Sometimes you go into fantasy football draft season more or less positive you’ll have no shares of a particular player. It’s not that you don’t want him at all, it’s just that you know he’ll be gone well before he falls into your acceptable range.
This year, for me, that player is Marshawn Lynch.
We recently unveiled the PFF Fantasy consensus top 200 PPR rankings, in which seven members of the PFF Fantasy team came together to sort out a list. Lynch came in 31st overall in those rankings, 13th among running backs. Personally, on my rankings, Lynch is 47th, 19th at the position.
Lynch is returning after a year of “retirement,” now as a member the Oakland Raiders, owners of PFF’s No. 7 offensive line entering the 2017 season. In current ADP on Fantasy Football Calculator, Lynch is going even higher than our consensus ranks, checking in as the No. 10 back. It’s not that I’m not interested in Lynch at any price. It’s that I know he’s not going to fall to me, and I’m not willing to pay the price it takes to get him. Let’s look at why.
Tread on the tires
Per Pro Football Reference, Lynch is 35th all-time in carries. Among active players, now that he’s technically one of them again, he’s fourth, behind Frank Gore, Adrian Peterson, and Matt Forte. By carries per game all time, he’s 28th, with only Peterson and DeMarco Murray ahead of him among active players. And while all of those active players have varying levels of relevance this season, they also aren’t coming off of a year’s absence.
Earlier this offseason, our Tyler Loechner studied the numbers, deciding that running backs tend to hit the wall at age 31, which Lynch now is.
A player can miss a year for any number of reasons. Sometimes it’s injury. Sometimes it’s contracts. Sometimes it’s suspension. Each of the aforementioned reasons, though, concerns a player who still wants to be a football player, meaning they are spending their off time working out (or, in the case of injury, working out as best they can). Did Lynch spend his off year keeping himself in football shape? Well, maybe. Videos of him on the beach in boots certainly look good. But at the same time, there weren't exactly a whole host of videos released that showed him working in a football manner during his time away. Drafting a running back in the late second, early third round means you are relying on that running back, and I’m not about to rely on a back with as much run as Lynch has had and that mystery absence on his hands.
Lack of receiving prowess
Maybe I’m being unfair here, but it feels to me like Lynch gets talked about like he’s a complete back, and … that’s not him. He’s only been top-20 among running backs in targets in a year once, and that was in 2008. The last four years he was active, 2012-2015, Lynch totaled 134 targets, or 33.5 a season. That total would have been 38th in 2016. It’s not that Lynch is a void in the receiving game — he’s not LeGarrette Blount — but he’s far from David Johnson or Le’Veon Bell as a receiver.
His teammates
For several years of his career, Lynch was a man on an island. The best No. 2 back the Seahawks provided Lynch in Seattle was probably Justin Forsett, at least until Thomas Rawls in 2015. But Rawls barely played when Lynch was active in his last year.
In short, Lynch as a Seahawk running back was going to be on the field all the time. Is that true in Oakland? I don’t think it is. The Raiders have him backed up by two 2016 rookies in DeAndre Washington (2016 grade of 72.3, 35th at RB) and Jalen Richard (77.2, 19th). Richard in particular was impressive as a rookie; his elusive rating of 90.7 was No. 1 in the league among all qualifying running backs, and he forced 28 missed tackles on 112 touches.
Jalen Richard of the @RAIDERS was the NFL's most elusive running back in 2016. pic.twitter.com/9LtTXlXGoM
— Pro Football Focus (@PFF) June 15, 2017
Here at PFF, we’ve had a lot to say this offseason about Lynch’s impressive history of forced missed tackles. And it is very impressive. But Richard is impressive in his own right, and between that and his usage in the receiving game (he was targeted 39 times in 2016), Lynch won’t have the RB monopoly in 2017.
Precedent
Not many backs have done what Lynch is about to do. The closest comparisons are 1981 John Riggins, 2001 Garrison Hearst, 2005 Mike Anderson, and 2008 Ricky Williams.
- Riggins’ year came 36 years ago, and only produced 773 yards from scrimmage.
- Hearst came back in 2001 after two seasons lost to injury and played all 16 games, producing 1,553 yards from scrimmage and five touchdowns.
- Anderson didn’t even play his first game until his age-27 season. He missed 2004 (at 31), then came back in 2005 to play 15 games, gain 1,226 yards, and score 13 touchdowns. It’s definitely impressive, though considering he did that in Mike Shanahan-era Denver, when Shanahan produced successful running backs over and over.
- Williams played one game in 2006 and 2007 combined. He returned in 2008 at age 31 and gained 878 yards with five touchdowns. The next year, 2009, Williams offered 1,385 yards from scrimmage and scored 13 times, but that was after a year back on the field.
None of the returnees was bad when he came back. But the only one I’d be hanging my hat on as a “Lynch 2017” truther is Hearst. You want to argue he’ll be a decent football player? That list is fine. You want to argue he’ll be a fantasy RB2, bordering on RB1? I’m not sure that list counts as evidence.
So far this draft season — mocks and real things — I have no shares of Marshawn Lynch. I don’t expect that to change.
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