If you have been playing fantasy football for a good while now (which means at least 5-6 years or more, and time flies), you know that the term “handcuff” has been out there quite a while when it comes to discussion starting running backs. Back in the days of Priest Holmes, LaDainian Tomlinson and Shaun Alexander, guys like Larry Johnson, Michael Turner and Maurice Morris were regarded as “must haves” for anyone who took one of those Top 3 running backs in a given year. That is where the handcuff term really started to take off, as owners would lock up the starting running back in Kansas City, San Diego or Seattle (amongst others) by taking the feature tailback starter along with his direct backup. That seemingly shrewd move ensured a fantasy team owner of owning the starting tailback for that particular NFL team, even if the guy first on the depth chart suffered an injury. Over time, this handcuffing strategy evolved to be the norm, elevating the respective ADP of the backup running back for many feature tailbacks, so much that Adrian Peterson owners in recent seasons had to pay the price of taking Toby Gerhart as high as the first pick of Round 9 to lock up the Vikings rushing attack.
As the NFL has become more and more of a passing game, the value of the running back has diminished. Teams are turning to the latest rage, which is the running back by committee approach, or RBBC for short. That means fewer feature tailbacks and even few direct backups for those same feature backs. So what do we do know when it comes to taking backup running backs in drafts? Is the smart move to abandon handcuffing entirely, or is there some other way to look at how to value running backs towards the second half of fantasy drafts?
So I started to think about what it means to have a handcuff running back situation, and – more importantly – why you should care. After all, what is our goal when we draft a team? We want points, points and more points – and keeping valuable assets away from other owners is a nice bonus, too. That’s why I devised a systematic way to evaluate every NFL team’s handcuff viability across several criteria. That system is what I will use to break down all the teams and their backup running backs, plus rank them against each other. You see, while I love the rankings and the projections that we provide here at Footballguys – there are inherent assumptions when it comes to predicting the numbers for each running back. The real value comes if and when a lead tailback goes down with an injury, and we all have to decide how fast we run to the waiver wire or how much we bid to pick up that new starter. Why not have some method for valuations before it gets to that point, and even before Draft Day?
Let’s get started by breaking down the four criteria I will use to grade each handcuff situation.
Criteria #1 – Team’s Feature Back Reliance
How much does the team want to use their top tailback? By “use”, I mean not just give him carries per game, but also receptions. I decided to use last year’s numbers for each team’s top running back and break down their total touches on a per game basis. With a few franchises I had to take a little bit of liberty due to injury, but for the most part this was a straightforward calculation. I devised the following 5-point scale:
5 = 20+ touches a game
4 = 18-20 touches per game
3 = 15-17 touches per game
2 = 12-14 touches per game
1 = less than 11 touches per game
CRITERIA #2 – Offensive Philosophy - RuN vs. Pass
How much does the team tend to call run plays? This started by looking at the numbers from last year (and there is a good breakdown here), but also requires a little bit of interpretation on my part. For example, Cleveland threw the ball a ton last year, but they clearly want to run more this season. I won’t go to the full extreme in the other direction based solely on a team’s wishes, as game situations play a major factor, but I have to take into account coaching, personnel and philosophical changes. So here is the scale I devised for teams:
5 = 59% (or fewer) passing plays called per game last year, plus a desire to keep it that way this season
4 = 58-60% passing plays called per game last year, plus a desire to keep it that way this season – OR a major shift away from last year’s passing plans
3 = 60-63% passing plays called per game last year, plus a desire to keep it that way this season – OR a major shift away from last year’s passing plans
2 = 62-65% passing plays called per game last year, plus a desire to keep it that way this season
1 = teams likely to throw 65-70% of the time this year
Criteria #3 – Draft Pick Price (ADP)
The price of the handcuff is a big criteria for me, and it is very easy to determine. Three little letters – ADP – tells me all I need to know. If the second running back on the team has too high of an ADP, the price you have to pay (a higher / earlier draft pick) is much more expensive than a late round flier. So here is the scale for handcuff pricing:
5 = ADP of Round 16+ (Pick 181 or later)
4 = ADP of Rounds 13-15 (Picks 145-180)
3 = ADP of Rounds 11-12 (Picks 121-144)
2 = ADP of Rounds 9-10 (Picks 97-120)
1 = ADP of Rounds 2-8 (Picks 13-96)
Criteria #4 – Skill Level
The skill level of the likely “next man up”, plus his opportunity. Here I am being much more subjective, but with good reason. Some teams have backup running backs that have never really seen a full game’s worth of NFL action outside of the preseason, or they could be a rookie fresh out of college. I have to assess the skills of the second back on the team, and also to decide if a coach will deviate away from a feature back plan to a committee approach. So the scale for handcuffs is as follows for skill level assessments:
5 = Should be the starter
4 = Has been a starter before and can handle it (at least temporarily)
3 = Could start, but unproven
2 = Not ready to start or likely to be in a committee
1 = Not a good option
So here is my scoring system, and it is pretty simple:
Backup RB ranking = Tailback Feature Score (1-5 points) + Run Game (1-5) + ADP (1-5) + Skill (1-5)
By using these four independent criteria (with as little subjective value as possible), I can start to rank all of the backup running backs across the league, and their respective outlooks if the top running back on a given team were to lose significant playing time due to injury. That’s exactly what I wanted – not a projection based on current information, but a “what if the starter gets hurt” outlook. Based on these four metrics, scoring 1-5 points each, I will add up the scores for each team and running back to give me some relative value amongst all of them and see which ones score the highest. I will be using this method to rank all 32 teams in the next two articles and to try and develop my own backup running back shopping list for fantasy drafts for this season.
Questions, suggestions and comments are always welcome to pasquino@footballguys.com.