We have just one week of preseason football left. The next two weekends are the height of fantasy football draft season. It’s go time. FantasyPros analysts Mike Maher, Derek Brown, Andrew Erickson and Pat Fitzmaurice continue a series of preseason roundtables. You can find the first three articles in our roundtable series here, here, and here.
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Fantasy Football Roundtable
RB2 Breakouts
Which of the players with an average draft position in RB2 range (RB13-RB24) in half-point PPR leagues has the best chance to handsomely reward investors relative to cost?
Andrew Erickson: ALL IN! We’ve seen fellow RBs from the 2022 draft class, such as Kyren Williams and James Cook, earn big-time contracts. But we have also seen certain RBs ball out in contract years.
The Seahawks hired Klint Kubiak as their new OC to get back to the run game, and all reports suggest that this new scheme is going to benefit Walker the most (via the Athletic).
In my defense for not ruling out Breece Hall (another polarizing RB in this range), I’ve settled on the mantra, “Bet on explosive RBs who can catch passes.” KW3 falls into that same category. The only difference is that Walker’s coaching staff is ready to run him out as a three-down workhorse. Why are they being so careful with his training camp reps? They are preparing Walker for the massive workload that will come his way in 2025.
Derek Brown: ERICKSON!!! My sharp colleague beat me to the punch and wrote such a beautiful paragraph about Kenneth Walker that all I can say is I agree and co-sign on his Walker take.
Pat Fitzmaurice: Yeah, I’m sky-high on KW3 as well. He just needs to stay healthy.
The Kubiak family has been making running-game magic for years. Klint Kubiak’s dad, Gary, was the Broncos’ offensive coordinator for years, and Denver always ran the ball effectively, whether it was with star RBs Terrell Davis and Clinton Portis, or with previously anonymous RBs who had big one-off seasons, such as Reuben Droughns, Mike Anderson and Tatum Bell. In Klint Kubiak’s first stint as an NFL offensive coordinator (with the Vikings in 2021), Dalvin Cook had 1,159 rushing yards in 13 games.
The Seahawks will primarily be using an outside-zone running scheme under Kubiak. Ryan Heath of FantasyPoints.com has noted that Walker averages 4.54 yards per carry on outside-zone runs, which is significantly better than his career average of 4.2 yards per carry.
Walker has upside as a pass catcher, too. He had fewer than 30 catches in each of his first two seasons in the league. Last year, Walker had 46 catches in only 11 games.
Mike Maher: The new regime in New England has no loyalty to RB Rhamondre Stevenson, and rookie RB TreVeyon Henderson is the shiny new toy the Patriots took in the second round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Our new “Consensus Draft Sentiment” (check out Henderson’s FantasyPros Player Card to see it) here at FantasyPros has the rookie pegged as a high-upside play, and some guy named Derek Brown thinks Henderson will be a 1B in this backfield and could supplant Stevenson as the 1A sooner rather than later.
The best fantasy managers balance safe, high-value picks with high-upside swings. Henderson is the latter. Swing for the fences, my friends.
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