If you have researched fantasy football this summer, chances are you have heard of the dreaded "Running Back Dead Zone." For the uninitiated, the trendy nickname refers to Rounds 3-6 of 12-team drafts. History tells us running back scoring tends to fall off more sharply in these rounds than at wide receiver.
If you’re interested in learning more about the specifics, check out Jack Miller’s article on Establish The Run. Miller’s data is specific to best-ball leagues, but ADPs are similar enough across formats to apply his major takeaways to traditional redraft leagues:
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Target wide receivers in Rounds 3-6
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If you don’t draft running backs with your first two picks, wait until Rounds 7-10, where similar running back production to what you would get in Rounds 4-6 is usually available.
Attacking your draft in this manner makes sense intuitively and is backed by years of data. But there is a problem with carving this strategy (or any other) in stone. Typical snake drafts leave too much outside your control. Your draft position and opponents have more to do with which players will be available each time you pick than you do. Sticking to a rigid positional strategy often comes at the expense of maximizing the projected fantasy points in your starting lineup, which is counterintuitive.
It’s also not as though running backs drafted in Rounds 3-6 never hit. They just do so less often than wide receivers. Last year, for example, Jonathan Taylor (3.09) and David Montgomery (5.05) were each drafted in the dead zone and were instrumental in deciding league championships. And in 2019, Aaron Jones (3.03), Derrick Henry (4.04), and Austin Ekeler (5.10) each finished inside the Top 5 PPR scorers at the position.
So while avoiding running backs in the dead zone gives you a greater probability of maximizing the value of your picks, it isn’t a requisite for constructing a championship roster. If two or three league-tilting running backs are found in Rounds 3-6 most years, it’s a worthy exercise to try separating the ones who have the best chance of emerging from those more likely to end up value traps we should have seen coming.
Below are the 14 running backs currently being selected in (or close enough to) the dead zone, tiered by their chances of delivering an outlier season.
Alive and Kicking
J.K. Dobbins (ADP 34.1) - Dobbins meets all the criteria for a running back primed to buck the dead zone trend.
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Potential Top 10 offense - The Ravens finished ninth in scoring last year and first in 2019. The additions of Sammy Watkins and Rashod Bateman at wide receiver make this year’s offense the best on-paper version of the Lamar Jackson era.
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Versatility as a runner and pass-catcher - Dobbins has a chance to be one of the best rushers in the league. As a rookie, he finished third in yards created per touch and fourth in expected points added. With Jackson freezing enemy linebackers at the line of scrimmage, Dobbins’ rushing upside isn’t in question. His receiving opportunity playing in the same backfield as Jackson is more of an unknown. But Dobbins can catch. Per Player Profiler, he had a 59th percentile target share at Ohio State, and both Dobbins and the coaching staff are saying the right things about getting him more involved as a receiver in 2021.
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Big-play athleticism - Dobbins checks this box easily. He was the best SPARQ athlete in his class coming out of high school, and his exceptional speed and burst translated as a rookie, as evidenced by his league-leading 8.2% breakaway run rate.
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Opportunity - The Ravens were eighth and thirteenth in running back rush attempts in 2019 and 2020, respectively. And despite the threat of Jackson at the goal-line, Baltimore running backs have 47 rush attempts from inside the opponent’s five-yard line over the last two seasons -- the third-highest total in the league.
Strong Pulse
DAndre Swift (ADP 33.2) - Swift sharing Detroit’s backfield with Jamaal Williams is an unfortunate truth at this point. But here is the saving grace --the Lions are going to stink. They have zero wide receivers of consequence, a quarterback who can’t drive the ball downfield, and a defense that allowed a league-leading 32.4 points per game a year ago.
Coaching staffs love backs like Williams. He pass-blocks well, picks up what gets blocked in front of him, and has soft hands. But in an offense that will need to manufacture yardage, Swift is the play-maker Detroit will lean on more often than not. He ranked eleventh in breakaway run rate as a rookie, tenth in targets per game, and sixth in yards per route run. Swift also has a chance to lead all Lions pass-catchers in touchdowns. He commanded nine red-zone targets in 2020, which ranked eleventh among all running backs despite missing three games.
Miles Sanders (ADP 44.7) - Sanders’ ADP is down nearly two entire rounds from last year after he finished 2020 as the cumulative RB21. It would appear a pair of underwhelming veterans (Jordan Howard, Kerryon Johnson) and a fifth-round rookie (Kenneth Gainwell) arriving in Philadelphia has put early drafters off Sanders, which feels like a mistake.
Sanders checks many of the same boxes as Dobbins:
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Youth and high-end athleticism
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More room to run while playing alongside a rushing quarterback. In the three games Sanders played with Jalen Hurts last season (Weeks 14-16), Sanders ranked as the RB7 in PPR leagues.
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A top-10 finish in yards created in 2020
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Questions about his role in the passing game may be unfounded. Sanders totaled 13 targets and had a pair of four-catch showings in his three games played with Hurts. And new Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni has emphasized the screen game from the moment he arrived in Philadelphia. Assuming Gainwell makes the active roster out of camp, he could steal some work on obvious passing downs, but he won’t be on the field enough to prevent Sanders from racking up 35-40 receptions.
Travis Etienne (ADP 59.0) - There isn’t much to write about Etienne’s league-swinging potential Jeff Bell didn’t already cover here. The Jaguars are awful defensively, and Etienne was drafted in the first round to reprise his role from Clemson as Trevor Lawrence’s YAC monster. Our current site projections have Etienne finishing with 53 receptions, which might end up too low by 30 percent. The only thing to be wary about is training camp hype inflating his ADP.
Darrell Henderson (ADP 65.9) - Henderson has become a divisive topic in the wake of Cam Akers’ season-ending injury. Sure, Henderson never separated from Malcolm Brown when given the opportunity. But he is no longer competing with Brown, will only be 24-years-old when the season begins, and should remain the Rams unquestioned starter regardless of which veteran retread eventually joins LA’s backfield.
When Akers missed time last season, Henderson had a five-game stretch of RB16 production in PPR formats while playing alongside Brown. The film agreed with the statistics. From our Matt Waldman:
“Henderson struggled to learn LA’s wide zone scheme as a rookie after working strictly as a gap runner at Memphis (and an electric one at that). To Henderson's credit, he became a good zone runner last year, and twice as fast as it took Tevin Coleman, who also got drafted to a zone team and had zone experience at Indiana. Henderson looked better as a decision-maker than Akers during the first half of the 2020 season. Akers was a fine talent but the Rams had a clear preconceived idea of how they were going to work their running backs during the year. Because if they went according to performance, Akers wouldn't have earned the late-season carries he did (although he produced).”
Given his progression as a sophomore, explosive collegiate profile, and the potential for Matthew Stafford to return LA’s offense to their 2018 peak, Henderson warrants a glass-half-full approach (for one more season).
Trey Sermon (ADP 75.6) - The 49ers’ defense endured terrible injury luck in 2020. The healthy returns of edge rusher Nick Bosa, defensive end Dee Ford, and safety Jaquiski Tartt, to name a few, should help San Francisco more closely resemble the unit that brought them to a Super Bowl in 2019. If the defense can recapture even 75% of its 2019 form, we can expect the 49ers to run the ball about 30 times per game.
Such a rushing workload leaves room for Sermon to be productive in a platoon alongside Raheem Mostert, especially if reports he’ll inherit Tevin Coleman’s vacated role prove true. Sermon’s path to emerging from the dead zone as league-winner lies in how confident we are in Mostert, whose profile doesn’t exactly inspire confidence:
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At less than 200 lbs., Mostert is too small to handle a heavy workload. Since he began earning significant playing time in San Francisco in 2018, he has broken his arm, sprained his knee twice, and suffered a pair of high ankle sprains.
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He brings zilch as a receiver out of the backfield.
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While he has less tread on his tires than most 29-year-olds, Mostert is well past the age apex for running backs.
Signs of Life
Chris Carson (ADP 38.8) - Carson is valued properly at ADP, but he’ll need some luck to finish much higher than his usual RB15 range. Since beginning his career in 2017, Carson has fractured his ankle and hip and sprained his shoulder, knee, and foot. Injuries usually aren’t easy to predict, but we can make an exception for backs like Carson, who seek out contact when they run. We have every reason to expect his upside will be limited as he plays through injuries and misses games.
David Montgomery (ADP 41.4) - It’s easy to write off Montgomery’s sensational 2020 stretch run due to the poor level of competition he faced and the absence of Tarik Cohen. But Cohen is coming along slowly in his rehab from a torn ACL, and head coach Matt Nagy sounds committed to saddling up Montgomery as a workhorse.
Damien Williams is a better backup than the Bears had on their roster in 2020, but as Kevin Cole illustrates, we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of back-to-back dead zone triumphs from Montgomery out of hand.
David Montgomery's most similar comparable players are looking pretty good pic.twitter.com/0YbFVW87es
— Kevin Cole (@KevinColePFF) July 29, 2021
Kareem Hunt (ADP 70.2) - An injury to Nick Chubb is Hunt’s singular path to becoming anything more than a touchdown-dependent committee back who drives you crazy trying to figure out which week it’s safe to start him. Should such an injury occur, though, Hunt has the track record, receiving chops, and will gain more than enough opportunity to finish inside the Top 5 at running back.
Chase Edmonds (ADP 78) - Edmonds is sitting on the fence between tiers. In his favor:
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The Cardinals’ offense will be above average, at worst.
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We know his role. Edmonds quietly finished sixth among all running backs with 68 targets in 2020. Kliff Kingsbury has proven he understands getting Edmonds the ball in space is the best way to maximize his trademark burst and agility.
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He’s efficient. Edmonds has finished among the league leaders with 1.02 fantasy points per opportunity in his last two seasons with Kingsbury.
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With Kenyan Drake gone and the Cardinals content to replace him with James Conner on a clear backup contract ($1.75 million), we should expect Edmonds to rush the ball at least 10-12 times per game. Tack on four-to-five catches most weeks, and Edmonds has enough work to reach low-end RB1 numbers in PPR scoring.
Unfortunately, as Dave Loughran recently pointed out, a Conner-sized elephant in the room threatens to place a hard cap on Edmonds’ ceiling. It would probably take a significant injury to Conner (not an altogether unlikely scenario) for Edmonds to emerge from the dead zone.
You could count on one finger the amount of goal line carries Chase Edmonds has had in his career.
— Dave Loughran (@Loughy_D) July 29, 2021
James Conner has 16 touchdowns on 32 career goal line carries. Kyler Murray has 5 scores on 11 attempts.
The writing is on the wall.
Flat Lined
Josh Jacobs (ADP 55.6) - How confident are you the Raiders are going to beat their implied win total this year?
Josh Jacobs is the most gamescript dependent RB in fantasy:
— Graham Barfield (@GrahamBarfield) July 22, 2021
In wins — 21.1 fantasy points per game
In losses — 10.3 FPG
17 of his 19 career TDs have come in wins.
Raiders win total is 7.5 — same as the Panthers and Broncos.
Mike Davis (ADP 56.4) - As Jason Wood has reminded us countless times, beware of drafting running backs based solely on their perceived opportunity. Davis has changed teams five times in the last three seasons. His production waned down the stretch in Carolina last year, and when was the last time we cared about an Atlanta running back in fantasy football anyway?
Javonte Williams (ADP 64.1) - Melvin Gordon showed up to training camp with no designs on relinquishing the Broncos’ starting job, and to his credit, he ran well last year. The 28-year-old veteran ranked inside the top-12 in breakaway runs and evaded tackles during his first year in Denver. As long as Gordon is healthy and the Broncos remain in contention, the talented rookie Williams will have to share the backfield in Denver's middling offense.
Myles Gaskin (ADP 67.3) - Like Davis, Gaskin is the quintessential dead zone running back who typically falls flat due to fantasy gamers overestimating his role as the nominal starter on his team. What makes us confident Gaskin won’t open the season in a committee?
Malcolm Brown is one of the least-sexy names in fantasy football, but he's one of those guys NFL teams just love. As noted above, he never stopped earning playing time for the Rams despite the team investing early draft capital at the position. In 2019, the Lions tried to steal him away with a restricted free agent offer. And ultimately, he was targeted by Miami when he finally hit unrestricted free agency.
Think through that last part. The Dolphins needed running back depth entering the offseason yet nearly passed on the position entirely during the NFL Draft. They did nothing beyond prioritizing Brown in free agency, which should tell us the team has plans for him to play, most likely on early downs and at the goal-line, which would sink Gaskin’s chances of surviving the dead zone.
