Full discretion: I'm going to open this up with all my cards on the table.

I began this article looking to outline why I had been drafting Le'Veon Bell as my top fantasy running back for 2016. But the more research I did, the more the same name kept popping up ahead of Bell and making me feel like I had made some mistakes in my earlier drafts.

He's a guy going largely overlooked in the "top running back" discussion this year.

It's Jamaal Charles.

According to MyFantasyLeague's average draft position (ADP) data, Charles is currently going as the eighth running back off the board as a mid-to-late second-round pick.

But to me, Charles should be going as the top running back off the board. And there are some legitimate reasons for it.

The Best Running Back in Fantasy Football

Let's start things off with a look at how Charles has stacked up among running backs over his career.

Rushing Todd Gurley's rookie breakout in 2015 wasn't even an entire season. If we exclude his first appearance in Week 3 (in which he scored 2.4 fantasy points), he has only 12 Weeks of production, with 17.4 fantasy points per game.

For David Johnson's breakout, we have an even smaller sample to go from. His significant fantasy production came from Week 12 and on, averaging 8.8 fantasy points per game before that and 20.6 after the breakout. Freeman and Johnson, even when we shrink the sample size down to less than a full season, focusing on their most productive stretches, haven't produced more fantasy points per game than Charles has averaged since 2013 (a 35-game span).

Devonta Freeman at least gave us a full season of production but, again, even that sample size isn't huge, and it came in a season in which he was fourth in the NFL in carries and third among running backs in targets -- a workload that's hard to project repeating for any player. He's also a far less efficient rusher than Charles, posting a 0.03 Rushing NEP per carry in 2015, a number that Charles has bested in each of the past three seasons.

As for Ezekiel Elliott (currently being drafted as the fourth running back), going back to the 2000 season, a rookie running back has never cracked the 20.0 fantasy points per game mark. Regardless of your feelings on Elliott the player or Elliott the draft pick, selecting him as your top running back in fantasy this year is counting on him to do something that hasn't been done and to be historically great right off the bat, which is not something you want to have to rely on.

Now, this isn't me arguing that these young guys can't repeat their performances, or that they can't improve and put up even better numbers than they did last year. But taking these small samples of production and trying to project players to be the best in the league (a position that it is very difficult to reach and project, regardless of how easy it feels in the off-season) is a huge stretch when you can instead draft that guy who has consistently proven himself as one of the league's best backs, both from a real-football and fantasy perspective.

Charles is one of the most efficient running backs ever, with three of the top-25 Rushing NEP per carry marks recorded by a high-volume (150-plus carries) back since 2000, making him the only back with more than two. He is also heavily involved in the passing game, plays in an offense that is regularly among the league's most run-heavy, and has proven himself time and time again to be able to translate all of that into elite fantasy production.

He may not be the sexy, trendy pick, but if you're drafting a running back in the first round this year, it should be Jamaal Charles.