Results for: "rookie RB efficiency"

With the 2022 NFL draft looming, many fantasy managers are looking to rookie drafts to replenish rosters. Breece Hall, Treylon Burks, and more headline this year’s draft class. But not all top rookies will be immediate booms for fantasy purposes. Amongst the teams making Day 1 and 2 selections, there are a few that provide great situations for incoming rookie playmakers. In this piece, I discuss the teams who will be fantastic spots for the top rookie playmakers in fantasy.

Green Bay has five selections on the first two days of the NFL draft, including two first round picks. It has prime opportunity to snag a top WR; with the likes of Garrett Wilson, Drake London, and Treylon Burks generating buzz to go in round 1. Any top selection contains the alpha traits to command a heavy Target Share and has the advantage of playing with an MVP, boosting the future rookie playmaker’s stock further. A top rookie receiving playmaker will be a smash for fantasy purposes.

Snoop Conner is a big dude at around 5-10 and 220-pounds. But he did not play a big role as a college football player. His career best Dominator Rating was the 17.9-percent he posted last season. Only a 32nd-percentile mark among third-year college runners who would go on to be drafted since 2007.

Again we see Miles Sanders popping up in the comps list of a total JAG running back (he shows up a lot because he’s average and therefore is relatively comparable to lots of players in the meaty portion of the bad-to-good bell curve). Nick Chubb is the best player here and Conner is the busted ass version of him. He’s bad and you should feel bad if you like him. Turn the film off and touch some grass.

It’s not a good look that it took D’Vonte Price four years to break out at Florida International. When it did happen though, it was emphatic. His senior season 40.2-percent Dominator Rating is a 90th-percentile mark for fourth-year college runners. Albeit in a five game season on a team that went winless in Conference USA.

D’Vonte Price is neither a good receiver nor runner, and he also wasn’t an impressive college producer. There just isn’t much indication that he’ll be a quality NFL player. I’m not interested in dynasty rookie drafts.

North Carolina’s Ty Chandler spent most of his college career at Tennessee. There, he shared time with everyone from John Kelly to Eric Gray. When Javonte Williams and Michael Carter buoyed their success as Tar Heels into quality draft capital, Chandler saw it and said, “omg goals.”

Ty Chandler’s name is boring, his career was boring, and his skills are boring. Given all that, I’m sure there’s some keyboard hero out there preparing a Twitter thread to show off his pad level and contact balance as we speak. Ignore the information shared here: that is the analysis you want to hone in on. Ty Chandler for RB1.

The RotoUnderworld community will be partaking in a series of 12-team, five-round rookie mock drafts, running through the spring and summer. The mock drafters will be comprised of PlayerProfiler writers/analysts, our friends in the Patreon community, and our good friends over at The Breakout Finder. Today features 2022 Rookie Mock Recap #4, a Superflex format.

Bailey Zappe has the highest ceiling in this QB draft class. He threw for nearly 6,000 yards and 62 touchdowns last season. That is just absurd. Especially in SuperFlex, I see no argument as to why he isn’t at least worth a late-round flier. Sure he played for Western Kentucky. Sure he didn’t really impress at the Senior Bowl. But those two things are not disqualifying. Tim Tebow won a Heisman and, for all intents and purposes, didn’t produce at the NFL level. Zappe will be an interesting player to watch this year.

C.J. Verdell blew up early on in his college career. He went for over 1,000 rushing yards in each of his redshirt freshman and redshirt sophomore seasons. He missed some games while dealing with injuries as an upperclassman in 2020 and 2021. But his 28.8-percent per-game Dominator Rating as a redshirt senior last season was actually the highest of his career.

C.J. Verdell was a productive college player who was fraudulently propped up as a future NFL stud by over-eager devy enthusiasts. He’s probably a JAG. Hoping he becomes Jay Ajayi or Miles Sanders is misguided, given that those guys aren’t really that good either. A JAG with volume is good for fantasy, but it’s not very predictable (at least pre-draft). Look elsewhere in your rookie draft.

Oklahoma State’s Jaylen Warren is the next subject in a series in which I evaluate 2022 rookie running backs solely on their ability to run the ball. Where he really shined was in the open field. He turned an 81st-percentile rate of his chunk runs into breakaways of 20+ yards. His career 38.0-percent Breakaway Conversion Rate is on par with the college rates of guys like Kenny Gainwell, C.J. Spiller, and Joe Mixon.

Jaylen Warren simply deserves more hype. He’s by no means a perfect prospect. But he’s a rocked up dude at sub-5-9 and 215-pounds. He was productive at three different college programs. And he was as efficient a college runner as some of your favorite sleeper runners of the past few years. Seeing as he got a Combine invite, the NFL is at least tentatively interested. In the late rounds of your rookie draft, you should be too.

Fresno State’s Ronnie Rivers is the next subject in a series in which I evaluate 2022 rookie running backs solely on their ability to run the ball. According to my running back model’s composite Rushing Efficiency Score (which accounts for all the non-BAE metrics covered here, in addition to overall team quality, offensive line play, strength of opponent, and rushing volume), he earns a 44.9 out of 100.

A five-year contributor at Fresno State, Ronnie Rivers is neck-and-neck with Alabama’s Brian Robinson as perhaps the most super of all the seniors in this year’s running back class. He had a good career in a mediocre conference. But that resumé is a dime a dozen among NFL players. He is not worth a selection in rookie drafts, and is unlikely to ever be fantasy relevant.

Ohio State’s Master Teague is a lot like Georgia’s Zamir White. Both have workhorse size. Neither of them catch a lot of passes. And they were both highly-touted high school recruits who had some bad injury luck and never were able to separate themselves from talented teammates at powerhouse programs. In Teague’s case, those teammates averaged a collective 3.84-star rating coming out of high school.

I haven’t seen many people out there hyping up Master Teague, and for good reason. It’s unfortunate that injuries (he tore an Achilles in college and lost his senior year of high school to an ankle injury) robbed us of a guy who could potentially have been a beast. But for the sake of your dynasty teams, there’s no longer much of an argument for taking him seriously as a future fantasy contributor.

Zamir White was a 5-star high school recruit with a bunch of hype coming into the start of his college career at Georgia in 2018. After an injury forced him to miss his entire true freshman season, he didn’t quite live up to the lofty expectations that his pedigree saddled him with.

White might be an actively good short-yardage runner. But I think that’s where the extent of his positive potential impact as a professional lies. It’s entirely possible that a team looks at the “G” on his red helmet, sees a 5-star recruiting profile in the rearview, and decides he’s worth a role somewhere à la T.J. Yeldon or Karlos Williams, but I’m not the one to waterlog my dynasty rosters with draft capital-soaked sponge backs who are otherwise void of redeeming qualities.