Fantasy Football Draft Strategy: The risk and reward for starting a 2023 draft RB-RB-RB

It could prove difficult to find the pairings to go with Christian McCaffrey/Austin Ekeler: From the early-round draft positions, a lot more has to go right to make this strategy work but it’s not impossible.
A preference to pull it off from the middle picks: Bijan Robinson or Saquon Barkley paired with Tony Pollard and Breece Hall could be exactly what we’re looking for.
The late-pick build with veteran workhorses: Nick Chubb, Derrick Henry and Joe Mixon make up the late-pick robust RB picks.

Estimated reading time: 13 minutes

In the fantasy football world, you’ll often hear strategies discussed like “zero RB” or even “hero RB,” which refers to specific strategic approaches heading into a fantasy draft. While having a set strategy heading into a draft can help a player feel prepared, it’s important to be ready to pivot from the original game plan if things don’t go as planned, or if there’s significant value that falls to you.

With that being said, for those that do want to approach a 2023 fantasy draft by attacking the running back position early and often, there are several strong candidates to consider in each of the first three rounds. With some draft positions yielding better results than others based on current ADP, the position from which fantasy managers are drafting may be more desirable to attempt this strategy than others.

Last season, as highlighted by Dwain McFarland, the optimism for this strategy was much higher, and for 2023, a lot will have to go right to get the players you want and to avoid the risk of those holding out and/or coming off injuries.

RB scoring

Looking at the three most common forms of fantasy scoring over the past 10 years, running backs have consistently dominated the top-three overall fantasy finishers, and that happens even more in half and non-PPR leagues. This tells us that among skill position players, running backs tend to have the highest production ceilings, especially among the top scorers, in large part, due to the significantly higher rate that they are involved in any given offensive play.

PPR SCORING TOP FINISHERS BY POSITION SINCE 2013

TOP:	3	5	10	25	50	75	100	150
RB	73%	56%	42%	37%	35%	35%	35%	34%
WR	27%	44%	53%	56%	56%	54%	51%	51%
TE	0%	0%	5%	7%	9%	11%	13%	15%

0.5 PPR SCORING TOP FINISHERS BY POSITION SINCE 2013

TOP:	3	5	10	25	50	75	100	150
RB	83%	70%	53%	45%	42%	39%	37%	34%
WR	17%	30%	43%	48%	50%	52%	51%	51%
TE	0%	0%	4%	6%	8%	10%	12%	15%

NON-PPR SCORING TOP FINISHERS BY POSITION SINCE 2013

TOP:	3	5	10	25	50	75	100	150
RB	93%	84%	66%	57%	48%	44%	40%	34%
WR	7%	16%	31%	40%	46%	48%	50%	50%
TE	0%	0%	2%	4%	6%	9%	11%	16%

This article will focus on PPR scoring since that is where the ADP is pulled from. With all four running backs that go in the first round having the strongest case to hit that 20-plus PPR points per game total, there isn’t a need to go into much detail there. Instead, we’ll focus on the options in the second and third rounds of drafts to get a better feel for who we’ll want to target for the optimal outcome of this strategy. Hitting on all three running back picks would deliver a massive advantage on a weekly basis, but there is risk involved with a number of the options, which we’ll look at as we work through the choices.

RB archetypes to target

Looking at each of the top-five PPR RB finishers over the last five seasons, the chart below highlights the key metrics that they hit in order to identify the criteria needed for each of the backs going in Rounds 2 and 3 to hit big.

Key metrics from past fantasy running backs who finished inside the top five since 2019:

TOP-5 RBs (since 2019)	Carry rate	Goal-line carry rate	Explosive run rate	Route participation	Targets per route run	Yards per route run
Average	74.8%	85.0%	11.6%	80.0%	0.21	1.44

With these average thresholds in mind, lets take a look at the backs going in rounds two and three, and see if they can make a worthwhile case to start RB-RB-RB in your 2023 fantasy drafts.