Time is a flat circle. Season after season, we’ve seen certain players shockingly produce record-setting numbers in career years while others surprisingly disappoint due to one reason or another. The NFL is chaotic, and consequently, so is fantasy football.
Below, I’ve listed three running backs with historical comps to a counterpart from a previous season for each player. To be clear, these are not exact historical comps based on projected 2024 stats but rather general excitement or concerns based on similar offseason trends by those players or their respective teams.
2024 Fantasy Football: Running Back Sleepers and Busts with Historical Comps
2024 D’Andre Swift → 2023 Miles Sanders
After a promising rookie campaign in 2019, Miles Sanders missed multiple games in each of the 2020 and 2021 seasons before then having a career year in 2022. 2022 marked the first season in which Sanders rushed for over 1,000 yards, and he scored a career-high 11 touchdowns that year behind the best offensive line in the NFL. The following offseason, his production helped Sanders get a four-year, $25 million deal with Carolina.
Last season, Sanders struggled behind a much worse Panthers offensive line. He failed to reach 100 rushing yards in each of his first five starts, and after he missed Week 6 with a shoulder injury, Carolina gave Chuba Hubbard the starting job for the rest of the season. The Panthers then proceeded to draft Jonathon Brooks this past offseason, which creates the possibility of Sanders being the No. 3 back or even cut from the team. Fantasy managers who chased Sanders’s career-year stats in 2022 got burned in a major way in 2023.
After a promising rookie campaign in 2020 in which he scored 10 total touchdowns, D’Andre Swift missed multiple games in each of the 2021 and 2022 seasons and mostly disappointed. The Lions quickly moved on and traded him to the Eagles last offseason for just a fourth-round draft pick. Behind the best offensive line in the NFL, Swift proceeded to have a career year and reached 1,000 rushing yards for the first time. This past offseason, that production helped Swift get a three-year, $24 million deal with Chicago.
The Bears’ offensive line projects to be above-average in 2024 but falls outside the elite tier and will still be a major downgrade for Swift coming from Philadelphia. It’ll be a tall task for Swift to replicate his 2023 production even assuming he can stay healthy. Of his total 1,049 rushing yards last season with the Eagles, an astounding 642 yards (61 percent) came before contact. Swift’s 2.8 yards before contact per attempt (YBC/Att) ranked ninth-best among running backs while his 1.8 yards after contact per attempt (YAC/Att) ranked just 24th at the position.
Last year, Khalil Herbert‘s 2.1 YAC/Att ranked 11th among running backs just behind that of Christian McCaffrey. It wouldn’t be shocking if Swift’s 2024 campaign played out similarly to Sanders’s 2023 season with the Bears realizing midseason that they made a mistake in free agency. Despite Swift’s big payday, it’s possible that Herbert or even sophomore Roschon Johnson could see more touches than him by the second half of the year. At his current ADP (RB26, 92.6 overall on Underdog and RB25, 89.5 overall on FantasyPros), Swift is grossly overpriced and overrated. Don’t make the same mistakes the Panthers and Bears have in your fantasy drafts.
2024 Rico Dowdle → 2015 Dion Lewis
During the 2014 offseason, LeGarrette Blount signed with the Steelers after having played a full season with the Patriots in 2013. However, Pittsburgh released him after just five games in 2014, and Blount returned to New England for the rest of the season. He then proceeded to sign a minimal two-year, $1.7 million contract with them the following offseason. Entering 2015, most expected Blount to return to prominence considering that the Patriots brought him back, as he had an ADP as the RB27 that preseason.
While Blount did see a significant workload that season, Dion Lewis, a former fifth-round pick by the Eagles in 2011 who went mostly undrafted in fantasy, also played an impact role. Even with Blount seeing the majority of the red-zone carries, Lewis mixed in on rushing downs. More importantly, he was heavily involved as a receiver out of the backfield with an average of 5.1 receptions for 55 yards per game. Prior to a season-ending injury, Lewis was the No. 9 running back in PPR points per game (PPG) from Weeks 1 to 9 in 2015 while Blount was the RB23 in PPR PPG over that same span.
After the 2022 offseason, Ezekiel Elliott left Dallas for New England in free agency. But after Tony Pollard left for Tennessee in free agency this past offseason, the Cowboys brought Elliott back on a minimal one-year, $2 million contract. However, Dallas also re-signed Rico Dowdle, who signed with them as an undrafted free agent rookie in 2020, to a one-year, $1.3 million deal. Though Elliott technically received a bigger deal, it wasn’t by a material amount.
Elliott certainly projects to be the lead back come Week 1 on paper, and he also projects to see a lot of red-zone touches. Still, Dowdle shouldn’t be written off. He was a competent complementary back behind Pollard last season and showed burst on a number of runs and catches. The advanced metrics back that up as well despite a small sample size of touches in 2023. While he saw just 89 rushing attempts in 2023, Dowdle’s 1.9 YAC/Att was the same as that of Bijan Robinson and Isiah Pacheco. And though it was a small sample of only 17 receptions last year, Dowdle’s 10.0 yards after the catch per reception (YAC/R) would’ve ranked highly among running backs in the same range as Austin Ekeler (10.1) and Rachaad White (9.5).
It’s possible that Elliott regains form in his age-29 season, but history tells us that it’s unlikely for running backs. It’s also possible that no Cowboys running back will be particularly productive in fantasy this year with Elliott and Dowdle cannibalizing one another’s touches. However, there’s at least a small chance that Dowdle could emerge as the more valuable running back in Dallas for fantasy and produce a flex-worthy or even RB2 season behind a strong offensive line, especially if he were to see target volume due to a lack of wide receiver talent behind CeeDee Lamb. I’d argue that the ADPs of these two Dallas running backs should be flipped. Dowdle (ADP of RB43, 137.4 overall on Underdog and RB45, 138.5 overall on FantasyPros) should be drafted ahead of his elder teammate, Elliott (ADP of RB37, 122.0 overall on Underdog and RB39, 124.5 overall on FantasyPros).
2024 Jaylen Wright → 2018 Matt Breida
In 2018, the 49ers signed Jerick McKinnon in free agency to be their starting running back, but he tore his ACL prior to the start of the season. As a result, San Francisco added Alfred Morris to a backfield that already had Matt Breida and Jeff Wilson Jr. Breida was an undrafted free agent rookie in 2017, and Wilson was an undrafted free agent rookie signing in 2018. Although Morris got the start in Week 1 that year, Breida outgained him with 46 yards against the Vikings. The 49ers gave the second-year back the start in Week 2, and Breida saw the most touches for the remainder of that season in San Francisco’s committee backfield.
From Weeks 2 to 13 that year, when Breida suffered an ankle injury, he only played more than 50 percent of the snaps in two of those 11 games. However, over that span, Breida was the RB20 in PPR scoring and the RB25 in PPR PPG. In Kyle Shanahan’s outside zone scheme, Breida was able to use his speed to produce big gains both on the ground as well as through the air. Although Breida wasn’t a league-winner in fantasy that year, McKinnon’s injury gave him the opportunity to be a strong fantasy RB2 prior to injury. In those 11 starts, Breida had four fantasy RB2 weekly finishes and two fantasy RB1 finishes.
Last year, the Dolphins’ backfield was a fantasy gold mine. Both De’Von Achane and Raheem Mostert averaged 17.8 PPR PPG. Mike McDaniel comes from the Shanahan coaching tree and utilizes similar concepts to get his running backs free to the edge and in space as receivers to create big gains. In nine healthy games where he saw at least 30 percent of the snaps, Achane had two fantasy RB2 weekly finishes and five fantasy RB1 finishes, including a 50-plus point performance. Mostert was likewise an elite fantasy asset last season. In 15 healthy games, Mostert had six fantasy RB2 weekly finishes and seven fantasy RB1 finishes, including a 45-plus point performance.
However, at 188 lbs., Achane has suffered multiple injuries dating back to college. In his final college season in 2022, he missed two games with a foot injury. And, as a rookie in Miami, Achane missed Week 1 after having suffered a shoulder sprain in the preseason and missed the better part of six games due to an MCL sprain suffered in Week 5. As for Mostert, while he’s remained mostly healthy the last two seasons, he missed Miami’s 2022 playoff loss to Buffalo due to a thumb fracture. And prior to his tenure with the Dolphins, Mostert had played just nine healthy games combined in his final two seasons with the 49ers.
As with Breida in 2018, fourth-round rookie Jaylen Wright is a perfect fit for Miami, who boasts one of the most efficient running schemes and offenses in football. Like Achane (4.32 40-yard dash) and Mostert (4.43), Wright (4.38) has the requisite speed to have some monster fantasy outings if given the opportunity. If either Achane or Mostert were to miss time in 2024, Wright would have a golden opportunity. The rookie speedster has multiple paths to league-winning fantasy upside and is far too cheap at his current ADP (RB49, 157.9 overall on Underdog and RB49, 158.0 overall on FantasyPros). He’s a priority handcuff and should be drafted in the same range as Blake Corum and Zach Charbonnet multiple rounds earlier.
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