Fantasy Football: One Overvalued Player From Each Team

Bilal Powell, RB, New York Jets

Positional ADP: RB32 | Projected Finish: RB23

Bilal Powell was a boon for fantasy owners in 2016. When Matt Forte began to struggle, Powell picked up the slack and finished as the RB23 in standard-scoring leagues.

Fast forward to 2017, Forte is another year older, and Powell is rightly a hot commodity. He just shouldn't be quite this hot. Here's why I'm going against the numberFire projections and fading Powell.

Last year, Powell's Rushing NEP per rush was third-best for all backs with at least 100 attempts. That's a huge improvement from his career up until last year.

Did Powell suddenly figure out how to become an elite rusher after five years in the league? Or was 2016 an outlier season? Powell looks like a great candidate for regression, and if he's less efficient, he'll score fewer fantasy points.

What about Forte? His 2016 and his career average Rushing NEP per rush numbers are identical (0.03). That suggests that Forte's performance was normal, and we don't really have a great reason to expect it to change much.

Forte could get banged up again, in which case Powell's workload goes up, offsetting a loss of efficiency. On the other hand, Forte is durable, having played 134 of a possible 144 games (93 percent) in his career. If Forte stays healthy, that's bad news for Powell.

Here's how Powell performed when Forte was either out or relatively uninvolved (fewer than 10 rushing attempts), compared to when Forte received 10 or more attempts.

Ouch. When Forte was able to handle a decent workload, Powell scored less than half as many points.

Instead Try

Matt Forte, of course. He's available much later, and our projections put him within a point per game of Powell. Both players have similar outlooks, so take the cheaper one who's less likely to regress.