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Leonard Fournette checks almost every box that you don’t want in an early-round running back send tweet
I do think his new cost -- or where things are trending -- is more accurate. I've got him at RB20. I just wanted to watch the mentions burn all night.
Let's talk about this. Like I said, I've got him at RB20, so I likely won't have much (if any) this year. I do have a dynasty share, so at least I've got something on Lenny. (No one cares about my fantasy teams.)
1) Good players in fantasy football come from good teams. Jacksonville has an over/under of 4.5 wins on @FDSportsbook. That's the lowest in football. That's despite a pretty average schedule overall too. (Late-Round Podcast episode on offensive situation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/218-the-value-of-offensive-situation/id1224965828?i=1000429708290)
2) His team tried to trade him this offseason. Does that matter? Maybe not! Maybe they ride him and don't think twice. But it definitely should give you pause.
3) There's a new offensive coordinator in town. Some data suggest John DeFilippo's offenses have been friendly to RBs as pass-catchers (top-10 in RB target share in each of his last three OC spots), but he's no longer in town. Jay Gruden is. As is his pass-catching specialist.
4) That's Chris Thompson. I do think the argument of *solely* Chris Thompson is a bad anti-Fournette one. Thompson is 29 and doesn't look like he did a few years ago. BUT! It's hard to ignore that he's had a double-digit percentage target share in each of the last four seasons.
5) Despite missing a game, Fournette ranked fourth among running backs in team running back target share. As in, he gobbled up his team's running back targets at a very high rate. Add in Thompson -- and Laviska Shenault -- and we *could* see his target share cut in half.
6) His prorated target share was 19.1% last year. Thompson has consistently been over 10%. Not out of the question to think it could get to under 10% for Fournette this year.
7) That's especially true because of point number 1: Jacksonville is bad. I've seen a lot of tweets saying "Fournette only saw 24% of his targets on third and fourth down last year!" That's not wrong. He also saw 61% of them while his team was down by 7+ points.
8) What happens if Thompson steals that role? When the Jaguars are inevitably trailing (they have the lowest win total in the NFL), is Fournette going to be on the field?
9) It's true that positive TD regression is coming. Anyone who listened to The Late-Round Podcast last year was probably sick of me talking about it. But positive touchdown regression is more meaningful if and when the offense is actually good.
10) Again, I've got him at RB20. I don't think he's going to disappear. But I do think there's a little too much optimism when people look at his numbers from last year. You can't just assume those things are going to happen again.
