2019 Redraft Strategy Review: RB vs. WR Heavy

Introduction

In part one of this series, I reviewed tight end strategy in 2019 redraft formats. In part two, I looked at the early versus late quarterback strategy. Now in this third and final part, I will look at the early-round running back vs. wide receiver strategy debate. As always, I will use half PPR stats and Yahoo’s ADP data when examining specific players.

Running Back vs. Wide Receiver Heavy

Unlike the quarterback debate, I don’t particularly have a strong opinion on this one. I typically build balanced rosters with no preference toward running back or wide receiver. The main crux of the argument centers around the first five or six rounds. Assuming you are following my late-round quarterback strategy, those picks will be all RB and WR, with perhaps a tight end in there somewhere.

The primary way to determine the correct strategy is to look at the top RB and WR finishers and compare them to the top drafted players at each position. Let’s start with RBs. Here is a table of the RB1s by ADP and how they finished in 2019.

This year, the RB1 range performed rather well as a group. Six of the 12 players finished as RB1s, for a 50% hit rate. Of the six who failed to return RB1 value, Mixon, Gurley, and Bell were at least high-end RB2s. None of those three players killed your fantasy team in 2019. There were three main busts: David Johnson, James Conner, and Damien Williams. Johnson suffered from injuries and lost his job to Kenyan Drake. Conner hurt fantasy owners by leaving games that he started, destroying those weeks for those owners. Williams was massively overdrafted, but the thought process behind drafting him was proven correct in the playoffs. Williams couldn’t stay healthy, and the Chiefs took most of the season to finally realize that LeSean McCoy should not receive significant work in the offense. 

While looking at the top-end of drafts is essential, the other side of the coin is whether or not it was easy to find running back gems later in the draft. Here is a table showing the other six RB1s and their fantasy ADPs.

Even among these RB values, they were still mostly early picks. Outside of Ekeler, fantasy players drafted all of them as RB2s. Considering that there are 12 teams in a fantasy league, but only one late-round RB1, this data seems to suggest that if you don’t pick RB early, you will likely miss out on having an RB1. 

Going even further, even expanding the range to all RB2 finishers, only Raheem Mostert, who finished at RB24, was selected behind Ekeler’s ADP of RB33. Therefore, unless you somehow streamed the running back position, missing on the early running backs would have demolished your fantasy team in 2019 redraft formats. Wise fantasy owners selected at least five running backs within the top-30 of running back ADP, making sure that they hit on at least two if not three or four strong options. If you failed to do that, you were not able to make it up later in the draft or from waivers.

However, the wide receiver position tells a somewhat different story, but with some similarities. Here is a table of the WR1s by ADP.

Similar to the RBs, six of the WR1s by ADP finished as WR1s. Even Hill and Adams averaged inside the top-10 of WRs in points per game. They each missed four games, but both almost certainly would have been WR1s if healthy all season. Brown played only one game and was a complete draft bust, but that was completely unrelated to his position of WR, so we can mostly ignore him. Beckham suffered from a sports hernia injury that limited him, although he was still the WR26 and played all 16 games. Even though he was far from a WR1, he still was a serviceable fantasy WR. Thielen and Smith-Schuster were complete busts, however. Both missed multiple games, and neither was particularly effective when on the field. Thielen exited games he started and never recovered from a midseason hamstring issue. He was a WR1 for the first six games of 2019 where he was completely healthy. Smith-Schuster averaged a paltry 7.7 points per game he played, less than wide receivers such as Randall Cobb, Dede Westbrook, and Sammy Watkins. Unlike Thielen, Smith-Schuster has little excuse, as fellow receivers Diontae Johnson and James Washington both outscored him in points per game. 

As a group, the WR1s performed even better than the RB1s. Without considering Brown, eight of the 11 players were successful, and Thielen was successful when healthy. Only Smith-Schuster was a real bust in the top WR range. However, we need to look at the rest of the WR1s for a complete picture of the WR landscape.

Just like the RB1s, five of the rest of the WR1s came from the WR2 range of ADP. However, the outlier, DeVante Parker, was only drafted in 2% of leagues. He was a league-winner for anybody who picked him up off waivers. 

However, unlike the RB2s, where only one had an ADP outside the top 33 RBs, many WR2s were available from waivers or in the super late rounds. Here’s a table of all the WR2s. Any player selected in less than 50% of leagues would have a misleading ADP, so those players are considered undrafted.

This range demonstrates that WRs can be found later in drafts and from waivers far easier than RBs. Five WR2s were not drafted in a majority of Yahoo leagues. Even among that group, there are a variety of different players. Chark was an early-season star, John Brown, Sutton, and Gallup were relatively consistent throughout the season, and A.J. Brown was a second-half breakout. 

Conclusions

After looking at all the data, the ideal strategy seems to be to focus on the RB1s and WR1s first. The RB1s and WR1s are mostly successful, so starting your team with a RB1 and WR1 is a great way to begin your draft. However, it seems far easier to find wide receivers later on than running backs. Therefore, loading up on running backs early in the draft is a better strategy than choosing a bunch of receivers. My preferred approach is still to remain balanced, but perhaps for 2020, I will rank RBs slightly higher compared to WRs, especially early on in the draft.

Closing

Thanks for reading this article. You can find me on Twitter at @DFF_Justin. I love to interact with anyone in the community, so reach out at any time! I take fantasy questions and help with all formats, so keep sending those questions my way.