We’re here to help you avoid draft-day landmines that can sink your season before it begins. Let’s take a look at a few 2022 fantasy football busts.
Rankings noted using FantasyPros half-PPR Expert Consensus Rankings (ECR) and Consensus ADP.
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Fantasy Football Busts
Ezekiel Elliott‘s main fantasy appeal is the touchdown opportunity he will see in a high-powered offense, coming off another season with poor rushing efficiency marks. The Dallas Cowboys running back finished fifth-worst in PFF’s elusive rating (25.0) and averaged fewer fantasy points per game than in 2020 (14.6 versus 15.4) in a better offensive situation. There is a caveat with Zeke’s inefficient rushing: He reportedly played with a torn PCL last season.
However, history doesn’t necessarily indicate that Elliott is in for a significant comeback in 2022 based on running backs that have had similar careers.
Steven Jackson, Walter Payton and Clinton Portis profile closest to Elliott based on their workloads and age, per Stathead.com. Each running back totaled over 1,800 touches before their age-27 season.
But the feedback was negative, with each running back seeing a dip in average PPR points per game (1.34) and total fantasy points (-18). And that came with each of them still seeing 370-plus touches on the season.
Elliott hit a career-low in total touches (284) and touches per game last season (16.7) — nearly three fewer than in 2020.
Dallas has every right to feed Zeke to their heart’s desire with an out in his contract at the end of the season. But they are also in the business of winning games and understand that Elliott breaking down at the end of last season did not help the offense.
Meanwhile, backup running back Tony Pollard quietly averaged 11.3 touches — three more than the year prior — and flashed elite rushing ability as PFF’s second-highest-graded rusher.
I hate to be the one to bury an older running back as washed, as that burned me last season somewhat with the likes of James Conner and Leonard Fournette. However, I am not overly convinced that Elliott will be a volume monster in 2022 after the team dialed back his usage while Pollard continued to impress at every opportunity he received.
And even if Elliott’s efficiency increases slightly after a lackluster season, the Cowboys’ offensive line might mitigate any of those benefits if they take a step back with a plethora of moving pieces.
If Zeke follows in the same path as the previous backs I’ve mentioned, he’s looking at 235 fantasy points (low-end RB1 last season) if he plays a full slate of games. But his points per game fall in the back-end RB2 range at RB22, averaging 13.5 points per game.
Chances are that Elliott will probably beat his ADP because he is an iron man and doesn’t miss games. He’s missed just one game due to injury over his NFL career.
But even the greatest Zeke fans will admit the ride for him to finish as RB10-12 hardly will feel smooth when he’s hanging middling RB2 production most weeks. He’s finished as a top-12 fantasy RB1 in just 35% of his games the past two seasons. Elliott won’t end up being a true difference-maker at this stage in his career, and the cost of drafting him over league-winning WRs in the middle rounds is something I can’t justify.
Keep in mind that 13.5 PPR points per game equated to the WR29 last season.
And if the sole argument for drafting Zeke is touchdowns (valid argument), why not just draft Josh Jacobs instead? Or guys like Antonio Gibson, Elijah Mitchell, Damien Harris and David Montgomery, who all finished as RB1s at a similar percentage (greater than 32%) in 2021?
Despite being an entrenched workhorse, David Montgomery finished as a top-24 running back in fewer than half of his contests last season (46%). Former sixth-rounder Khalil Herbert was a top-12 running back in two of his five games last season when he received at least a 50% snap share.
Just don’t draft David Montgomery. Projected volume is the only reason he’s going where his ADP is, but a new coaching staff could approach the backfield differently. In my heart of hearts, I think Herbert is the better, more explosive back. Monty finished outside the top 24 in more than half of his games last season. His 2022 ADP hits inside the top-20 RBs. No thanks.
Running backs tied to a mobile quarterback are often short-changed when it comes to the passing game. For as well as J.K. Dobbins performed in fantasy football from Weeks 11-17 in full PPR (RB11) during the 2020 season, guess who outscored him… J.D. McKissic. That’s because McKissic caught 37 passes versus Dobbins’ three.
Guys like Derrick Henry can overcome the lack of receiving work because they are entrenched bell cows, but that’s not the case with Dobbins in Baltimore, with Gus Edwards also in the mix. Dobbins only slightly out-touched Edwards 86-74 down the stretch in 2020.
It would be pure ignorance to assume that Dobbins will take over the backfield coming off an injury, considering Edwards has been excellent with every opportunity he has received.
Dobbins also ran extremely hot when it came to scoring touchdowns, scoring at least one TD in every game from Week 11 on. His nine total rushing TDs ranked 12th in the league and nearly doubled his expected output (5.5, 30th) — the sixth-highest difference at the position.
Drafters must understand that to invest in Dobbins as a late third-rounder or fourth-rounder (RB22, 45th overall ADP), he needs to run hot in the TD category coming off the season-ending ACL injury. They also should expect zero-to-little pass-game work with Jackson’s tendency to not check down, along with the additions of two receiving backs, veteran Mike Davis and rookie Tyler Badie.
There is some risk that Damien Harris will be used in a 50/50 split with second-year back Rhamondre Stevenson in 2022. Stevenson (93) and Harris (86) split touches nearly 50/50 in the team’s remaining seven games. In the six games they played together, Stevenson slightly edged out Harris in expected fantasy points per game (9.3 vs. 8.9).
Harris’ production was heavily inflated by his 15 touchdowns, which were nearly six more than his expected output. As a result, the running back’s total expected fantasy points were equivalent to the RB23, and on a points per game basis, the RB26 in half-point scoring.
With a limited role as a receiver, Harris has a limited fantasy ceiling that is accompanied by a super shaky floor if he loses volume to other Patriots’ running backs or fails to score touchdowns at the same rate as last season.
A running back I am avoiding is running back Kenneth Walker. With an ADP in the top 75, it’s just too steep a price to pay for a running back who is projected to be used heavily on early downs in an offense that easily projects to be bottom five in the NFL led by the unsurprising duo of Drew Lock/Geno Smith at quarterback.
Even if Walker can carve out a first-year workload similar to that of Chris Carson circa 2020 — 16.4 touches per game, 56% snap share when healthy — it’s still going to be a massive uphill battle for him to be a fantasy producer in Year 1.
Pete Carroll has a stable of backs, including Rashaad Penny, Travis Homer and DeeJay Dallas, who all figure to work in at some point despite Walker’s Round 2 draft capital. Penny was the fantasy RB1 over the final five weeks of the season.
Again, even when Carson was the clear-cut RB1 of the offense, he was splitting snaps.
Penny was brought back on a one-year deal for $5 million (12th-highest cap hit), Chris Carson — if healthy — is due $6.1 million (10th-highest cap hit), and Homer/Dallas have routinely worked as pass catchers out of the backfield.
Seattle also finished dead last in targets to the RB position last season, creating serious doubt that Walker will be used in that fashion in any capacity as a rookie. Part of that is on Russell Wilson‘s lack of juice in the screen game, but the offense itself doesn’t predicate much RB pass-game usage. Geno Smith posted a meager 12% RB target rate (three per game) in his three starts last season. Drew Lock was at 17%.
The Seahawks have the chance to be a running back by committee backfield and dumpster fire on offense this season for all the reasons I’ve laid out, which is why I am adamantly against paying the premium for Walker. If this team falls behind in games, there’s no telling which RB will even be on the field.
A friendly reminder: Nobody is making you draft a Seattle Seahawks running back.
FantasyPros Staff Consensus 2022 Redraft Fantasy Football Rankings
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