Fantasy Football Debate: Can James Conner Replicate Success in 2019?

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Every fantasy football draft season, there are players that cause a divide between fantasy football experts and analysts. To get a sense of the most volatile players entering fantasy football drafts, you can check out our Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) and view the player’s standard deviation. The lower the standard deviation, the more agreement around a player’s ranking. But a high standard deviation means our experts have a high range of expected outcomes.

Since these are the players that tend to make or break fantasy football drafts, we’ve paired our experts and writers — one higher on a player compared to our ECR and one lower — to bring to you a fantasy football player debate.

We’ll kick off the series with a league-winner from a season ago. This rusher took over for an offense that has been one of the few that continues to believe in a bell-cow running back system. However, said player wore down as the 2018 season progressed, and there is talk of more of a timeshare for the team. We’re talking about Steelers running back James Conner.

Conner has an ECR of RB6 in half-PPR scoring formats. Our writer and expert Geoff Lambert (@GeoffLambert77) is higher on Conner, while writer Marc Mathyk (@masterjune70) isn’t as confident in the third-year player entering the 2019 season.

Let’s check out the fantasy football debate for James Conner.

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Fantasy Football Debate: James Conner

Lets just start off by giving you his stats from last year. 973 yards 12 TDs, 55 receptions 497 yards 1 TD. He was RB6 in total points (.5ppr) and he only played in 13 games, assuming health, why would he not be the RB6 this year?

— Geoff Lambert (@GeoffLambert77) August 2, 2019

The main reason is I believe that Jaylen Samuels will have a greater role this year. He proved he is quite a capable back when he took over for the four weeks Conner was injured. I think Conner will be the first choice but Samuels will cut into his load more every game.

— Marc Mathyk (@Masterjune70) August 2, 2019

I knew this would come up. 1st, did he really have good games, plural? Or did he just have one REALLY good game and 3 meh games? 19 carries for 142 will make your 4 game average look a lot better. 2nd, Tomlin has never had an RBBC in 12 years, why change that in year 13?

— Geoff Lambert (@GeoffLambert77) August 2, 2019

Conner is a serviceable pass-catcher. Screens – simple RB stuff. Samuels was a TE/RB at NCSt. He is elite at catching. Like Le’V Bell, he has soft hands and the route tree to do more in the passing game than Conner. Yes, it has been a one man show in Pitt, but won’t be this year.

— Marc Mathyk (@Masterjune70) August 2, 2019

We just write off 12 yrs of history? ??‍♂️. With the amount of targets left on the table from the loss of AB and even Jesse James, and the fact that Juju is already close to maxed out on targets, Samuels may get some work out of the slot or even TE, but Connor is still the workhorse

— Geoff Lambert (@GeoffLambert77) August 2, 2019

The league has changed;the game has changed. RBBC will be more paramount this year. Gurley/Henderson; Michel/White; having more variety thrown at D’s makes a team less predictable. Conner will get his run – no doubt but Samuels w/ a year under his belt will be on the field more.

— Marc Mathyk (@Masterjune70) August 2, 2019

I agree the RBBC is more prevalent, but all those teams have innovative coaches. Tomlin is set in his ways. When Connor came back in Week 17 with Samuels on the field, despite coming off injury, he went right back to work horse status.

— Geoff Lambert (@GeoffLambert77) August 2, 2019

https://t.co/Vtf8ypgVCM
An article that shows that even Conner is embracing others like Samuels and Snell to be more of a committee. pic.twitter.com/8xpk03jfnB

— Marc Mathyk (@Masterjune70) August 2, 2019