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Fantasy Impact: Marshawn Lynch Traded To The Raiders

Fantasy Impact: Marshawn Lynch Traded To The Raiders

It feels as if I’m living the real-life movie of Groundhog Day. Over the last month, I swear I’ve woken up hearing that Marshawn Lynch has signed with the Raiders almost every day. But this time, it appears legit, pending a physical. It’s likely something they wanted to get worked out before the draft, in order to shift their attention away from the running back position. Let’s take a look at what this means for fantasy players.

If you haven’t heard, the Raiders have arguably the best run-blocking unit in football right now, especially after the Cowboys lost two of their starters this off-season. In 2016, the Raiders running backs combined to average 1.73 yards prior to contact, a jump from the Seahawks 1.37 last year and their 1.59 in 2015. But that’s just the icing on the cake for a running back like Lynch, because he often gets his yards after contact.

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Sticking to his final three years in Seattle, Lynch broke 224 tackles on 778 touches, which amounts to a broken tackle once every 3.47 touches. To give you a comparison, David Johnson led the league in broken tackles last year and he broke a tackle once every 5.25 touches. Lynch has always been a task to bring down, and despite his advanced age, he’s still going to be menace to opposing defenses.

The last time we saw Lynch on a field was in the first half of the 2015 where he didn’t look so great, averaging 3.8 yards per carry and scoring just three touchdowns on 124 touches. It’s fair to say that he may have struggled due to the injuries he was dealing with, but it’s also fair to question whether or not a running back like him was wearing down with age. He just turned 31 years old, and you can argue that he’s been the most physical running back from the last decade.

Still, the Raiders have shown multiple times that they want to improve their run game, whether it be beefing up their offensive line, drafting DeAndre Washington with a fifth-round pick, snagging Jalen Richard as an UDFA, and now pulling Lynch out of retirement. They also ran the ball 50 more times in 2016 than they did in 2015, and that number only figures to go up with their young talent on defense.

Opportunity is key in the NFL and Lynch is going to get plenty of it right out of the gate, but it’s a fair question to wonder if he’ll be the same player. It’s not as if he was dealing with a major injury and rehabbing the entire time. No, instead he was traveling the world, away from football for an entire year and a half. If there’s anyone who can take a full year off the game and come back to play with the same intensity, it’s probably Lynch. But you can’t forget that even though he’s a unique individual, he’s 31 years old and has taken a beating over the last nine seasons. Don’t expect miracles, instead expect mid-to-low RB2 type numbers in the range of guys like Isaiah Crowell and Eddie Lacy.


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Mike Tagliere is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him @MikeTagliereNFL.

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