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Running Backs to Avoid (2021 Fantasy Football)

 
The 2020 NFL season barely ended, and we’re already preparing for the 2021 season. It’s never too early to dip your toes into some pre-pre-pre-draft analysis. It goes without saying that everything you read in February is subject to change upon new information, so don’t hold me to any takes in here that change over the coming months.

With that being said, there is still value in constantly evaluating the fantasy football landscape. The following are running backs I plan on avoiding based upon the information available to us right now as well as what I anticipate will happen between now and the start of the 2021 season.

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David Montgomery (CHI)
You just knew David Montgomery would be first on this list. I promise I have nothing against him personally. I thought he was one of the worst running back prospects in a long time, and his rookie year proved that to be correct. Last season, he showed legitimate improvement. I am no longer certain he will be out of the NFL in 2023 (but it’s still a possibility). However, let’s pump the brakes on Montgomery as an RB1.

In addition to actually getting better at football, Montgomery benefited from some good fortune. During the first three games of the 2020 season, when Tarik Cohen was active, Montgomery was targeted just three times in each game. After Cohen tore his ACL, the Bears didn’t really replace Cohen with someone else – they just kept Montgomery on the field. Over his following five games, Montgomery saw at least five targets in each game and averaging a hair under five targets a game without Cohen. Montgomery’s snap count in his first three games: 45%, 54%, 56%. After Cohen went down, Montgomery was at about 80-85% in every game, except for a couple, and never lower than 65%.

Whether it’s via Cohen’s return, the Bears drafting a running back on day two, or the team signing a veteran, Montgomery is unlikely to see the volume he did in 2020. I’m also unwilling to buy that he suddenly is just good at football after how bad he looked in college and during his rookie season. I expect Montgomery to find his way into the second round, which is a price I am just not interested in paying.

Josh Jacobs (LV)
One of the biggest mistakes I made in the 2020 season was extending the necessity of taking a running back early “no matter what” too far. For 2021, the plan will be to take running back early, but a player like Josh Jacobs is exactly when you need to pull back and just accept that you can’t construct the ideal team. Taking a running back early just for the sake of having a running back is not beneficial. That is what happened with Jacobs.

We know that Jacobs is a sub-athlete with a 28th percentile speed score and 34th percentile burst score. Jacobs was viewed as a guy that just “gets football.” And he’s not bad at all. He’s not even necessarily a player you don’t want on your team. The problem is he’s overpriced. He was overpriced in 2020 and is poised to be overpriced again in 2021.

Jacobs needed to improve his passing game usage to return value in 2020. That happened, but not to the extent necessary. Jacobs averaged just three targets a game. He managed an RB11 finish based on ranking third in goal-line carries and fourth in total touchdowns. We want running backs that rely heavily on rushing to experience a positive game script. The Raiders are technically trending upward, but we are three years into the Jon Gruden $100 million experiment, and they’ve posted seasons of 4-12, 7-9, and 8-8. The Raiders are unlikely to suddenly be good in 2021 without a quarterback or coaching upgrade. Without that, Jacobs will continue to experience games where he’s pulled for large portions for the pass-catching back. He may experience touchdown regression as 12 touchdowns on a bad team is a bit high.

There’s also the matter of Jacobs being very prone to bust performances or middling, non-needle moving performances. Jacobs scored a total of 235.3 fantasy points in 15 games in 2020. 27.8% of those points came in his Week 1 and Week 10 games combined. Jacobs had three top-five games and averaged 15.7 ppg. However, he scored 13.5 fantasy points or fewer nine times, including four games in the single digits. Jacobs hit 20 fantasy points just five times and once was in Week 17, which does not count anyway. Jacobs’s problem is not that he’s bad – he isn’t – it’s that he’s very mediocre. He’s a solid third-round running back priced in the back end of the first round and just isn’t worth passing on the elite wide receivers for.

Clyde Edwards-Helaire (KC)
If I’m going to rail on Josh Jacobs for only hitting 20 fantasy points five times, I have to eviscerate Clyde Edwards-Helaire, playing with the most talented quarterback in NFL history on the league’s best offense, for only reaching 20 fantasy points once all season. Yes, he was a rookie and could certainly improve heading into year two, but by all accounts, CEH is “just a guy.” He’s a fine running back that could produce with volume. On a team with Patrick Mahomes that throws all the time (but rarely to running backs), he’s not getting it.

Somehow, CEH did average a little over four targets a game. The game logs tell a different story, though. In seven of his 13 games played, Edwards-Helaire caught two passes or fewer. In another four games, he caught exactly three passes. For comparison purposes, in 2017, Kareem Hunt caught at least four passes in seven of 15 regular-season games. He caught two passes or fewer just twice.

CEH was also pulled for Darrel Williams frequently on third downs and in hurry-up situations. And frankly, Williams was the more productive back. CEH became a first-round pick in 2020 because Damien Williams’ opt-out was viewed as the 2020 version of the 2017 Spencer Ware injury. CEH ended up seeing just a 60% snap share and averaged just 13.5 ppg, good for the overall RB22. Those numbers won’t destroy your fantasy team, and we would all be fine with our RB2s putting up those numbers, but that is not what you want from an RB1.

I’m not sure where Edwards-Helaire will fall in 2021 ADP. My guess is offseason chatter, and coach praise propels him into the early third round. That’s not terrible, but that’s wide receiver territory, and as of now, I’m going to be avoiding a running back that is entirely situation and opportunity-dependent.

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Jason Katz is a featured writer at FantasyPros. For more from Jason, check out his archive and follow him @jasonkatz13.

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