Vets vs Rooks: RB Edition
Do vets offer better value in redraft?
Most of my posts so far have centered around dynasty leagues, but today, I’m tackling a question that’s more relevant to redraft formats. Simply put, I want to know whether rookie running backs offer better return on ADP than veterans.
Defining RB Success
The ultimate question of whether rookies or vets are better value is not one of what, but when. That is to say, you ideally want your running backs to perform well early, for a variety of reasons.
If your guy takes a while to get going, you either want to drop him or trade him. Doing the latter will be significantly harder for an under-performer, and you’ll often be stuck coping your pick can turn the corner.
This leads me to my next point: if your guys can’t produce early, you at least want them to turn it on late in the season. This isn’t to encourage sunk-cost managing, of course, but I also don’t expect managers to jettison top draft picks without a good reason to do so.
The week 5 cutoff
For most fantasy managers, the time comes when they have to cut bait on a player, whether they like it or not. At some point, you have to stop coping that your guy is going to supplant the starter, the opportunity cost of rostering him over a waiver pickup proving too great.
Where is this mythical cutoff point, though? For the purposes of this exercise, let’s choose week 5; if a player hasn’t produced by then, he probably isn’t somebody worth rostering.
Should breakouts move the needle?
How, then should we define what playing well looks like? The answer, in my mind, is pretty simple: a player should have a breakout performance. If a player crosses the threshold—defined here as having at least one 18-PPR game—then managers will feel more justified in continuing to roster a guy.1
The problem, of course, is that this holds late-rounders to a much higher standard than early picks. Thus, we put players into three buckets: early picks (top-72 ADP), mid-round picks (ADP 73 through 144), and late-round flyers (ADP 145 and onward). Note that our cutoff is ADP 225; this was chosen because it gives us leeway to include backs likely to be drafted as handcuffs.
The end result is above; at first blush, it seems like rookies lag far behind vets in early-season performance. This isn’t really surprising, however, since most rookie picks are really just managers betting on a mid-season breakout.
Even still, the gap is large enough that this breakout has to be pretty significant when it does come. While our early-round rookies look pretty good here—more on them later—the mid-round rooks lag way behind comparable vets. For late-rounders, the picture is slightly fuzzier, with neither group exhibiting the early promise you’d like to see from them.
Late-season success
This is all well and good, but we’re still ignoring the other half of the problem. If rookies are lagging behind in the early season, then they really need to come on strong in the back half.2
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The chart above shows that, from week six on, more vets score 100 total points than rookies do. Even if this benchmark is fairly arbitrary—ideally, you’d want a player to score even more—the fact that many rookies aren’t clearing the bar is pretty worrisome.
What’s noteworthy, too, is that this isn’t the result of vets being picked earlier (which would imply they’re higher-quality players). Within each bucket, rookies and veterans have roughly the same median ADP.
Notably, the biggest ADP gap—about eight spots—is between early-round vets and rookies. That our top rookies nearly match comparable vets in spite of this handicap is impressive, and might suggest such rookies are undervalued.
Late-season star performances
With our 100-PPR benchmark, we have a decent idea of which RB’s will be consistent contributors. However, we really want to find out which players are capable of producing like starters.
Let’s then define a “star performance” as game where a back has 18 or more PPR points, which is enough to give them real consideration as your long-term starter.
We’ll start with players who had at least two such great games after week 5. It once again looks like rookies taken within the first six rounds are the juice, since they outperform vets here. Mid-round rookies, too, are on about equal footing with the vets.
Yet the late-round rookies really haven’t delivered on expectations. Under ten percent of them will turn in at least two 18-point performances in the back stretch, while 24% of vets clear the bar.
At this point, we have to question the upside of these fringe rookie picks. From what we’ve seen so far, if a late-round rookie back is anything other than a handcuff, he might be a wasted pick.
What about real studs, though? How many picks turn into players who pop off every week? The answer, it seems, is remarkably few, with only early-rounders consistently becoming back-half studs.
The notable thing here, however, is how few mid-round rookies pass the test. Just three percent of mid-round rookies have four back-stretch games north of 18 points. Meanwhile, 19% of vets surpass that mark, meaning there’s a significantly higher chance of mid-round vets performing like stars.
It’s also interesting how late-round rookies and vets do equally poorly here. You can’t bank on either group to perform like superstars; instead, you’re hoping your late-round picks can contribute as flex plays or spot starters. If that’s what we’re looking for, then vets hold a clear edge.
Trends over time
Note, however, that we’ve been looking all the way back to 2015 for most of our analysis; are there any trends we should be noting in recent years? Let’s see if, by breaking our analysis into two groups—2015-2019 and 2020-2024—anything interesting comes of it.
Looking at how many players cleared 100 total points from week six on, the picture is quite interesting. Top-72 rookies are clearly the best bets here, though with the caveat that the sample size is only nine backs.
This is not the case, however, for our late-rounders, who boast a far more substantial sample size. Indeed, it seems the bearish case for late-round rookies was largely driven by our 2015 through 2019 classes. Not even 10% of those backs became solid second-half contributors.
Since 2020, however, late-round rookies have outpaced vets. Roughly 30% of those rookies hit the 100-PPR threshold, compared to 25% of vets. It’s a small win for such rookies, who have otherwise lagged far behind end-of-draft vets.
If we look at the percent of players who had at least two 18-point games after week 5, though, the picture’s a bit more grim. Less than five percent of late-round rookies from 2015 to 2019 had two such games, while only 13% did from 2020 to now.
Note, of course, that this isn’t really all late-rounders, since our ADP cutoff is 225. Even still, I think this encompasses all reasonable picks, and then some. You likely aren’t drafting guys below that line; instead, they’re more likely to be mid-season waiver adds.
In any case, the takeaway is clear: late-round rookies are not going to be your end-of-season saviors. If you want a guy with a chance, however slim, of being a plug-and-play starter down the line, you should probably bet on a player with some prior NFL experience.
Summary
So what, then, did we really learn here? Let’s break down the key takeaways:
Vets have a higher chance of producing like stars
Late-round picks, meanwhile, have little star upside
Early-round rookies might be slightly undervalued
Late-round rookies are often bad picks
To put it even more concisely, you should probably be taking unsexy vets across the board. The only exception might be in the early rounds, where rookie backs have been over-performing (and under-drafted) in recent years. Even then, vets in that range have more big games down the stretch, thus reducing the rookies’ edge there.
What’s most striking, really, is that most mid-to-late-round rookies boast little late-season upside. This is a problem, of course, since that’s almost the entire reason people draft them. If they both start slow and don’t finish strong, then there’s little reason to pick such rookies.
A lot of this, too, is probably driven by vets often being higher in a team’s depth chart than rookies. The logic is simple: a second-string vet is more likely to see the field than a third-string rookie. Even if they do see the field, rookies might have a shorter leash for fumbles or blown blocks in pass protection.
This is getting into the realm of speculation, though, so I think it’s fine to end here. Ultimately, the simple argument for vets is one you’d probably be following anyway, i.e., you should take vet handcuffs for your starters over enticing rookie backs.
It’s a terribly boring answer, really, one that sucks the fun out of the sport. But when you’re etching your name into your league’s trophy at the end of the season—or at least avoiding a last-place punishment—it’ll all be worth it.
PPR scoring data is, as per usual, sourced from Stathead.
Note that we exclude week 18 such that our comparisons are apple-to-apples, since the extra week was added in the middle of our dataset. It didn’t really impact anything, of course, but it’s still worth noting.