A Running Back to Target in Each Round of Your Fantasy Football Draft
Danny Woodhead, San Diego Chargers
ADP: 87 (8.01)
Two factors have suppressed Danny Woodhead's value in fantasy football drafts this season: recency bias and Melvin Gordon.
In 2014, Danny Woodhead missed all but three games due to a fractured fibula and ankle. This is the Danny Woodhead most fantasy football managers remember.
But in 2013, playing in the first year of head coach Mike McCoy's system in San Diego, Woodhead amassed 1,034 total yards and 8 touchdowns -- including, most importantly for PPR, 76 receptions and 605 yards through the air -- to finish the year as an RB12 in PPR-scoring leagues.
Let me repeat that: in 2013, Danny Woodhead finished the year as an RB1.
Yet, when the Chargers traded up in the first round to get their hands on talented Wisconsin tailback Melvin Gordon, the entire fantasy football community almost immediately wrote of Woodhead as a fantasy asset.
But with Gordon's relative lack of experience in the passing game during his time at Wisconsin, along with the typical struggles rookies encounter in learning the nuances of pass protection in the pros ensures that Woodhead's highly productive role on the Chargers in 2013 will remain intact in 2015.
Reports say that Gordon's "pass protection remains a work in progress." And not only will Gordon cede passing down work to the far more experienced Woodhead, he may also give up red zone work to him as well.
An underrated red zone threat, in 2013, Woodhead converted nearly 20% (7 out of 37) of his red zone touches into scores. And on this note, flashing his pre-injury form, in Week 1 of the preseason, Woodhead ran in an 8-yard touchdown on the Cowboys while working in with the first unit.
As the forgotten man -- as far as fantasy football managers are concerned, that is -- in the Chargers backfield thanks to their shiny new toy in Gordon, all of these elements conspire to place Woohead in a very profitable situation in PPR leagues at just the fraction of his true price.
