The game of fantasy football has evolved substantially over the years. Yet one thing has remained constant — upside wins championships. This has been obvious for as long as you’ve played fantasy football, whether you realized it or not. If every single one of your draft picks returned par value, you would consistently make the playoffs, but you’d never win. Not because your team would be bad, but because at least one of the other 11 teams in your league would have players that outproduced their ADP.
We know that the elite running back is the most valuable asset in fantasy football. Typically, you have to get your elite running backs by using first and second-round picks. If you could find an RB1 from an RB3 (or later), you’d have a significant advantage over your competition.
In 2019, the only RB3 to finish as an RB1 was Austin Ekeler, and that was largely due to Melvin Gordon’s holdout. It just wasn’t a good year for running back value.
In 2018, there were a number of RB3s (or worse) that returned RB1 value (or close to it): James Conner, Phillip Lindsay, Tarik Cohen, Marlon Mack, Aaron Jones, and Chris Carson were the most prominent ones. Will 2020 be more like 2018 or 2019? We have no way of knowing. The best we can do is pinpoint RB3s with the best chance of being RB1s.
Check out our consensus ADP to identify values across the most popular league hosts 
Mark Ingram (BAL) and J.K. Dobbins (BAL)
Just to be clear — I am not drafting Mark Ingram this season. I want to put that out there because it seems contradictory that I’d include him on this list. That’s the beauty of fantasy football and separating your personal opinions from objective reality. There is a very clear path for Ingram to finish as an RB1. I’m not drafting him because I believe in J.K. Dobbins that Dobbins will eventually take over a relatively split backfield.
There’s still a very realistic scenario where that doesn’t happen, and this backfield ends up looking like it did last year, where Ingram finished as the overall RB11. That’s it. That’s the path. Dobbins gets treated more like Derrick Henry was when the Titans had DeMarco Murray and just has to wait his turn while Ingram plays out his last year or two of being an effective running back. Ingram is 30 years old and has never been a particularly special player. He just gets it done. All Ingram has to do is be used like he was last year, fight off a little touchdown regression, and he can be an RB1 again. If he does that, he will be a league winner from his RB27 ADP.
Ironically, I don’t want Dobbins either. While I do believe that Dobbins will take over this backfield before year’s end, I don’t know exactly when. In what should be a screwy season, I’m not willing to spend a sixth or seventh-round pick and wait. Dobbins has the talent, and if we knew he was going to be the primary back, he’d be a second-round pick. I think that’s where he will be priced heading into the 2021 season. I can’t deny that he has the upside to finish as an RB1, so I would be remiss to exclude him, but at his RB32 cost, I can’t pay it for a guy that may be useless for more than half a season.
Kareem Hunt (CLE)
Currently the RB29 by ADP, Kareem Hunt’s name should come as no surprise here. While it’s difficult to envision him as an RB1 as long as Nick Chubb is around, there are more paths to a Hunt RB1 finish than you make realize at first glance.
The obvious one is a Chubb injury, but the less obvious part of this is it wouldn’t take any sort of lengthy injury. No one is rooting for Chubb to get hurt, but if he were to miss a couple of games with a sprained ankle or end up on the COVID list for a month, that could be all Hunt needs to reach RB1 status.
We know Hunt is capable because he’s done it before. He was an RB1 in both of his first two seasons in the league. Given that he was with the Chiefs, it was fair to question how much of that was system or talent. The Chiefs certainly helped, but we saw what Hunt could do on his own last season. From Weeks 10-16, Chubb averaged 14.1 PPG, and Hunt averaged 13.5 PPG. That’s pretty much the same. If Hunt were to get even a quarter of the season with the backfield to himself, he could get close to an RB1 finish.
There’s also the possibility that Hunt, who has a 0% chance of being on the Browns in 2021, simply gets traded. This season, more so than any other, will see teams needing to plug holes and fill spots due to an expected increase in players missing time. What if a contending team loses their running back midway through the season? Or even if it’s a bad team like the 2019 Cardinals. Opportunity is everything. And unlike Kenyan Drake of 2019, we can be certain that if a team chooses to trade for Hunt, they’re doing it to make him the feature back and possibly sign him to an extension.
The obvious path to Hunt finishing as an RB1 is Nick Chubb going away for some reason. The more likely path is Hunt doing it on another team. I love Hunt at his ADP because he’s proven that even if 2020 is exactly like 2019 in terms of his usage, he has low-end RB2 floor. He’s priced at his floor, but his ceiling is sky-high, which is the exact type of player you want to target.
“The Handcuffs”: Alexander Mattison (MIN), Tony Pollard (DAL), Boston Scott (PHI), Chase Edmonds (ARI)
I decided to put these guys together because they are all going as RB4s or RB5s, and their paths to being RB1s are the same — they all need an injury to the starter in front of them. It goes without saying that there are many other handcuff backs with a chance to excel in the absence of the starter. I specifically chose these four players because we’ve seen proof of concept.
Alexander Mattison is the clear handcuff to Dalvin Cook. If Cook goes down, Mattison is going to see the majority of the touches in a run-heavy offense.
Tony Pollard is the clear handcuff to Ezekiel Elliott. During Zeke’s 2019 holdout, Pollard dominated first-team reps and was poised to be an every-down back until Zeke returned. Elliott has been the pinnacle of health during his time in the NFL, but if he were to miss time, Pollard, as the lead back in what could be the NFC’s best offense, is a league winner.
Boston Scott is the clear handcuff to Miles Sanders (and he also may have standalone value). More than the first two, Scott has demonstrated his RB1 upside by posting two elite RB1 performances (albeit one in Week 17) in 2019. Scott doesn’t profile as a three-down back, but in that Week 17 game, he played 76% of the snaps and touched the ball 23 times en route to 35.8 fantasy points. He obviously won’t do that every week, but the fact that he did it at all proves what he’s capable of if given the opportunity.
Chase Edmonds is the cheapest of the four and, like Scott, has also demonstrated his RB1 upside. He was literally the overall RB1 Week 7 against the Giants last season with 35 fantasy points. If Edmonds didn’t get hurt the following week, I don’t think the Cardinals would’ve ever traded for Drake, and we’re talking about Edmonds as a second-round pick instead of him. Edmonds has the highest chance of being an RB1 out of these four backs because Drake does not have the job security of Cook, Elliott, or Sanders.
If one of those three gets hurt, there is a 100% chance that when they recover, they return to their previous job (Sanders could find himself in a split, but he’s not going to be a backup). Drake, on the other hand, could miss a couple of games, watch Edmonds dominate, and come back to the same role Edmonds returned to last season when he watched Drake dominate during his own absence.
2020 Draft Kit: View printable cheat sheets, sleepers & mistakes to avoid
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Jason Katz is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Jason, check out his archive or follow him @jasonkatz13.
