more games played last season:
Unsurprisingly, Le’Veon Bell and David Johnson were the two highest-owned running backs last season, which is understandable given they saw volume comparable to No. 1 wide receivers.
Devonta Freeman posted Roethlisberger-esque home/road splits, but he also finished with the third-most red zone carries in the NFL, which could regress in 2017. On the road, his Plus/Minus dipped from +7.00 to +0.97, and his Consistency Rating dropped from 90.0 to 37.5 percent. The public seemed to be on to this, however, as he carried less than half the ownership on the road.
Remember when Latavius Murray ran for 114 yards and three touchdowns against the Denver Broncos in Week 9 at 2.6 percent ownership? Good times. Even throwing that game out, he still provided an edge at home last season with a +5.69 Plus/Minus and a 75 percent Consistency Rating.
LeGarrette Blount was often overlooked on DraftKings because he doesn’t catch passes, but as the goal-line back in an elite offense, he probably had a safer floor than the narrative suggested.
Vegas Favorites and Underdogs
Let’s take this one step further. Here are the trends for those same backs, but this time as a Vegas favorite or underdog:
Small samples are a huge problem in NFL, but in regards to game theory, we can still find some potential takeaways.
- LeSean McCoy was relatively invincible at home, but he was much lower-owned as an underdog (and had a higher Consistency Rating).
- Jordan Howard and DeMarco Murray smashed last season as home underdogs but struggled as favorites in a small sample.
- Darren Sproles provided a huge edge at home when the Eagles were underdogs; perhaps targeting pass-catchers with a potentially poor game script is a sharp contrarian play. A massive 43.03 percent of Sproles’ opportunities came in the receiving game; the next closest in this group was Johnson at 29.06 percent. It makes sense that a player like Lamar Miller would provide more value as a favorite: Just 12.70 percent of his total opportunities came through the air.
Outside of lower ownership, is there any reason to be excited about rostering a running back on the road?
Notable Road RBs
Outside of the big three, running backs were typically lower-owned on the road, but who was the most consistent?
The Plus/Minus is lower across the board on the road, but what can we learn from this?
Sproles makes the list again, but this time fellow pass-catchers Giovani Bernard and James White join him. That makes sense: Pass-catching specialists should see more targets as road underdogs with a poor game script. Their ceiling may be lower, but targeting these receiving backs on the road could provide value in cash games.
Finally, here’s the list of road backs separated as favorites and underdogs:
Actionable takeaways:
- Ezekiel Elliott saw far less ownership as a road underdog, but the Cowboys were committed to giving him volume regardless of game script. These are the type of ceiling situations to look out for in tournaments.
- Pass-catching backs like Sproles, Bernard, and White were better as underdogs, as expected.
- Isaiah Crowell and Frank Gore were never road favorites, but with limited competition they often carry more touchdown upside than their ownership warrants.
Conclusion
Running backs at home and favored by Vegas historically provide the most value and are far more consistent, but underdogs as a whole could be intriguing tournament considerations if the player is game-script independent.
Based on their volume and consistency, Johnson and Bell were probably sharp plays regardless of splits and ownership.
Goal-line backs in elite offenses can still have a solid floor even if they don’t catch many passes.
Targeting cheap pass-catchers on underdogs can provide a solid floor in cash games, but they probably have a limited ceiling in tournaments.
