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Rookie Running Backs - Summary

Draft Recommendation: Rookie running backs who were drafted in the top 12 in the NFL Draft are the only ones that are undervalued in fantasy drafts.

The National Football League Draft is an annual event that takes place at the end of April and was watched on ESPN by over five million viewers in 2009. Once the draft is completed, the analysis begins as to which teams won or lost the draft and which players will have the biggest impact with their new team for the upcoming season. In terms of fantasy analysis, rookie players are amongst the hardest to analyze because all we have are college statistics which are often flawed by the varying quality of opponents, the system of play or the talent surrounding the players. I was curious to find out whether rookie players were overrated or underrated by the average manager in fantasy drafts.

For this analysis I decided to look at running backs drafted in the first four rounds of the NFL Draft since the year 2000. Of the 67 rookie running backs since 2000, only 22 of them performed better than their average draft position which is equal to only 32.8%. To put that in perspective, non-rookie running backs with a similar average draft position improve 41.3% of the time. This means that your chances of making a good pick in your fantasy draft decrease by 8.5% when you choose a rookie running back over a non-rookie running back.

Our data shows that the only rookie running backs that perform better than non-rookie running backs are the ones drafted in the top 12 picks in the NFL Draft. All other rookie running backs decrease your chance of making a good pick by 11.2%. This difference is the equivalent to drafting your running backs one full round before their average draft position.

The data presented in this article makes it quite evident that the only rookie running backs that might be worth drafting in your fantasy drafts are ones drafted in the first 12 picks of the NFL Draft. In 2009, Knowshon Moreno is the only running back who was drafted in the first 12 picks. Other rookie running backs such as Chris Wells, Donald Brown and LeSean McCoy are likely to be overvalued but do not rule them out completely because in some drafts they could fall lower than expected.

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