Fantasy Football: Identifying sleeper and late-round RBs to target

NFL football games are often won between the trenches, but fantasy football championships are born at the running back position. Bonafide stud running backs are crucial to league-winning rosters — that's why RBs are currently flying off the board in the first two rounds of Underdog best ball drafts.

It's no secret who the league’s top dogs are in fantasy — Christian McCaffrey, Dalvin Cook, Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry — but the talent falls off quickly outside the first few rounds.

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That doesn’t mean we should avoid the position after the heavy hitters, though. There’s value to be had with middle- to late-round running backs; you just need to know where to look.

I’ve collected a sample of 67 running backs since 2017 who were drafted outside the top 24 (or went undrafted) and outproduced their ADP in PPR formats. The goal is to find common themes among these league-winning running backs — like Mike Davis and James Robinson — and apply the findings to the upcoming 2021 season.

Most productive RBs drafted outside top-24 since 2017 (PPR)

Player	Team	Year	ADP	Fantasy Finish
Austin Ekeler	LAC	2019	RB30	RB4
Mark Ingram II	NO	2017	RB25	RB6
James Conner	PIT	2018	RB56	RB6
James White	NE	2018	RB42	RB7
James Robinson	JAX	2020	RB65	RB7
Tarik Cohen	CHI	2018	RB36	RB11
Duke Johnson Jr.	CLE	2017	RB38	RB11
Mike Davis	CAR	2020	RB65	RB12
Phillip Lindsay	DEN	2018	RB65	RB13
Miles Sanders	PHI	2019	RB29	RB15
Chris Carson	SEA	2018	RB30	RB15
Dion Lewis	NE	2017	RB65	RB15

Every year, several running backs drafted outside the top 24 finish the year as fantasy RB1s in PPR scoring. But identifying and drafting these backs is easier said than done.

To start, we need to look at when these specific backs were taken in drafts to find out if there's a sweet spot for RBs primed to smash their expected outcomes in a certain ADP range.

Fantasy Finish and ADP

The sample size includes running backs drafted outside the top 24 who beat their ADP. But breaking them into subsets of ADP ranges offers a clearer picture of the best value spot at the RB position.

The RB3 range (RB25-RB38) presents the greatest hit rate for fantasy running backs to return a mid-range RB2 (RB16.8) finish. That’s not Earth-shattering news — undervalued starting RBs are often selected in this range. There are also plenty of RBs in crowded backfields and backs who offer serious pass-catching chops.