Fantasy Football: The Downside for Each Top-20 Pick

Todd Gurley, RB, Los Angeles Rams

Downside: Offensive Production

Volume shouldn't be an issue for Todd Gurley. No player saw a larger percentage of their team's rushes than Gurley did last season, and he's averaged 17.48 rushes per game over the first two seasons of his career.

The reason Gurley was just a consistent RB2 in fantasy football last year was inefficiency and scoring. He scored a rushing touchdown on every 46.33 rushing attempts, which is far off from the league's 31.54 attempts per touchdown average that was noted earlier. Meanwhile, among the 42 running backs with 100 or more carries last year, Gurley's per-rush efficiency (according to our numbers) and Success Rate both ranked sixth worst.

That has a lot to do with the Rams' offense. The team only ran 960 plays last year (second-lowest in the league), scoring a touchdown on just 12.4% of their drives (lowest). There's almost certainly going to be improvement within that unit this season for a number of reasons, but if things don't improve enough, Gurley owners could find themselves in fantasy football hell again.