By: Kiel Messinger (@KielMessi)

Nobody’s perfect. That holds true in school, life, and even more so in the world of fantasy football. As the great Sonny Weaver Jr. said in Draft Day, “Everybody has something. Even the great ones… We need to find out what Bo Callahan’s “something” is. Then figure out if it matters or not.” So what factors really matter when predicting fantasy football success?

They said Michael Thomas’s upside was limited by Drew Brees spreading the ball around, but that didn’t seem to matter. They said Derrick Henry wasn’t involved enough in the passing game, that he was game-script dependent, but that didn’t seem to matter. Google literally said Lamar Jackson couldn’t throw, but that didn’t seem to matter. And they said Ezekiel Elliott has played for the worst franchise in the history of sports (just roll with it, and fly eagles fly), but that didn’t seem to matter.

We know that if you mix talent and opportunity, you generally get the glory of fantasy success, but those are very vague terms that can be influenced by numerous factors. Even Christian McCaffrey, despite being the consensus number one pick and having biceps larger than Antonio Brown’s ego, has potential concerns. New system, new quarterback, more weapons, coming off of a 400 (that is not a typo) touch season. Will any of these factors matter? Maybe. Maybe not. But it is worth analyzing the history of these potential “faults” to determine who has the best chance of overcoming them. And if you are right like Sonny Weaver Jr. you can end up with a very prestigious and esteemed special teams returner… just because you feel like it.

Note: I know there are plenty more factors to analyze but for the sake of time I have presented those where research leads to a more definitive conclusion.

Running backs need either a good offensive line or pass catching ability.

A lot has been made over the importance of a running back’s offensive line to their fantasy success. We saw how much it can affect a player like Le’veon Bell last season. Though his decline was influenced by multiple factors *cough cough Adam Gase*, he clearly struggled to find room behind the Jets 28th ranked offensive line according to Pro Football Focus, ultimately inhibiting his fantasy success. However, we have seen numerous instances of players overcoming it, like David Johnson in 2016 (offensive line ranked 26th) or Austin Ekeler last season (29th). How have players overcome this concern? Data from the elite running backs of the past three seasons shows that to be an elite fantasy running back, you need either an elite offensive line or elite receiving upside. Obviously, what constitutes “elite” in the two factors can be twisted, so I will give different thresholds to show the correlation.

Over the past three seasons, an average of eight running backs per season had at least 16 fantasy points per game. Of these:

Those are a lot of numbers, so what can you take from this? Elite running backs are the most valuable part of your fantasy team, so knowing which guys are likely to maintain their status and which guys have the upside to break into that tier is crucial. The one guy out of 24 who didn’t meet the first criteria was Joe Mixon in 2018. And who was the biggest running back bust of 2019? Elite running backs NEED one of the two strengths, but as seen by the last stat, rarely do they need (or have) both.

Lack of offensive team success makes running backs dependent on big plays.

While this seems obvious, it still tends to get overlooked in the grand scheme of things with fantasy managers placing priority on other factors. If you need evidence, here is an article by Mike Tagliere that shows research from the past seven years to prove that point.

This may seem like irrelevant numbers, as we couldn’t predict once perceived elite talents like David Johnson and Le’Veon Bell would struggle to produce big runs while Barkley and Chubb wouldn’t. However, the truth is you probably could have. Because even when Bell had his terrific 2017 season with the Steelers, he was 20th in breakaway runs (despite being first in carries by a significant margin). In David Johnson’s magical 2016 season, he had just 6 runs of 20 yards or more. Neither of them were poor players, but they never had the big play potential of Barkley or Chubb. On a good offense with plenty of volume, that explosiveness isn’t needed, but when you are looking at running backs on poor offenses, it becomes a necessity.

Pass attempts and distribution of targets by position are important to volume.

Volume is generally the best indicator of fantasy success among wide receivers (and all positions for that matter). Aside for a few exceptions with abnormally high or low efficiency or touchdown rates, the players with the most targets get the most fantasy points. There have been 27 wide receiver campaigns over the past five seasons with receivers averaging over 15 half PPR points per game, and they all were on a 16 game pace of at least 136 targets, with an average of 164. In that same time span, only two players have hit 164 targets and not finished with 15 points per game. We know Julio Jones, Davante Adams, and Michael Thomas will get their share, as they have proven that year in and year out. But other players’ fluctuations in targets may be harder to predict.

Of course, how much a team passes is important to its receivers. But ultimately, the majority of teams in the NFL throw enough (maybe not well enough) to support at least one high end fantasy pass-catcher. However, the story is a little deeper than just the team’s total pass attempts, as the positional distribution of these targets is extremely important. Take the greatest franchise in the history of the NFL for example. The Philadelphia Eagles had 613 pass attempts last season, which was top 10 in the league, yet due to the lowest percentage of their targets going to receivers, they were bottom 10 in the league in pass attempts to wide receivers. This was largely due to the loss of personnel at receiver; when Nelson Agholor is your top receiver, receiver targets should become listed as throwaways.

Again, though target distribution can be personnel driven, as who wouldn’t want to throw to Mike Evans and Chris Godwin, a look at the history of Bruce Arians as a play-caller shows his lack of emphasis on tight end targets, and thus more for receivers. By the way, Diggs was the league leader in yards per target; he didn’t regress as a player, but just didn’t get his grease. So when determining if someone has the potential to obtain or maintain elite target volume, do not overlook potential play-calling and target distribution.

Receiver efficiency metrics are useful in overcoming poor quarterbacks.

I tend to try not to place too much value on Next Gen Stats and efficiency metrics for receivers, as it seems the truly elite ones succeed without blowing away the competition in these categories. After all, looking at the metrics from last year could imply that Albert Wilson is a better route runner than Michael Thomas, that Adam Humphries is better at contested catches than Julio Jones, or that A.J. Brown is literally not human after the catch (ok, that one might be true). However, one thing I noticed when looking at players who scored highly in categories contested catch rate or separation was that many of the names were players that overcame poor quarterback play, or at least did so to an extent.