NFL Draft Impact - Running Back Risers and Fallers for Fantasy Football

I am going to start this column by reviewing the concept of ADP, which you are likely familiar with. Fantasy football Average Draft Position (ADP) indicates the average position where a player is drafted over more than one fantasy football draft. You can consider it as the price you have to pay to draft and get a player on your team. A high ADP (that is, actually, a low-numbered ADP) means that a player is going off draft boards early, and thus you'll need to draft him in the first rounds if you truly want him.

Low or high ADP values, though, are not gospel. Each of us fantasy GMs have our strategies and value players differently depending on what we think is the most important for them to have in terms of abilities. No matter what, though, ADPs are good to know the average value of the "average GM" you'll be drafting against.

Free agency is long over, and now the NFL Draft is in the books too. It's been just hours since the first-year player draft took happened through the past few days, so I figured it'd make sense to give my two cents on who came out as a winner and who did so as a loser after all teams picked their freshest assets in time for the 2022 season. We'll review actual ADP trends later in May to see how they have changed among fantasy GMs as we start to gear up for the real-life draft and our very own fantasy draft season. Let's get it going!

Running Backs - Fantasy Football Risers

Chase Edmonds and Raheem Mostert - Miami Dolphins

I don't really get why, but there was some narrative out there about Miami having a legit interest in adding more rushers to the fold. Didn't happen (obviously from my point of view), so it's now all for Edmonds/Mostert's taking with Myles Gaskin as a tertiary option in the backfield. Miami focused entirely on bolstering the receiving corps for Tua, and that's precisely what the Dolphins did with up to four of their five top-WR coming to Miami for the first time next season.

J.K. Dobbins and Gus Edwards, Baltimore Ravens

Hollywood Brown got traded away in a rather surprising move that, even more surprisingly, wasn't patched through the draft with a WR pick at all. In other words: only Mark Andrews is going to command lots and lots of targets next season along with Rashod Bateman--who definitely is not a WR1. Tha low-profile receiving-corps, along with a packed backfield that also saw no additions to it, make Dobbins and Edwards a fresh start and opportunity to thrive next to Lamar Jackson.

Kenneth Walker III - Seattle Seahawks

We will see how things develop in Seattle over the summer and the training camps, but the Seahawks are reportedly going to use KW3 as their lead rusher with Chris Carson playing a secondary role and Rashaad Penny a peripheral piece. I'm still not buying 100% into that, but even if that's not the case, there is a high probability both/one of Carson and Penny misses time here and there with injuries, opening a clear path for KW3 to put up numbers.

Dameon Pierce - Houston Texans

I'm a sucker for Marlon Mack, but sadly Mack has pretty much missed two consecutive seasons of play (one game in 2020, six last season with only 28 carries). There is a chance he rebounds this year if he can stay healthy as the Texans have a barren roster all across the depth chart and he should be the RB1. That said, Houston drafted a very intriguing prospect in Pierce and there is a chance this man flies under the radar in fantasy drafts but ends the season as a very good asset to have around. Keep an eye on him.

Running Backs - Fantasy Football Fallers

Derrick Henry - Tennessee Titans

King Henry isn't going anywhere, don't get me wrong. Obviously, Henry is coming off a year in which he missed ample time injured. That said, Henry had barely missed games before (just one in 2019) so that's not something we should expect to happen next season or at any point in the King's future. Of course, Henry has been the main Titans weapon for three years (if not four) and running, but that might change a bit next season. Not in that Henry will lose touches--in fact, he might get even more than ever--but in that, Tennessee has traded A.J. Brown away and will have to rely (more) on the rushing game while not having bona fide WR1 pass-catchers to keep defenses that honest. We'll see how DH handles all of those stacked boxes.

Breece Hall - New York Jets

The Jets probably had the best real-life draft of all NFL franchises, and they still came out with two losers for fantasy football in WR Garrett Wilson and RB Breece Hall. Focusing on the latter in this column, the problem I see here is that the Jets already have a second-year rusher in Michael Carter who should command tons of touches in this offense once more. Hall, mind you, was the clear RB1 of the class and will get his fair share of chances while having a clear bell-cow profile as a player. But if you hated the Javont/MelGo pairing in Denver, you're definitely not going to want to have any sort of Hall shares for 2022.

Zamir White - Las Vegas Raiders

Nobody was probably going to draft Zamir White anyway, but the fact that the Raiders put this young man in a situation in which he'll have to fight Josh Jacobs and Kenyan Drake is definitely not appealing at all for fantasy purposes. Even if any of those two studs loses time, White will still need to battle for touches against the remaining one, and the outlook isn't any sort of good.

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