RB By Committee, Update

Photo: USA Today Sports

This year's series of "By Committee" articles sparked a few great questions from the readers, and that led to a recent article where I discussed using a few different approaches (such as Ben Roethlisberger only at home plus another quarterback).  At the end of the article, a table was presented to show several options at quarterback for committee pairs that involved quarterbacks that were higher than the cutoff line that I had drawn (QB13+ on the ADP list).  The readers asked why the line was drawn at QB12, and I felt that it was a good question and a different answer (and article) was needed.  Further investigation of this seemlingly arbitrary line led me to ask the question for running back - should the line be drawn higher, and could better pairs result?  

So with this in mind, I revisited the arguments I made about the committee approach, and then I explored raising the line (and the bar) for better pairs.  Below are the results, which I hope help you on your fantasy draft day: 

ELIGIBLE RUNNING BACKS

I mentioned this the first time - defenses and quarterbacks are relatively easy to "committee" together. There's usually only one QB and certainly only one team defense per NFL club, so the approach is pretty simple as far as picking out which players / teams to try and pair up. When it comes to running backs, the line is not quite so easy to draw, but I needed some basis to pick which players it made sense to try and combine for a decent committee. This time I decided that I would use the following criteria to decide which players to start with for evaluating:

CRITERIA #1 - RB11 AND BEYOND

This seems pretty simple. If we want to have a duo that puts up elite numbers, that means we want RB10 or better production - else we would just draft a Top 10 option and forget the whole idea. So here is the list of players with which I started, based on their Average Draft Position (ADP):

Table 1: Running Backs RB11-RB27 Based on ADP

Now we have 17 guys to pair up and see how they do. That makes 136 potential committees, so there had better be a decent one (or several, we hope) out of all of those couplets. Now, before I go over the method of how to pair them up and the results, we need one more rule:

CRITERIA #2 - NO MORE THAN ONE RB FROM ROUND 5 AND ONE FROM ROUND 6

Rather than keep Criteria #2 from the original article, I am allowing for more flexibility in your draft.  Let us let the results speak for themselves and then decide which pairs are the correct ones to select as the draft progresses.

So what do we do now to figure out some RB pairs?

CRITERIA #3 - USE FOOTBALLGUYS' RB STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE

This sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Just take the RB Strength of Schedule to figure out when certain players are more likely to score well. What I did is similar to what the Projections Dominator and Draft Dominator do for you - take the projected fantasy points and slice them up over 17 weeks based on the strength of schedule. I call this result the "distributed fantasy points" for each receiver.

After I had all 17 running backs with distributed fantasy points on a weekly basis, I just compared all of the possible RB pairs to find the best duos for an elite RBBC. So here we are - time for some results:

Table 2: Elite Running Back Committee Pairs

Okay, that is a really big table, but I wanted to be thorough.  As you can see, we have some very good pairs to select from for an elite RBBC. So digging in, there are 81 pairs ot Table 2 to consider, so there are a number of options.  Rather than looking at the frequency of appearances, let's just jump right into the comparison to the original table for our Top 12+ running backs from the original article:  

Table 3: Projected Fantasy Points for Elite Running Backs

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Based on Tables 2 and 3, we see that some combinations of running backs can provide elite production at a reduced price.  Taking two running backs in the RB15-24 range with the right combined schedule gives 240+ fantasy points, which is equivalent to any of Todd Gurley, Leonard Fournette or Lamar Miller (RB12, RB10 or RB11, respectively) along with 4-8 points for a bye week filler. Not all of the pairings may fall into place in each draft, but having a chart like Table 2 can give you a leg up on the competition.  

The committee approach is not a perfect one, but having this knowledge prior to your fantasy draft can prove to be invaluable if you decide to adopt this approach.  If all the players on your starter list are gone, goiong with a committee can save your team and help you deal with the loss of bigger names.  The method is also a big help in "Best Ball" leagues, where lineup decisions are not necessary every week.  That's exactly where a committee can do the best, as either player can count for you each week.

Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.

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