We all love drafting. Be it mock drafts, bestball drafts, redrafts, rookie drafts, or startup drafts. Especially dynasty startup mocks and drafts.

When we draft, although we sometimes like to experiment, many of us new-age fantasy players tend to go wide receiver-heavy. However, seasoned and experienced players also know how to gamble on the running backs effectively. With Zero-RB as the current trend, SuperFlex becoming more popular, receivers breaking out earlier in their careers, and running backs in the real world largely struggling to get second contracts of note, running backs have been pushed down fantasy draft boards.

I’ve seen industry analysts post something like “imagine drafting a running back in dynasty,” after avoiding the position through 8 rounds or more in order to stockpile other positions. The sentiment we see often about running backs is “they're replaceable” and “they have the most churn." Which, to an extent, is true. But have we gone too far? To find the answer, we need to examine what you should expect from a particular startup draft investment. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.

For this study, I used ADP data from FantasyPros and fantasy stats from Stathead. To have a qualifying PPG season for this study, a player needed to play at least 8 games in a season and average 4 PPG. That helps filter out irrelevant, roster-clogging players and make the data set more manageable. I then compared a player's ADP to their rolling three-year average. For example, Christian McCaffrey’s 2017 ADP vs his fantasy PPG from 2017-2019. Then McCaffrey’s 2018 ADP vs his PPG from 2018-2020, and so on.

This type of approach does bring up some problems. First, we have the cases of injury where a player was drafted highly, but did not play a given season, like Odell Beckham in 2017 or Dez Bryant during 2018-19. Or a player sat out the majority of a season due to a dispute, be it Deshaun Watson or Le’Veon Bell. We’re going to have players missing time and creating a bit of chaos in studies like this, which is to be expected. I’ve done my best to mitigate the effects of this by inputting healthy season values. So, even though we got little from Beckham in 2017, I input the average from his following healthy seasons in 2018 and 2019. 

Additionally, this study doesn’t factor in age. I’m merely taking into account what a player will do for your team in a three-year span, regardless of where they are in their career. While that certainly is a worthy discussion, it won’t be the main focus here. The age-risk factor is largely built into a player's ADP in some way, shape, or form. Like how Mike Evans is currently drafted around WR25 in bestball formats, but is the WR53 in dynasty rankings. Or how Julio Jones was drafted as the WR26 in 2021 in dynasty leagues a year before his drop-off. His age was somewhat baked into his price, even more so in 2022.

So in essence, we are looking at a player’s ADP in a given year and the three-ish relevant following seasons in PPG to see how they will help your team following the draft.

Every draft slot has a certain PPG expectation. You would rightly expect the RB6 in ADP to score more than the RB20 by ADP. Here’s a chart showing running back positional ADP vs PPG for the top 60 RBs and WRs:

The trend of receivers outscoring running backs continues effectively until the draft ends. Once you add quarterbacks and tight ends to the mix, you’re looking at those pieces being selected late in drafts for depth or a hopeful breakout. If you look beyond RB/WR60, which is very late in drafts in 12-team leagues, you can find gems in the WR70s! For example: 

There is so much value to be had late in drafts at receiver, but it’s important to remember we miss more often than we hit. We can also find late-round RB hits, much like we just did with receivers. Still, receiver is a deeper position in fantasy, and you can find values late in your draft.

Additionally, I looked at the optimal roster constructions for leagues with 2 starting RBs and 3 starting WRs, plus depth. In full drafts, QB and TE would also be a factor, but we’re going to omit them to better highlight the discrepancies between the RB and WR positions.

Using the information in the chart above, what are the best possible combinations in terms of roster construction? When should we be taking a running back and or receiver when looking at the average PPG based on ADP?

Somethin important to note here before continuing: we’re assuming only RBs and WRs are being taken in the draft. Each round we are seeing 6 RB and 6 WRs taken. So in the chart below, a RD2 RB would equate to RB7-12. A RD3 RB would be RB13-18, and so on. The same goes for wide receivers. Now that we’ve got that clarification, let’s proceed.

It would seem that the consensus is correct. In this day and age, receivers rule, and they are the best option to build a roster around in startups. However, it’s worth noting that two of the top five roster builds include going running back heavy through the first couple of rounds. RB Heavy is a viable option for those who prefer that style. Sometimes going that direction is preferable if your draft room leans super heavy into receivers. Taking the best player available is better than stubbornly sticking to a pre-conceived strategy, especially when the draft board doesn’t line up.

My optimal construction doesn’t account for the “what if a Top-6 WR falls, do I still grab a back-half RB1?” It presents a baseline idea of what’s going on when you select a player around a certain ADP. Smart drafting is always paramount. However, exercises like this are both fun and useful because they give us a good idea of what we can expect for our teams when we draft a certain way.

What’s important to note with all of these numbers and studies is that there is a lot of gray area in fantasy football, and dynasty is not immune. There may be more gray area in dynasty than any other format! When spitting out these numbers, league context is important. Knowing you’ll also need quarterbacks and tight ends is important. Knowing that values will appear in drafts is key.

When building a team, building around wide receivers is the safest way to go. Over a three-year span, receivers will usually outscore running backs of the same positional ADP. But while receiver is the optimal position to draft heavily, you can still draft running backs early and invest heavily in WR. The two don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

This study also factors in assumptions in order to make things smooth and work with positional ADP. As I’ve tried to make clear, in real drafts, we would see positional runs, reaches, falls, QBs/TEs, all sorts of things this study doesn’t account for. However, I think that this gives us a great look when comparing RB/WR as they are the positions we start the most of in fantasy in most leagues.

The cool thing about a study like this is that there is so much left to explore. We could add in quarterbacks and tight ends to the sample and look at how players perform by round, and see how that could determine our draft strategy. We could look at trades and ask, “Now that our team is drafted, what should my trades look like to improve my team?”

If you want to see something like that in the future, make sure to hop on the RotoBanter Discord and let me know!

PS: huge thanks to Taylor Christianson of Dynasty Nerds for his help in editing and refining this article! Go check him out on X!