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Every fantasy football draft season, there are players that cause a divide between fantasy football experts and analysts. To get a sense of the most volatile players entering fantasy football drafts, you can check out our Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) and view the player’s standard deviation. The lower the standard deviation, the more agreement around a player’s ranking. But a high standard deviation means our experts have a high range of expected outcomes.
Since these are the players that tend to make or break fantasy football drafts, we’ve paired our experts and writers — one higher on a player compared to our ECR and one lower — to bring to you a fantasy football player debate.
Today, our debate will center on Dolphins running back Kenyan Drake. Drake has an ECR of RB27 in half-PPR scoring formats. Our expert Anthony Amico (@amicsta) is higher on Drake, while expert Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) isn’t as confident in Drake taking the next step forward in 2019.
Let’s check out the fantasy football debate for Kenyan Drake.
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Fantasy Football Debate: Kenyan Drake
I think I’m just really surprised by the dropoff in rankings. FantasyPros ECR has Drake as RB27, and it feels like much of this is in reaction to Kalen Ballage seeing time as the first string RB in camp. But Drake is still likely to see a ton of targets, which matters more, no?
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
The targets definitely matter, but are sure they’ll continue to feature him in that role? He had a very low PFF receiving grade last season, while finishing tied for the 5th most drops among RB’s. Take those away and his value plummets
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
Drops are pretty unstable, and are usually a result of targets. I’m not worried about that. Ballage has not been good enough as a receiver to unseat him, and almost all of the chatter around him has been in an early down role. I’m picturing Drake as James White+, a top 15 RB.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
Alright, let’s even assume the receiving role stays the same. Last season he scored a TD on 5.2% of his touches. That’s a higher rate than Chubb, Sony Michel, and Christian McCaffrey. Last time I checked the Dolphins still blow, so that touchdown rate is going to drop
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
That’s fine, Drake is going to catch more than 60 balls this year. His HC and OC are both from NE, where passing to the RB was second nature. Jim Caldwell is the assistant HC, and his RBs always had high reception totals. Drake is getting there through the air. TDs are flimsy.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
Touchdowns are fairly random. But we can expect to see fewer total TD’s on bad offenses. Also while it’s technically accurate that their new coaches were from NE…Flores was the defensive coordinator, and O’Shea was the WR coach. McDaniels and Belichick run the offense
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
Coaches are founded in their roots. I would imagine O’Shea runs a similar offense to the one he’s coached under in NE.
To out-do his ECR he doesn’t really have to score. If he catches 60 balls and splits the rush load in half he’s going to be a major value.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
I don’t see it that way. This is a RB that’s going to see a lower percent of the early down work, is expected to see a reduction in touchdown rate, on one of the worst offenses in football, running behind the single worst offensive line. He’ll need more Miami Miracles to pay off
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
The Dolphins were 14th in FO Adjusted Line Yards last year, and then drafted 2 linemen. Yes, they lost JuWan James, but I’m not sure how that drops them to being the worst OL in football.
Drake was RB14 last year on just 120 carries. Even with less TDs his floor is high.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
Tunsil is the only decent guy they have on that line, with no depth at all behind the starters. And that stat is why I’m concerned. The TD’s were a huge part of his scoring (30%), and the carry total has nowhere to go but down since he and Ballage will split this year.
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
Down from 120? The Dolphins ran the least number of plays last year at 878. If we’re talking about numbers likely to change, it’s that now that Gase is gone. More plays = more touch opportunities. I would say Drake has plenty of room for improvement across the board.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
These are extremely low upside opportunities in that offense though. He’s going before White/Coleman/Miller/Penny/Sanders. I’d much rather take RB’s with the same, if not more volume, on offenses that will actually score
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
Miller will likely rise now with Foreman gone, and he isn’t going before White on DRAFT. Penny and Sanders are total wildcards who could bust pretty easily. Drake doesn’t belong anywhere near them. Coleman has upside, but again is part of a three-headed backfield.
— Anthony Amico (@amicsta) August 6, 2019
I wouldn’t call Penny and Sanders wildcards. Sanders is the best RB on that roster by a decent margin, and they have an elite cast at every other position. Penny has a ton to gain after the departure of Davis, and he’s part of a much better offense as well
— Nick Zylak (@NickZylakFFA) August 6, 2019
Fan Take
We also asked our Twitter followers for their take on Drake. Here’s what they had to say:
Kenyan Drake is the RB27 in 1/2 PPR based on our latest #ExpertConsensusRankings. In your opinion, he should be ranked …
— FantasyPros (@FantasyPros) August 6, 2019
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