Kevin Tompkins | Fri, Jun 21st 2024, 7:06am EDT

Zero RB Draft Strategy: Does it Work? (2024 Fantasy Football)

Zero RB. The name alone sparks a division between fantasy managers on whether it’s a viable strategy. It’s a term coined by Shawn Siegele in 2013 thanks to this article, which stands as one of the best articles ever written in the fantasy football space.

Whether you employ this fantasy football draft strategy liberally, sprinkle it in here and there or swear off of it entirely, we’ve seen a landscape change over the last few seasons when it comes to the average draft position (ADP) of running backs which makes Zero RB more accessible than ever. But was Zero RB effective in drafts last season?

We’ll dive into 2023’s Zero RB landscape, what we can bring from it into 2024 and one of my drafts from last season as a post-mortem, to see what went right, what went wrong and what we can use for the 2024 NFL season.

Was Zero RB Draft Strategy Effective in 2023?

A Macro Look at Zero RB in 2023

Yes. Zero RB was effective, and that’s putting it mildly.

Two late-round backs were instrumental in Zero RB’s resounding success in 2023: Kyren Williams and Raheem Mostert. If you went Zero RB and drafted every position but running back for the first six to eight rounds, grabbing Williams and/or Mostert was the skeleton key to success. Granted, you didn’t need either, but both certainly helped your rosters considering Williams was RB2 and Mostert was RB4 in fantasy points per game last season.

With the running backs continuing to be pushed down the board in the first few rounds in 2023, it made for a great opportunity to get some running back archetypes in the sixth through eighth rounds that wouldn’t normally be available in previous seasons. Backs like David Montgomery, James Cook, Isiah Pacheco, Rachaad White, Brian Robinson and Alvin Kamara were all available in those ranges.

If you waited even longer and stockpiled an elite QB, elite TE and grabbed a bunch of receivers to fill your starting lineup, your Flex spots and your bench in case of injury, projection error or any other chaos that ensues during the NFL season, there were also plenty of running backs that were awesome picks. Players like Mostert, Jaylen Warren, De’Von Achane, Gus Edwards and Jerome Ford all helped out in different parts of the season to steer teams to fantasy championships.

When going through my Zero RB teams, two stood out for very different reasons. The first one was an industry draft in late August where I had the 1.06 draft slot.

What Can We Take Away From Zero RB in 2023 to Help Us in 2024?

A lot of the same tenets for Zero RB still apply year after year. Zero RB leans hard into the chaos of the NFL season and stands to benefit from that chaos. The days of 300-carry backs being so plentiful in fantasy football are over for the time being. The purpose of the Zero RB draft strategy was to help dispel the myth that value-based drafting or VBD (drafting the best player available) was the best way to win a fantasy football league.

For myself, who has employed Zero RB as a regular strategy in leagues way before it was ever cool, I think of each week of the NFL season as its own season. So much can change in an instant and can flip a season on its head when you’re factoring in injuries, player performance, coaching changes, coaching decisions, a player’s role change, suspensions; you name it.

Those particular things are evergreen, but ADP changes and we must adapt to it. The original aim of Zero RB in Siegele’s 2013 article was to grab as many top-15 WR as possible, win the race to fill the Flex position with as many high-scoring wide receivers and then find running back profiles later in the draft so that our rosters become better during the season, rather than becoming more fragile when drafting running backs at the beginning of the draft.

Just like in 2023, 2024’s ADP features eight wide receivers in the first round to just four running backs. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be drafting Christian McCaffrey, Breece Hall, Bijan Robinson and Jahmyr Gibbs. If you have a principled stand on one of those players finishing with 23+ fantasy points per game and putting forth a legendary season, draft them as your anchor and continue with the other positions.

As for mid-range running backs that don’t break the bank on draft day, you can take guys like James Cook, Joe Mixon, Kenneth Walker or David Montgomery in the fifth round. They should all be either lead backs or backs with a sizeable role to more than pay off a fifth- or sixth-round ADP. In years past, those are third- or fourth-round backs. With the backs being pushing down draft boards en masse, you’re looking at much better prices here.

A 2023 Zero RB Draft Post-Mortem

I have drafted a ton of Zero RB teams in my day. Quite a few have won championships. Numerous have made the playoffs. Some just couldn’t get out of their way. A few were so horrific they should never see the light of day again. This is one of the latter. In this PPR 12-team league, you can start up to four wide receivers with three WR slots and a Flex. Out of the 1.06:

Where Did This Team Go Wrong?

Player selection for sure. I mean, I took Cooper Kupp over Tyreek Hill. Jerry Jeudy got hurt two days after drafting this team with a hamstring injury. Cooper Kupp missed the first four weeks of the season. Diontae Johnson had his own hamstring injury he suffered in Week 1. Quentin Johnston and Rashod Bateman were terrible busts and Jonathan Mingo was not too far behind.

A lot of bad injury luck coupled with a bet on the Chargers that didn’t pan out led to this team being well behind the competition. To give you a sense of how dead this team was, even early waiver pickups Puka Nacua and Adam Thielen couldn’t save this team.

What Went Right for This Zero RB Team?

Structurally, it was very sound. Grabbing an elite TE, elite QB, four wide receivers and still ending up with a running back pairing of James Cook and Jaylen Warren — who both ended up as top-24 running backs on the season — was a great way to structure this team from a running back perspective.

Structure with a Zero RB team is as important — if not more important — than player selection itself, but clearly with my example team, you need the player selection aspect as well. The structure of grabbing wide receivers before the heavy tier drop (think Jameson Williams, Courtland Sutton and Curtis Samuel at ~WR50) at the position while getting elite options at other positions puts you at a clear advantage to dominate your league.

Fantasy Football Draft Picks to Target

Fitz’s Top Fantasy Football Draft Targets (Premium)
Erickson’s Top Fantasy Football Draft Targets (Premium)
DBro’s Top Fantasy Football Draft Targets (Premium)

Kevin Tompkins is a featured writer for FantasyPros. For more from Kevin, check out his profile and follow him @ktompkinsii

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