Running Back-Offensive Line Combos to Fade

Sometimes fantasy GMs focus too much on raw, counting stats for running backs. How many yards did they rush for? How many touchdowns did they score? Perhaps, taking it one step further, they end up looking at some "manufactured" numbers such as yards per carry, yards after contact, etc... But there is something more that correlates to running back performance that is often overlooked: the strength of the offensive line they play under.

It is definitely hard to assess how much impact any O-Line has on running back performance on a play-by-play basis, but at the end of the year, it's easy to look at season-long data and make a strong correlation between the strength of offensive lines and the production that comes from the backfield. While quarterbacks and wide receivers are also affected by how good the line that protects them or gives them time to work their routes is, the biggest impact any good or bad O-Line causes is on running backs.

Today, I will hand you a few atrocious OLs (per Lineups.com ranks) and the rushers that will suffer from playing under them. Let's get to it!

Arizona Cardinals (No. 29 OL)

James Conner, Darrel Williams, Eno Benjamin, Keaontay Ingram

Instead of just highlighting the worst possible lines in the league in order (at the end of the day, though, bad lines are bad lines anyway), I've opted to feature those which saw the biggest falls from their 2021 ranking to the 2022 one starting in the desert. The Cardinals are the only team that got bumped down more than 12 positions from last season to the upcoming one in the rankings I'm using. They have gone from 15th to 29th!

That bodes not very well for the Cards' backfield (which boasts a massive overperformer in James Conner and not much more) and their rushing quarterback Kyler Murray. First of all, it must be clarified that "not much more" is very real when it comes to the Cardinals RB2/RB3 in tow: free-agent Darrel Williams and rookie Keaontay Ingram are far from what Chase Edmonds was supposed to be in 2021 (at least on paper) last season. Benjamin appeared in just nine games last season, rushing the rock 34 times for 118 yards and one score while he caught six passes for 42 extra yards... and a total of 28 PPR points. Ugh.

Conner was a beast and will remain so in 2022, but to a much lesser extent if we bake some (realistic) regression back to the mean into his projections. He scored 257.7 PPR points last season for an RB5 finish (career-best) but PFF has him hitting just RB low-end RB1 points next season mostly because of a bump-down in touchdowns with "only" 10 instead of the 15 (!!!) he scored last year. Regression and a flopping OL might doom Conner's (and Murray's) numbers a bit more than expected, so keep that in mind come your league's draft day.

Tennessee Titans (No. 28 OL)

Derrick Henry, Hassan Haskins, Dontrell Hilliard

Nobody is going to give a damn about the Titans' OL when assessing Derrick Henry's talent, abilities, and fantasy projections. It is what happens with studs, folks, so you don't really need to sweat it that much. That said, I wanted to highlight Tennessee's unit here because the downgrade is staggering with the Titans' lineman going from ranking as the 16th-best unit last season to the 28th entering 2022.

While Taylor Lewan is still in tow, he suffered a little bit of a step back while the rest of the members didn't play up to expectations, and staple OT David Quessenberry is also waving his goodbye. Henry suffered injuries last year and could only return in the postseason for Tennessee after missing all regular-season games from Week 9 (included) on. Henry being Henry, of course, still finished RB22 season-wise though he appeared in fewer than half of the scheduled games.

Will Henry keep his 24.2 FPPG up in 2022? Hard to see that happening considering 1) the OL assumed downgrade in talent and 2) a logic regression to the mean by Henry, who comes off a 219-carry, 937-yard, 10-touchdown year in such a small sample of games. The backups are truly atrocious in Tennessee, which could aid Henry's chances at another monster season but definitely keep fantasy GMs off the Titans backfield once Henry is off the board at the end of the draft's round.

Chicago Bears (No. 31 OL)

David Montgomery, Khalil Herbert, Darrynton Evans, Trestan Ebner

As is the case with the other two teams highlighted here, the combination of a bad OL and a thin backfield is in play for the Bears next season. The problem for Chicago, though, is that while Arizona (Kyler Murray) and Tennessee (Ryan Tannehill) have at least viable/good quarterbacks manning the pocket, well, the jury is still out on Justin Fields when it comes to their future as Chicago's franchise QB.

Anyway, and moving on to the OL exclusively, this is one losing mainly bona fide stars Jason Peters and James Daniels. With the most sacks allowed in the NFL last year, you'd think whatever Chicago ended doing this offseason would help their OL. Welp. I'm sorry for Fields mainly, but David Montgomery and the Minnow-RB Troops he will have as backups won't have any fantastic time when out there on the gridiron.

Montgomery is pretty much going to have a similar workload as he did last year as he didn't have any sort of competition in 2021 and he won't have it next year (Herbert and Evans project to 95 combined opportunities in PFF's last run of projections compared to Montgomery's 261 all by himself). Montgomery had an RB21 season playing behind the 22nd-best OL in the NFL as PFF saw it. With a much more precarious situation in Chicago for next year, odds are he stays a borderline RB2 (because he only played 13 games last year) with the downside of falling to the RB3 realm if he misses a few games as he's done in each of the last two years.

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