Pre-draft Average Draft Position (Jonathan Stewart): 203
Pre-draft ADP (Wayne Gallman): 215
Pre-draft ADP (Paul Perkins): 356
This one's easily the most obvious. The New York Giants, despite lacking any real quarterback depth behind 37-year-old Eli Manning, decided that it was pertinent to invest their second overall pick in a running back.
With the questionable (at best) logic of taking a running back this early aside, fantasy football is a completely different animal than real football. We don't care about whether a player helps team win more games, we care about their production. And nothing is tied more closely to production than volume.
Teams that take running backs this early make sure that those players see a ton of volume, as we can see looking at the last five backs that have been drafted in the top 10.
| Year | Player | Pick | Games | RB Rush Share | RB Target Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Leonard Fournette | 4 | 13 | 57.60% | 36.30% |
| 2017 | Christian McCaffrey | 8 | 16 | 34.40% | 84.70% |
| 2016 | Ezekiel Elliott | 4 | 15 | 75.60% | 50.00% |
| 2015 | Todd Gurley | 10 | 13 | 66.00% | 29.50% |
| 2012 | Trent Richardson | 3 | 15 | 76.70% | 65.40% |
Four of the five saw at least 55% of their team's running back carries in Year 1, with four of the five also seeing at least one third of the targets out of the backfield. Two of the five were real workhorses, handling both more than three quarters of the carries and half of the targets.
So with Saquon Barkley likely to shoulder a massive workload, that leaves little more than scraps for Jonathan Stewart, Wayne Gallman and Paul Perkins.
If the team had a clear-cut second back behind Barkley, there may still be some room for fantasy value, but that's just not the case as of right now. Gallman and Perkins both saw sporadic work last year, and the addition of Stewart to the stable crowds things even more.
None of the three were being drafted as anything more than late-round dart throws, but now even that is likely an overpay. None of these three should be on your radar in redraft leagues.