If we targeted WRs early instead of TE or QB, it’s likely that the WR mound would shift right and the TE or QB mound would take a hit. This could have to do with more depth at the position, or it could just be the ‘ranges’ I set up above, which prioritize QB and TE in the Zero RB simulation as opposed to WR. Interestingly, the WR mound is relatively similar between the two charts.The green RB ‘mound’ is shifted to the right (with a longer right tail), indicating higher performance, in the first chart, whereas the QB and TE mounds are shifted to the right, indicating higher performance, in the Zero RB charts. When we compare the two charts, the player distributions are as expected.This difference is small, but highly statistically significant. Right off the bat, we should note that the Heavy RB strategy scores about two more points on average than the Zero RB strategy (with a simulated win rate of about 53%).In a bad scenario, you get positionally dominated every week because your meager RB group barely puts up any points. In a good scenario, you build out a superstar non-RB roster and hit on some solid running backs late in the draft / pick up a young back on the rise as the season progresses. Indeed, there is a ton of discussion in the fantasy community as to the merits of this approach. This might seem like an unintuitive strategy, largely because, by definition, it goes against the grain. You might plan to be very active on the waiver wire in-season, spending high amounts of FAAB (or waiver priority) to target RBs that emerge. You won’t get the top backs off the board, but you’ll be able to build an extremely strong foundation at other positions and then play the game of trying to find values / breakouts at running backs. Of course, ‘Zero RB’ doesn’t actually mean that you don’t pick any running backs: you just defer your RB picks to later rounds (ideally when the rest of the managers have pivoted to other positions). Another advantage is ‘zigging where everyone else zags’: since most managers will be targeting running backs early on, you can get the cream of the crop at all of the other positions. ![]() One potential advantage is more certainty in getting a return on investment, especially in the relatively more stable positions of WR and TE (compared to RBs). ![]() A manager using this strategy will, instead of using high draft picks on running backs, instead target the other roster positions: QBs, WRs and TEs. This is exactly the type of uncertainty that the Zero RB strategy hopes to take advantage of. It can be very frustrating to invest so much draft capital (your first few picks) in running backs that don’t pan out. The position is extremely physically demanding, and backs are often (unfortunately) injured, ‘age out’ shockingly quickly (Todd Gurley, Le’Veon Bell, etc.), see value get diluted by the ‘committee’ approach, or just plain underperform. However, running backs can also be fickle. The vertical lines denote the 12th and 24th positional spots I’ve only drawn the top 12 QBs and TEs since, in non-Superflex leagues, you probably won’t be looking much deeper at these positions, whereas you will have to start depth RBs and WRs. What’s more, this gap widens: the green RB line gets farther and farther away from the purple WR, as the value of deeper RBs just falls off a cliff. Although the WR1 scores were much less than the RB1, it only takes to the WR8 to see the wideouts scoring more than running backs. While the RB dots start out high – the RB1 scores nearly 25 points a game, not that far from the QB1 – look at how fast the RB line decays. We can see this clearly if we plot average fantasy PPG by positional rank (i.e., overall RB1, etc.) across the main fantasy positions (QB, RB, WR, and TE) since 2010. ![]() They dominate the start of drafts for that very reason: if you can roster a room of elite RBs, you have a vastly improved chance of finishing atop your league. It’s not controversial to say that running back is the most important position in fantasy, thanks to a combination of skew – the best RBs score so much more than the rest of the field – and scarcity – there simply aren’t enough great RBs to go around. This latest entry in the Fantasy Mythbusters series is simple: is Zero RB a legitimate draft approach? Fantasy data is from nflfastR, while ADP data is from the fantasy football calculator.* What is Zero RB? If you’ve played fantasy football for a while, you’ve probably heard about the ‘Zero RB strategy’ you might have even tried it yourself at some point.
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