Should I draft a Running Back here?
A simple heuristic to use while drafting
I’m on record saying that at the macro-level, best ball ADP is more efficient than ever. With the death of the running back dead zone, the priotization of elite quarterbacks that do actually separate, and the elevated price tags for young wide receivers, long-held macro edges are certainly disappearing. And these shifts have radically changed the drafting landscape. So, I wanted to check in on the “efficiency” of the market, to see if it is indeed more efficient, as I thought, or if we had simply exchanged one inefficiency for a different one.
The Method
My method for doing this started as a simple drafting heuristic based on research buried in the deep, dark depths of Mike Leone’s Best Ball Manifesto. In it, Leone presents the following:
Assuming that 90% of the time the flex is filled by an RB or WR on Underdog and that it is split equally between the two positions, we arrive at 3.45 starting WRs and 2.45 starting RBs. In theory, that ratio (3.45:2.45 or 1.4:1) should be reflected in how teams spend their draft capital.
From Sam Sherman’s research, we should expect the 1.4 ratio to be roughly correct on a 0.5ppr site like Underdog (without factoring in other considerations like stacking, positional scarcity, leverage, etc).
So, before picking in drafts, I divide the highest available WR positional rank by the highest available running back positional rank. In the below image, Tony Pollard (RB7) and Tee Higgins (WR14) are the top RB/WRs on the board.
The Positional Efficiency Check (PEC) (testosterone-heavy drafters unite) ratio divdies Higgins positional rank by Pollard’s, which in this case is 14/7 = 2. To me, this means that all else being equal (and I again acknowledge all else is not equal, with stacking, scarcity, etc all factors of importance), Pollard is likely a better pick than Higgins. However, in a scenario where Higgins and Breece Hall were the top RB/WR options on the board, the PEC ratio would be roughly 1.4, meaning that absent other factors, Breece and Higgins are roughly the same from a projected value standpoint (depsite loving Breece’s upside, the ADP value of Higgins, scarcity of WR, and unique leverage would very likely lead me to select him).
The Research
Similarly, we can use the PEC to roughly determine efficiency throughout the draft, which I did for following three separate points in time, using the Rotoviz Underdog ADP tool:
September 1 2022 (representing the end of last draft season)
May 11 2023 (when I wrote the New Frontier)
July 1 2023 (current market)
For last year (and very likely for many years before it), I expected to find that the market systemically overvalued running backs, especially in rounds 3-6, where the RB dead zone historically was. This was indeed the case, with PEC showing that WRs were better values for each of the first 5 rounds, before leveling out for the remainder of the draft.
Given that wide receviers were undervalued even before adding in other factors like stacking, scarcity, and running back being a relatively easier position to gain ADP value on, it’s no suprise that teams that invested heavily in wide receiver smashed last season. Armed with this information, the market has (finally, after nearly a decade of data pointing to this conclusion) reacted.
By May 11 of this year, the valuation had essentially flipped, with wide receivers now being overvalued in the early rounds per PEC. The dead zone has completely disappeared, with running backs actually projecting as better bets through round 10. At that time, I wrote in the New Frontier that now was one of the best times to draft a SuperHero running back team (2 RBs in the first 3 rounds, then none until after round 8 or so), as the consensus was that the early-round running backs would likely rise, and as we gained more information on the best late-round RB candiates. However, I also noted that:
“it’s at least plausible that the sickos refuse to relent, hammering wide receivers early and often and limiting the viability of multiple early-round detours. In this scenario, we continue to get those RBs at the 2/3 turn, or even in the mid-3rd, making Hero/Zero RB starts particularly appealing as more late-round RB targets present themselves.”
As of July 1, that is exactly what has happened, with the sickos hammering wide receivers even earlier, maintaing the edge in PEC to the RBs in rounds 1-3, and increasing the size of small pockets of RB value in rounds 5-10, before again leveling off in rounds 11+.
The Implications and How To Play It
Based on PEC, Hyperfragile, SuperHero, and Hero+ RB (with a relatively early 2nd RB) remain tempting (though the risk of a scarcity avalanche is ever-present), and I would like to continue to draft an outsized portion of my Superhero, Hyperfragile, and Hero+ RB builds drafted before training camp news and preseason returns. At that point, these strategies will likely become less optimal as the summer progresses, for two reasons.
As more casuals join best ball summer, I still think it is likely that early round running back ADP increases, reducing the positional value of early RBs, and allowing other factors like stacking, scarcity, etc to be of greater importance.
Even if ADP remains static, more certainty on the backup situations in NFL backfields creates better late-round zero RB candidates, weakening the edge of the early running backs, and likely bolstering Zero and extreme Hero RB builds the later into summer we go (which is something Leone found last year as well, and Blair Andrews found previously, forgive me Blair, I couldn’t find the link).
As we gain more information on who the RB2s are for the Vikings, Cowboys, Chargers, etc are, I’ll likely shift to more true Hero and Zero teams. Ultimately, PEC should continue to serve as a quick heuristic to identify when the best time to take the early RB value is, while being cognizant of the fact that, as Jakob Sanderson recently wrote, this year’s draft environment is essentially a game of chicken.