On Tuesday, we wrote about the 5 QBs that will put you at an immediate disadvantage of the gate. It was bound to stir up some controversy, and stir it up it did - so much so that it prompted me to extend it to RBs, arguably the most important position of them all when it comes to fantasy football.

Like the previous article, it's worth mentioning up front that my comments aren't a condemnation of the athletes individually. They're instead a counterpoint to inflated ADPs, thus making the idea of "killing your fantasy team" less a function of individual fault on their part and more a function of a disaster in relation to better, smarter picks you could have made in the same slot.

Oh, and because we're mathematicians and not just random "I like sports and here's my opinion!"-style content regurgitators, all of our analysis is done with historical analysis and data modeling as the guide.

Steven Jackson

This one hurts a little bit because I've always defended Mike D'Ecclesis had to say about him:

Well, despite the “eye test” giving a clear nod to Lamar Miller, the actual numbers from last year make things a bit muddier. There is a rushing metric called success rate, which takes into account how often a rusher improves their team’s likelihood to score when they are handed the rock. And guess what? The success rates for Daniel Thomas and Lamar Miller were not only nearly identical last year, but Daniel Thomas actually came out slightly ahead with a 43.48% success rate compared to Lamar Miller's 43.14% success rate.

If he's not statistically better than his own backup in Daniel Thomas - a player that was very below-average to start with - where is all of the hype coming from? Pass.

We think: #26 RB

Ahmad Bradshaw

Outside of Lamar Miller, there's a bit of a theme going here. Washed up player masquerading as a "veteran with leadership", on a new team that inexplicably chose him and him alone as the answer to all of their problems. Free advice to GMs everywhere: when the Beatles were breaking up, it wasn't like Paul McCartney was like, "Well, John is leaving, but hey - let's go get Charlie Chaplin to come on board! He'll solve everything." Stop it.

No. They broke up and moved on. The Colts could have drafted anyone from Le'Veon Bell to Montee Ball to rock out with a strong core of Andrew Luck, Reggie Wayne, and T.Y. Hilton but instead they overpaid for someone who no one else wanted.

And why would any other team want him? If he was so good, would the Giants have entrusted a team with assets like Eli Manning, Victor Cruz, Hakeem Nicks, and Pierre-Paul to a question mark like David Wilson? Of course not. The Giants saw his declining productivity, his terrible metrics (#18 in RNEP), and his advancing contract, all of which forced their hand in telling Ahmad to hit the bricks. Oh, and I saved the best part for last. His top comparable? Kevan Barlow, 2003.

Don't be the Colts. Be the Giants. Draft Wilson instead. Or Eddie Lacy. Or Giovani Bernard. Or draft a WR. Anything.

We think: #29 RB

DeAngelo Williams

How many times do we have to go through this with DeAngelo Williams? He's like the hot girl that you see at your college in September, playing frisbee on the quad, only to disappear completely and never be seen again. Why must you tease us with the thoughts of what might be?

He's been average/below-average longer than Nickelback (not a single season in the RNEP top 20 since 2008) and he's the definition of winner by default: he is and has been the defacto starter in Carolina only because the other options are terrible and/or injured. Cam Newton clearly doesn't trust him, nor do the coaches - there's a reason why Cam himself (or worse, Mike Tolbert) gets all of the rushing calls in the red zone.

Don't listen to just me though. Check out what JJ Zachariason said about it:

Not only is he 30-years old and massively inefficient by our metrics, Williams didn’t make a significant impact in the games where he did carry the load in 2012. He had 17 attempts against Atlanta last season – a team that ranked seventh worst in adjusted defensive rushing NEP - and mustered up just 56 yards on the ground. Though he managed a crazy 210-yard Week 17 performance, let’s not overstate the success. It was against the miserable Saints, one of the worst defenses (third worst in adjusted defensive rushing NEP) in the NFL.

It used to be and still sometimes is a decent strategy to fill your bench with anyone with a legitimate stake as the #1 RB on his team's depth chart. With DeAngelo, it's just a wasted spot.

We think: #30 RB