The 6 Riskiest Players in Fantasy Football This Season

Montee Ball

Montee Ball is a risky player for totally different reasons than Foster. Foster's proven production is playing tug of war against all of the possible limiting factors for his fantasy shelf life, while Ball is unproven potential with vast opportunities and no solid track record to base prognostications off of.

As a result, Ball has the second-highest range of likely outcomes according to our CI numbers. The difference in the best case and worst case scenarios according to our projections is a whopping 97.82 points, enough to allow the span of his possible point totals to go from the third-best running back to the 16th.

The upside for Ball is obvious, as he's going to be the featured back for a Peyton Manning offense, and last season he proved that he can at least be consistent, if not flashy or overly productive. Ball didn't produce heavily in our Rushing Net Expected Points metric, but he did finish well (very well, in fact) in Success Rate, which determines how often a player gains positive NEP production for his offense.

Ball is, then, the kind of back that a Peyton Manning offense needs. If Manning sees a matchup at the line of scrimmage and checks to a run, he needs to be sure that the back will make the right reads and get the yards needed to keep the offense ahead of the chains. The small sample size that is Ball's NFL career proves that he can do just that.

But can he be anything more than that? Or will he be a Shonn Greene-like plodder capable of scoring touchdowns and staying on the field because of his reliability, but lacking any sort of game-breaking ability to light up the scoreboard for fantasy teams and the Broncos alike?

That's the risk you'll have to take with Ball, and with his current draft position as eighth back off the board (according to Fantasy Football Calculator), it's a risk that might not be worth taking. The aforementioned Lynch and Lacy are both solid options in his place, with DeMarco Murray (shockingly) assuming the role as yet another safe option in the late first or early second.