RADIO
The most fashionable opinion in fantasy football in 2016 is bemoaning the downfall of the RB position. WRs are going higher than they have ever gone and there is no shortage of Zero-RB articles across the web.
But no matter how much our faith in the RB position is shaken, there is one core belief that refuses to go away. It dominates draft strategy and roster-construction philosophies in the fantasy football community. This is the belief that you need to draft a “RB1”.
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There Are No RB1s
The belief that you need draft the type of running back who will give you elite production week in and week out. The type of guy you need if you want to win your fantasy league. Last season, only one RB matched that description. The realities of the NFL are very different from this perspective. The reality is that you are not facing a significant competitive disadvantage if you fail to lock down an RB1 early in the draft.
To demonstrate how unreliable or rare RB1s are, I broke last year up into four relatively even quarters: Weeks 1-5, Weeks 6-9, Weeks 10-13, and Weeks 14-17. I then evaluated who the top-10 running backs were over each quarter. A top-10 player at running back is one that would safely be considered an RB1.
28 different running backs had a top-10 quarterly performance. This is out of the 40 top performances, and those 28 players were drafted fairly evenly throughout the draft. According to Fantasy Football Calculator, there were 7 RBs drafted in the first round. Four of those running backs had at least a single top-10 quarter. There were more undrafted RBs than first round picks who had a top-10 quarter. Of that 28-RB pool, only nine had more than one top-10 quarter. Adrian Peterson and Matt Forte were the only ones of those nine who were drafted in the first two rounds. Five out of those nine RBs were drafted in the fourth round or later. Only two running backs had more than two top-10 quarters, Devonta Freeman, a ninth round pick, and Adrian Peterson. Peterson was the only RB who was a top-10 player at his position across all four quarters.
Now my point is not that RBs picked in later rounds are equivalent prospects to Doug Martin, Ezekiel Elliott, and Todd Gurley. My point is that you cannot rely on any one RB to win you weeks throughout the entire season. Players bust, injuries happen, depth charts are shaken up, etc. When it comes to drafting, quantity at the RB position is preferable to quality. Only one RB was a true RB1 last year. Your RB committee will have to evolve throughout the season if you want to stay competitive. Drafting a RB early provides you no relief from that truth. Not drafting a RB early does not banish you from some elite club.
So why is it that after last year, when we were one sprained ankle away from having no true RB1s, we are so eager to check off that RB1 box on draft day? Most Zero RB articles still include players you can draft late who can be your bell cow. Picking a QB early is laughed at because of the opportunity cost of passing up on a starting caliber RB. Why do many panic at the thought of not having an “RB1”?
The process starts with a perversion of how we evaluate rankings. This next part may sound remedial, but give it some thought anyway. David Johnson is a better fantasy prospect than Frank Gore. But at the end of the day David Johnson is just a prospect. At this point the fantasy community’s evaluation of him is an amalgamation of all possible outcomes for David Johnson. The large range of possibilities precludes any prediction with even relative certainty that he will perform at any specific level. However, it can be hard to fully conceptualize all these possibilities. So we just take the average and assume that the player will most likely score at that level consistently throughout each week. In effect, we turn players into finite values in a way that betrays the range of outcomes. Once you do this, even if it is subconscious, you effectively manufacture that concept of an “RB1” that rarely exists.
How Loss Aversion is Hurting Your Draft
Even if we create these artificial values, why do we over-stress the importance of them? The reason is a concept known as "Loss Aversion". Loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to prefer avoiding losses than to acquiring gains. Think of it like this: I am going to flip a coin and offer you two options.
Option A – Heads you win $100, tails you lose nothing.
Option B – Heads you win $200, tails you lose $100.
In experiments similar to this, subjects overwhelming chose Option A. Even though both options have the exact same expected return. An associated phenomenon, the endowment effect (valuing your own assets more highly than someone else’s) has been connected to fantasy football in the past through discussions of trades. Just about everyone is aware of how hard it can be to actually get another owner to trade with them. Usually owners overvalue what they have and refuse to be reasonable. Now, in the example above there are no wrong answers. But when it comes to drafting, many owners sacrifice a large gain to avoid a minor loss.
Loss aversion plays a role in how we evaluate drafts. It drives most players to try and get well rounded teams. They don’t want to have a deficiency at any one position which is viewed as a loss. They think this way even if doing so would provide them an even larger advantage at another position. This becomes a dangerous prospect when you combine it with the singular artificial value that is subconsciously created. There may be only one or two true RB1s each year and they are incredibly hard to predict. But when you evaluate players using that artificial “RB1” designation, it seems like they are everywhere. And if you pass up on one to get a QB, the loss at RB is viewed as more painful than the gain at QB. Losses hurt more than gains feel good. So we end up in a situation where everyone is racing to check off boxes that don’t exist to avoid a competitive disadvantage which is a fabrication.
Loss aversion is also the reason why Late Round QB has gained so much traction amongst dedicated fantasy football players. Having the 10th best QB is not a significant drop off from having the 5th best QB. It is really only a disadvantage in your matchups against one or maybe two QBs. Thus you rarely feel like you have suffered a loss. The benefit of having the one or two QBs who give you an advantage each week is viewed as less favorable than the loss from poor RB play every week. I have argued against Late-Round QB in the past. Do not let loss aversion prevent you from taking a QB.
This certainly isn’t the first time that someone has told you RBs aren’t as valuable as they are sometimes thought to be. This is also likely not the first time that someone has told you to pick for value and not positions. But be aware, that sometimes your brain is going to bias you in certain directions against the advice of logic or stats. And you should also be aware that thought processes like these influence all the members of your league. People will make mistakes and players will fall in the draft. Don’t box yourself into a corner trying to check off specific roles. Be ready to grab that steal even if it gives you a disadvantage elsewhere.
