At the end of every fantasy football season, several players seem to be on every championship roster. Some of those players are the usual suspects you see getting selected in the first few rounds of every draft. But there are usually at least a handful of players who were afterthoughts during draft season and were selected late or not at all in most standard formats.
Those players are what we like to call “League Winners.” League Winners are those low-cost players who produce more for fantasy managers than what their cost suggested during drafts. These can be household names like Cooper Kupp or Deebo Samuel who exploded onto the scene with breakout seasons, or they can be players like Cordarrelle Patterson who weren’t even being drafted.
Being able to identify these players can, well, put you in a position to win your league. Our own Andrew Erickson recently took a look at 10 potential League Winners for the 2022 Fantasy Football season.
Melvin Gordon III (RB – DEN)
Melvin Gordon is bound to be written off by fantasy draft pundits this offseason due to his age, but he proved that he still had gas in the tank in 2021. The 29-year-old running back was efficient across the board, ranking eighth in both PFF rushing grade (83.4) and forced missed tackles (45) while compiling 231 touches (16th).
Gordon finished right behind Javonte Williams as the fantasy RB18 and played one fewer game.
With MG3 back on a high-powered offense and with the potential to receive goal-line touches — as he did so last season — Gordon could easily become a league-winning Rb that you can draft late in 2022 like James Conner or Leonard Fournette last year.
– Andrew Erickson
Check out more fantasy advice for Melvin Gordon
2022 Fantasy Football Staff Consensus Rankings
2022 Fantasy Football Rankings powered by FantasyPros
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | SoundCloud | iHeartRadio
If you want to dive deeper into fantasy football, be sure to check out our award-winning slate of Fantasy Football Tools as you navigate your season. From our Start/Sit Assistant – which provides your optimal lineup based on accurate consensus projections – to our Trade Analyzer – which allows you to instantly find out if a trade offer benefits you or your opponent – we’ve got you covered this fantasy football season.
