7 RBs You NEED To Draft BEFORE They Breakout in 2024

Intro what's going on man welcome back to the basem Omron and a lot of people want to see it to believe it when it comes to fantasy football but this is a great way to miss out on League winners and breakouts when we look at the top 12 running backs in points per game last year seven of them did so for the first time you're not going to win your leagues by buying last year's production you're going to win your leagues by finding the seven running backs this year that finish in the top 12 for the first time right finding this year's Kiren Williams Raheem moer Travis eten Jamir Gibbs and that's what we're here today to do we are going to talk through seven running backs you need to Draft before they break out this season as always if you enjoy we put a lot of research into these videos so make sure you leave a like subscribe let's [Music] go so the idea behind this video is Bijan Robinson drafting runningbacks who haven't finished in the top 12 in points per game before but have the chance to do so this year and the first player we're going to talk about is not a like crazy breakout candidate okay we're going to get deeper as we go but bejon Robinson technically technically did not finish as a top 12 running back in points per game last year he was the RB 17 so technically it would be a breakout if he got there this year but I actually wanted to talk about beon because there's still a lot of people that have you know a sour taste in their mouth over what happened last year a lot of comments like this and I I don't even really want to put this guy on blast he said some of the worst advice I've ever seen I get that all the time all right whatever bejan is going to have a lot of carries taken away from him from alir could be a 60/40 split and air also catches the ball too so it's not like Bean is getting exclusive work and his coach even said air will have a major role which is true and there's a lot of hesitancy towards beon right we can see here this is his sleeper rank to the left of me sixth overall I would take him as high as like fifth fourth third um especially in like RB hungry leagues as like a smash pick in the first round but there is some I don't know again there's some hesitancy there when it comes to beon and it really stems around this quote from Zack Robinson certainly Tyler going to have a big role and certainly at certain points of the season a lot of certains here we're going to be leaning on him quote from Zack Robinson Twitter account coache index and it's just I mean this is a new hire firsttime offensive coordinator he's not going to say yeah uh Tyler aler is going to just run back and forth getting water for beon Robinson no he's going to pump up his guy so I'm not taking that too much to heart and then when we look at ejections here and we actually break down what a backfield looks like in the modern NFL right where there's no longer 25 plus touch bcal running backs these are Mike Clay projections he does the projections over at ESPN in my eyes he has the best free projections out there he goes through everything in terms of like coach Tendencies scoring Vegas offensive line like he goes down all the way from the ground up with these projections and here I just want to outline how bejan Robinson is his rb3 in PPR points for his projections and even with that Tyler air has 143 Rush attempts five rushing touchdowns 28 catches and one receiving touchdown so that's over 150 touches and over six touchdowns in just a 14 game Pace he only does 14 games for the running backs because they missed time but you can see here it outlines even with Tyler air having a sizable role bejon Robinson still gets home as a top three running back in fantasy and the reason for that is a couple of them first he's going to catch passes last year he had over 80 Targets this year he's going to flirt with 80 plus receptions which is hugee in these PPR leagues and then two this offense is just going to be much better due to Zach Robinson at offense coordinator this is a guy coming from the Rams the McVey scheme who we've seen have Todd Gurley kyen Williams not even just that just good offenses in general and now you go from Desmond Ritter to Kurt Cousins and Michael pennick and just to show how bad this offense truly was I really like this tweet from Josh Norris here the state of the Falcons offense last season de Foreman had six carries inside of the 5 yard line air had four beon had two Deontay Foreman had as many carries as they did inside of the five so first offense was brutal if your top two running backs have just six carries inside of the five your offense sucked and that's really what the case was last year where they were the seventh worst offense in scoring last year this year now they are projected by Vegas to have the 13th most points scored in the NFL so the offense will be better and now you don't have Arthur Smith making weird decisions like giving air four inside the five carries to two for beon so we are going to get efficiency we're going to get pass catching and even with Tyler AER having a rooll it's not a zero sum game these backfields are going to be split pretty much across the board and that's going to be fine for bejan because he's going to get there with efficiency he's going to get there with better offense he's going to get there with catching and this is a year two running back the best of beon is still yet to come shout out to Ryan Heath in his age curves and cliffs article that he posts every year we can see here running backs take a huge step forward in year two you said ke takeaway here just in terms of Baseline career averages generally speaking running backs take a big step forward from year 1 to year two with Peak production maintained from years 2 to six so you can see The Best Is Yet To Come for ban to to just look at what he did in his rookie year with Arthur Smith on a bad offense and say okay that guy doesn't have it is crazy he is the best running back prospects since saquin Barkley super super special talent and in the right scheme this year with a Rand tree coordinator beon could absolutely Crush you could talk me into as high as 101 for beon if you truly wanted to this season and I think anywhere inside of the top five he is a smash pick to finish as a top 12 running back and if not you know top three top 12 is really Isiah Pacheco what I mean so next up we're going to go a little bit deeper still not super deep but we have Isaiah Pacho here he's going at the 304 over on sleeper we're just going to use sleepers default rankings for now I think that's a decent gauge of what your home League might look like um he's going as the rv12 off the board I will say with with PCO I'm not drafting a whole lot of him because I can't get there in the second round for ESPN and Yahoo leagues I would much rather have uh Kiren Williams or Devon Anan but on sleeper if he gets back to me in the third round that's a smash pick anywhere in the third round I'm completely fine with peo he was the RB 14 in points per game last year so it's not going to take a lot for him to get into the top 12 running backs but I like his odds and he already showed down the stretch what that might look like this is a really good tweet from Ryan Heath here Peko without jerck Kinnon last year 14.9% Target sh which is really good he has receiving upside and then 22.1 points per game that's what we're looking for he said after the buy pko's Red Zone attempt share Grew From 56.8% to 80.4% only Kiren Williams averaged more fantasy points per game in the Red Zone than Pacho from weeks 10 to 18 and if this offense hums and Xavier Worthy is as good as advertised and rashy rice is out there and Kelce and this is going to be one of the best offenses in the NFL right now they are projected for the third most points by Vegas p is going to be ramming a lot of those in on the goal line and they didn't bring anybody else in this backfield right they didn't bring in uh a sage perine or anything it is just simply behind him daic Prince it is C it is Carson Steels getting some buzz but these are all Fringe names buto will be the one and then Jacob Gibbs outlines here uh we already saw this in four playoff games he had a 74% snap rate 57% rap participation 20 rushes per game 48% Red Zone opportunity rate up from 38% in the regular season so we already saw games without Jer m Kon games in the playoffs Isaiah Peko had a role that would have very easily finished not only as a top 12 running back last year but flirt with top five production and this is somebody where Chiefs running backs used to be first round picks in fantasy football right Kareem hunt remember Clyde Edward is a rookie before that of course you had like lesan McCoy with the Eagles Brian Westbrook it is a long long list of guys and Peko is just the next one for Andy Reid now our third running back here this is where we get into our James Cook true breakout candidate types and we have James Cook he's going at the 406 right in the middle of the fourth round on sleep res the rb1 14 and despite what people think about this bills offense without Stefon Diggs people are very I don't know people are like not big on the bills offense this year like Josh Allen in general because they think okay no Stefon Diggs they might not score as much and it's like Stefan digs is a good player but Josh Allen is the straw that turns the drink or stirs the drink you guys know I I do suck with those sayings but highest projected scoring teams when I I will say I do get this question in ton when it's like Ron where you pulling these Vegas projections from it's from this Connor Allen thread make sure you follow him on Twitter he has a lot of really good info on there and he went through back in June looked through all of the lines of like okay the Chiefs are minus 7 versus the Ravens in week one and so on and so forth and found totals and spreads and he pretty much extrapolated that out to what does Vegas think each of these offenses is going to score and the bills have the fifth highest projected point total so they're going to score a lot of points and they don't have a lot of receiver help right Curtis Samuel n has turf toe you have Keon Coleman a rookie who I like but he's not going to score 15 touchdowns you have uh cancade who's a great pick but a lot of these touchdowns are going to come from the Run game especially with new offensive coordinator Ken dorsy who took over or not Ken dorsy Joe Brady who took over last year for Ken dorsy and you can see here Ken dorsy had a 50% Red Zone pass rate if we go down to Joe Brady this is really good info from Jacob Gibbs here Joe Brady had a 39% Red Zone pass rate with 42 rushing touchdowns and 36 passing touchdowns with his one season with the Panthers and then seven games with the bills last year so this is somebody that even goes toe-to-toe with a guy like Jim Harbaugh back when he was with the ners in terms of Red Zone rushing percentage this is somebody that when he gets inside the Red Zone wants to run the ball so if we have an environment that's going to score the fifth most touchdowns in the league and we have a coach that wants to run the ball in close on the goal line there's going to be a lot of rushing touchdowns to go around for the bills now I will say this is why I'm very high on Josh Allen this year I think that Josh Allen's going to score a lot of rushing touchdowns I think Ray Davis is a great flyer at the back end of drafts but if James Cook can even get like half of the goal line Looks we're talking about somebody that can crush his ADP and finish in the top 12 very very easily this is from Dwayne McFarland over on Fantasy Life he charted the week two preseason games and James Cook played 88% of the snaps he handled 100% of the rush attempts during his four drives at the starting offensive line he also posted an 82% route participation which is really crazy like anything about 60% is really good uh last week the 30-year back handled 100% of the work before exiting with Josh Allen we never want to over react to small preseason samples but there is a chance he best the 49% rush share and 48% R participation rate in my projections by a decent margin so this is somebody that's on the field in All Phases running routes doing his thing I will say he's sub 200 lb so the goal line rle is 100% a huge question mark and that's kind of the give and take with James C right now is if he gets the goal line roll he's way mispriced if he doesn't then we're probably drafting him at about you know his median to ceiling ejections but I would even say he's not somebody that I'm expecting to score 15 rushing touchdowns but if he can just get in the mix for like 6 to 10 and kind of be what jir Gibbs was last year where he's not this like battering ram but he's somebody that can be out there and mix in I think he's at least going to get that opportunity and if he gets stuffed they'll take that away from him but if you can just mix in for like five to 10 touchdowns his receiving upside is already so good that I don't really think that the touchdowns are a maker break for him but they they are the skeleton key to that crazy big ceiling and just to go a little bit further with his usage last year we already kind of saw what it looked like when he didn't score touchdowns last year he was on Pace for what seven receiving touchdowns two rushing touchdowns so nine total touchdowns and here one stro Brady took over after the I believe it was in week 11 it was after they lost to the Broncos he takes over and gives James Cook 16.7 points per game uh a pace of 63 targets a pace of like 1,700 yards from scrimmage and I still think that that 63 Target total is still very low for what he could get to I really do think that he can get to like 80 catches this is somebody who's not just a checkdown guy he over the last two years has been a top five running back in average depth of Target he's running routes down field he's not just a like swing pass type of merchant like he is somebody that's actually a receiving weapon and in an offense right now we just talked about with Curtis Samuel hurt we could very much see a lot of receiving game work for him and then if he gets the touchdowns as well it's over like we're talking top five running back upside this somebody who is actually really good where he has the best rushing yards OV expected per attempt over the last two years he has the second most Rush attempts of over 10 yards last year and he was top 10 in yards per carry and yards per catch it's an efficiency monster across the board he's super explosive and in this role he could really Thrive now our fourth Kenneth Walker breakout running back here that I think can finish in the top 12 for the first time this year Kenneth Walker we just drafted him last night on stream I'm really I'm really trying to go because early in the offseason I wasn't all that into Kenneth Walker just the Seahawks offense in general but I'm really coming around on him I'm trying to make up for lost time here with Kenneth Walker he's going to 501 as the rv16 if he is on the board at any point in time when I'm on the clock in the fifth round he is a smash uh last year wasn't pretty but I'm kind of tempted to throw it out Bru shoulder strained oblique chess soreness Cal soreness he was banged up all over the place you also had a coach who was on his way out and Peete Caroll you also had banged up Gino Smith you had uh Drew loot come in for a game or two the off just didn't look right and now we get Ryan grub coming from the Washington Huskies offensive scheme he's now the the play caller OC for the Seahawks and these were in the last two years what his offense has looked like at Washington pretty crazy EPA per play is just efficiency so total EPA like total offensive efficiency amazing you can see uh the first year he had 74 plays per game so he actually pushed the tempo second year didn't do it as much but I think that that might have just been because Washington was so dominant but this is a really really good offense they're going to throw the ball downfield and throw the ball a ton which you might be like well how does that how is that good for Walker well it's going to give him a lot of light boxes you now have to account for DK meaf downfield jsn vertical down the seam it can really open things up for Kenneth Walker and this is a new coaching staff with which gives him an upside to like an allpurpose role and we've already seen Ryan grub just absolutely gush over him he said I think he gets better every single day I think the guy's a limit for him I think he's really really talented powerful back that a true three tool guy he's electric out of the backfield as a pass catcher then he said Ken Walker receiving efficiency in 2023 among 150 Rouses from Fantasy Point data uh eighth best in yards per out run second best M Force per reception second best in yards at the contact or is that yards at the catch per reception it's one of the two but he was really really good just in terms of efficiency per route just in terms of the pass catcher he's efficient uh he wasn't known as a pass catcher in college but I'm open to the idea that a coach might want to expand his role just because of how explosive he's been during his career when we look at just since he entered the league from Ryan Heath he leads all running backs over the last two years in Miss tackles force with 145 which is pretty Bonkers uh I could see him being an all-purpose guy who just gets all three down work this offense progresses a little bit the offensive line gets a little bit better or he could kind of have like a early career like Derrick Henry Nick chub Jonathan Taylor type of year I'm not saying that's going to happen but some people do believe that he is that talented as a rusher and if he is that could be his path to getting there if the receiving upside isn't all there now this is where we get into our our long shots right these are now our like plus Jonathon Brooks 1,000 tickets to finish inside of the top 12 in points per game but this one's a little bit of a cheat code we're going to say John Brooks because I think that he can get there on a points per game basis he's going in the 805 as the rb27 and he's coming off of a torn ACL he tore his ACL in November which isn't great but I think this is a pretty good comparison from Dave here he says Todd Gurley tore his ACL on November 15th in 2014 at 20 years old here's how many touches he had as a rookie in 2015 he was inactive the first two weeks then seven then 21 then 30 Jonathan Brooks tore his ACL on November 11th 2023 at 20 years old then we have Edwin poris here who is a injury analyst in the fantasy space he also said this a similar thing in 2015 Todd gley had ACL surgery around the same time in season as Jonathan Brooks the following year he finishes the rb8 so we could see a world where Jonathan Brooks is going to start slow and I think that's that's the biggest disclaimer for Jonathan Brooks is do not draft him in a team where he would have to start early in the season he is a guy that you draft if you already have two running backs or maybe you have a guy like Jerome Ford who can score early for you and I don't even think that it's that crazy I know that I'm usually against drafting a handcuff of the your same player but you could also just draft chuba hubard and kind of play it that way if you'd like to as well but this is somebody that has a lot of upside here I know Todd Gurley finished rv5 in points for game as a rookie I think that John Brooks is not nearly the same Talent as that right Todd gley was a first round pick Brooks was a second round pick but we did also see a lot of guys that weren't in the same tier Prospect as Todd Gurley become really good right like Bree Hall Nick chub Jonathan Taylor all as rookies and I'm not saying that Jonathan Brooks is for sure in the same Talent bucket as those guys I'm just saying when we draft a rookie he is a mystery box right we don't know what that guy is going to look like in the NFL and those are his cealing outcomes is being a guy that oh man maybe this guy should have got in the first round and there are reports out there that you can look back at what shefer said during the draft he would have maybe been a first round pick had he not tore his ACL so I kind of do like the idea of drafting Jonathan Brooks you hold him early he's probably going to miss the first two to three games he'll ramp up and then by week six seven eight he'll be startable and he's going to be in a Dave Canales offense that we want pieces of this is a good tweet from Ryan Heath here where Dave Canalis goes to the Seahawks Gino Smith's per attempt pass efficiency that's just what adjusted n yards per attempt is goes up same thing for Baker and now this year that could be Bryce young so we can see this Panthers offense really take a step forward and I was going to say hum but not hum but just go from like bottom five dumpster fire to League average which would be huge and then we've also seen Dave Canalis give a ton of work to a guy like Rashad white and that could be a similar role that we could see for Jonathan Brooks Rashad White had over 300 touches last year so he is going to rely on a Workhorse and that could be Jonathan Brooks down the stretch and I do just want to point out in terms of just like prospecting when we look at M tackles Force per touch and receiving fantasy points per snap over a Collegiate players entire career Jonathan Brooks is in a rare category where he's 216 pounds he is between javante Williams Kenneth Walker and Bree Hall and M tles Force per touch and he has a higher receiving fantasy points per snap than Bree Hall than Dalvin cook then of course I mean Jonathan Taylor wasn't that great but he can catch passes he can make people miss and he has size he has everything that you're looking for for a running back to breakout it just comes down to the ACL Javonte Williams Terr and what he looks like after that now the next guy we're want to talk about is javante Williams and I know that I'm going to get some comments here of like well isn't this hypocritical you just said draft Jonathan Brooks and now you're going to say to draft Davonte Williams and blame last year's bad year on an ACL tear well here was what I would say Jonathan Brooks is just 20 years old and it was a clean ACL tear the difference is that javante Williams wasn't that young and then he also had multi- ligament damage where he had an ACL te TCL MCL complete reconstruction which is a much tougher injury to work back from it's not as clean right and that's what we saw last year play out Bree Hall had a clean ACL tear he was good to go javante had multi- ligaments he was not similar ACL tear to what we saw from JK Dobbins but I do think that this year a year removed from that he can bounce back because last year he really took a hit in terms of efficiency his yards per carry was down rushing yards over expected per attempt yard to contact per attempt explosive uh Rush percentage literally everything you look at he was much worse but we do know that running backs bounce back from these injuries and they become more efficient in year what like n plus one or n plus2 whatever it would be from these ACL tears and if he can go back to his efficiency from that first one to twoe stretch then we're really cooking here in this Shawn Payton offense because Shawn pton uses his running backs a ton last year in terms of running back usage they were sixth among all backfield just in terms of usage so that's Red Zone attempts carry targets all of that how much fantasy points were expected to go to the running back position this is a chart from Hayden winks and then this is also a good stat from uh Sean seagull over at rotoviz and he said in 17 years Payton has never had an offense finish outside the top five and receiving expected points to the to the running backs by contrast Russell Wilson had never had a season inside the top 20 until the previous year in Denver and what this illustrates is that every season Shawn Payne gives so much targets to his running backs that they are top five and receiving expected points every single year that he's coached and even it's even quarterback proof where a guy like Russell Wilson who has historically never targeted the running back did so in Denver with Shawn Payne so there's going to be a lot of targets there's going to be a lot of usage and if this offense can take any kind of step forward with B Knicks we could see a really big year for javante now even if this offense doesn't take a step forward we're going to have the usage we're going to have a year two back from ACL efficiency bump and then we're also going to have dant as the clear Workhorse back with Sam pan likely cut samaj pan was out there playing after all the starters were done this past week and a lot of the beat reporters seem to think that he will be cut from the team which leaves him to be working with audri ese who is a day three between the tackles grinder who's going to be fine but he'll just take like a couple touches here and there you have Jalil McLaughlin who I like but he is 187 lbs he's not going to be reliable in pass protection so now you have javante Williams who Benjamin right here he is one of the uh more plugged in guys with the Denver Broncos and he believes it'll be one two three punch he obviously doesn't he doesn't list samj perine he has javante Williams as the rb1 and somebody asked are any of them worth rostering for Fantasy purposes he said javante Williams so it's all setting up for a big year for javante I think he could be out there in passing scenarios he could be out there as the main back he could be out there on the goal line and if he can take up a lot of you know that big usage there we see Shawn Payton give to the running backs and we're talking about a guy that can definitely finish inside of the top 12 and then our last running back candidate here this one's a flyer because I don't Tyjae Spears know I don't if the offense will be good enough and I don't know if he'll get enough volume but I do really like Tai J Spears he's going the 101 is the RB 37 and I will say two with javante didn't mention it but he's going in the eighth round at the rb30 anytime that javante like similar to Kenneth Walker anytime that Kenneth Walker I look up and he's in the fifth round I'm taking him anytime I look up and javante Williams is there in the eighth round I'm taking him now Tai Spears he's going at the 101 on sleeper as the RB 37 and he is a year two running back so that stuff that we talked about beon still applies we want to be targeting year two breakouts with these running backs like we saw last year with Bree Hall we saw last year I would kind of consider it etn right where he had like a red shirt year and then like a pseudo like almost like Ben Simmons rookie year and then truly broke out last year I think we could see that with Tai Spears this year where he has a real year two bump here and this is somebody who last year could have just been the pure handcuff in a backfield next to Derrick Henry but instead he forced himself to a 52% snap share again in a backfield with Derrick Henry who's beloved by the Titans and really good in his own right Tai Spears was good enough to get on the field 52% of the time and then also finish inside the top 10 in running backs with 70 targets so we have upside in terms of Target upside we have upside in him as a talent where we look at Dynasty zoltan's tweet here him versus Tony Pard who they just signed just in terms of efficiency on yards per attempt yards per touch yards created per touch yards at the contact Miss tackles forced all of that he smokes him in yards per route run smokes in so he's more efficient between the tackles he's a better receiving back he has continuity with the team already and we could very much see this be like a 1 a 1B that he could just run away with by the end of the year and I think this is a team that's not going to be all that great so there could be a lot of targets to go around and with like DeAndre Hopkins banged up Tai Spears could rack up a lot of Targets in this offense if he gets that third down and two-minute drill roll and then he also fits in really well in this offense where you have Brian Callahan coming over from the Bengals he's going to run Up Tempo and pass the ball a ton and what that means as well is that he brought his dad who's an offensive line coach I believe that's Bill Callahan he's one of the best in the league he drafts JC leam top 10 the offensive line should be improved on the Tennessee Titans and then this is a really good nugget from Scott Barrett over at fantasy points and he said Spears might be the perfect running back for a Brian Callahan rushing scheme the following is from Jacob Gibbs the Bengals ran out of shotgun 73% of the time in 2023 third most well above Tennessee's 40% Spears averaged seven yards per carry from shotgun in college versus just 4.3 yards per carry the rest of the time Spears also averaged 6.1 yards per carry on Zone attempts and 8.4 on man Gap concept runs at two lane by EPA per run Spears is actually the most effective man Gap rusher to enter the NFL draft over the past eight draft classes Cincinnati ranked sixth in man Gap run rate last year so we're going to see a lot of rushes out of shotgun a lot of man gaps scheme and that is Tai J Spears specialty so if Tony po comes out here and his efficiency doesn't bounce back at all from last year Spears could be the main back he could catch a ton of passes now he's not going to ever be a 20 plus touch back but he is very much in that same category of H and jir Gibbs of guys who don't need those touches but can get their own efficiency and explosive plays and PPR Target upside so Tai Spears to me is really really interesting anywhere like the ninth or 10th round now that is going to do it for us today that is seven running backs to Draft before they break out and before they hit a top 12 point per game finish for the first time in their career as always we have them all highlighted targeted in the ranks over on patreon.com at my top 200 it's tiered it has my target rounds for each and every single player my targets my avoids it is the one cheat sheet that if I could only bring one thing into my home League Draft a high stakes draft it would be this cheat sheet you can find it over on patreon patreon.com Ron Stewart but if you can't support there just leave a like subscribe and I will see yall in the next one [Music]