In this series, I will be looking at every position and how players performed at different price points and under certain circumstances over the course of the past year. If you’re the type of player that is apt to lean towards always using a cheap quarterback or paying up for Rob Gronkowski, this may be a good time to see how such strategies worked out as a whole and if there are/were more optimal ways to approach your lineup construction from week to week.
Next up on our list of positional reviews we’ll look at the running backs. This group, as it oftentimes is, was characterized by the multitude of injuries to starters and the value created as underpriced backups took over starting roles. Below we’ll work through a few trends that either emerged or solidified themselves this season.
Slow Reaction Time
DraftKings pricing comes out extremely early each week and as such, lingering injury issues from that week have often not been resolved. We saw this lead to many starting running backs being priced severely below where they should have been, which is to be expected. Beyond this though, the pricing algorithms seemed slow to react to these newly minted starters even multiple weeks after they had taken over. For example, after finding success in his first game as a starter, David Johnson saw his price rise only $900. At $4,300 he was the 27th-highest priced running back of the week. Far from an isolated incident, we saw similar scenarios play out for Thomas Rawls, Jeremy Langford and Charcandrick West. If you were playing cash games and weren’t utilizing these underpriced running back assets, you were likely at a disadvantage.
On the flip side, these underpriced running backs created precarious situations when constructing GPP lineups. The low prices, new role, and publicity associated with the new role all but guaranteed massive ownership. For those that prescribe to the theory of fading a player when their projected ownership is quite high, this actually made your job much easier as there was no guessing required – these players would have massive ownership. This worked out in West’s first week as a starter, as he posted a disappointing performance and those who faded him likely profited. Alternatively, Johnson was so successful and so cheap, it was likely hard to finish high in any tournament without exposure to him in his time as a starter.
Fading the Premium Players
After the aforementioned rash of injuries to starting running backs and the slow price increases, those who have traditionally opted to pay up at the running back spot may have found themselves in need of a new strategy. Using our Trends tool, I’ve prepared a comparison between running backs priced at $7,000 or greater between last season and the current one.
While the consistency was comparable, on average, we saw a Plus/Minus -2.12 points lower than you could expect the previous year. What really stands out though is the amount of big games we saw from this upper tier of running backs in 2014 compared to 2015. Of the 102 players priced at $7,000 or higher in 2014, 34 (33.33%) produced a game of 25 or more DK points. In 2015, only 10 (15.87%) players were able to muster such performances.
The difference? A smaller player pool bereft of many injured, talented players is certainly partially to blame. But the type of players that were removed played a large role as well. Pass catching backs such as Le’Veon Bell, Jamaal Charles and Arian Foster were removed from this player pool and in their place we found two-down backs such as Todd Gurley and Adrian Peterson. They are supremely gifted backs that are capable of winning you a week with their rushing abilities, but also players who can see their touches reduced due to game flow in any given week.
Conclusion
If nothing else, these season served as a great lesson in game theory. With players like Gurley and Peterson, the public understands that in easier matchups that their teams are favored in, these backs are likely to see heavy workloads, causing their ownership levels to skyrocket. Conversely, in tougher matchups against good run defenses, we saw their ownership percentages drop. One such instance of this was in Week 12 when the Vikings traveled to Atlanta. The Falcons had yet to allow a 100-yard rusher all season and were favored to win, which projected game flow to turn on Peterson. As such, his ownership levels stayed in check, yet he finished with his best performance of the season. With all of the hyperbole and discussion that goes on throughout the week, it’s easy to begin to think that projected game flow is a sure thing, when in reality, things go awry more often than we’d like to believe. If you’re utilizing two-down backs, this is certainly something to attempt to exploit in the future if you didn’t this year.
With the return of the many injured stars, we’re bound to see some of the higher-priced options return to producing at a greater clip next season. But just as we saw with the quarterback position, the value-priced options reigned supreme this year.
