Every fantasy football owner has heard about the "Stud RB theory" that has become prominent in fantasy circles over the last several years. The theory says that if you don't get your starting backfield set in the first several rounds of your draft you can kiss the trophy good-bye. Despite the last three champions of my league drafting RBs with their first three picks, a friend of mine recently told me that he was not going to draft a RB in the first several rounds of our draft this year. He feels that the idea that a team needs to draft several RBs early to win their league has become too well-publicized and that RBs in most leagues are being overvalued because of it. He compared it to the tech bubble in the stock market and claims this year it will crash. While I believe my friend's opinion has a small amount of validity (which I will explain later) I set out on a mission to explore the facts and prove him wrong.

There are several reasons that the top RBs are more valuable to your team than WR.

• First, a starting RB should touch the ball a minimum of 20 times a game. In some cases this can be 25, 30, even 35 times per game. The best WR are lucky to touch the ball 10 times per game. Touches equal opportunities to score. You want the guy with the most opportunities to score on your team.



• The second reason that RBs should prove more valuable to your team is a matter of supply and demand. In a 12-team league that starts 2 RB and 3 WR the total number of starters will be 24 RB and 36 WR. Consider that the average NFL team has 1 main RB and 2 starting WR the pool of viable options is approximately 32 players at RB and 64 players at WR. So the above league is starting 75% of the main RB and only 56% of the viable WR.



• Third, there is the matter of consistency. Very rarely will a RB start the season outside the top 25 or 30 players and then finish above that. Guys may get an opportunity due to injury of ineffectiveness (Portis/W Green), but the WR position has shown a better opportunity for players to come from the bottom of the rankings to out perform higher rated players. Think of these teammates and how you had them ranked going into 2002: Porter/T Brown, Driver/T Glenn, Q Morgan/K Johnson, C Johnson/Warrick to a name a few.

So if RB have more opportunities to score, are more consistent, and there are less of them to go around they become more valuable. Let's look at the numbers. First, we need to agree on statistics to work with. Since I live by them (and wouldn't mind seeing this article published) I will use the projections from Footballguys.com for this evaluation. Looking at the numbers I see the following:

• Based on points alone, 13 RB are projected to outscore every single WR and 18 RB are projected to outscore all but the big three WR (Harrison, Moss, Owens).



• If you don't land one or two of these top RB the quality starts to drop quickly. For example: RB13 (J Lewis) is projected to get 226 points. That is almost 100 points less than the RB1, Tomlinson. RB23 (Candidate) is projected at 168 points. After 10 more RBs (M Williams) we're down to 113 points and a player not guaranteed a lot of opportunities.



• Compare that to the WR position. After the top 4 are gone, there are 30 players projected to score between 127 and 177 points. Think how many of these players might score an extra TD and/or gain an extra 100 yards above this seasons projections and how quickly they can move up this list. That is where value lies.



• The next 23 WR are all bunched from 90 to 119 projected points.

These numbers further show the value of grabbing 1 or 2 top RB and then getting some good value at WR in the middle rounds of your draft. The reason I have not mentioned QB here is because the depth at the position makes it easy to wait until the 3rd-6th round of your draft. There are at least 9 QB that can easily lead a fantasy team to a championship (McNabb, Culpepper, Vick, Manning, Garcia, Favre, Brooks, Gannon, & Warner). Not to mention up and comers like Pennington and Hasselbeck and solid veterans like Bledsoe and McNair. Like WR, it is usually not worth taking one of these guys in the first several rounds when the others can be had later.

Conclusion
I mentioned at the beginning of this article that I would show why my friend's point was invalid, but also show where it holds some weight. I believe the above reasons are compelling enough to suggest that in most drafts the best player available in rounds 1 and 2 will be a RB. Let the other guys jump on Michael Vick and Randy Moss while you get the stud RB. Then when they are filling their backfield with Mike Alstott and Garrison Hearst you can be grabbing WR like Amani Toomer, Chad Johnson, and Donald Driver. Players who should not have a problem finishing close to the top of the aforementioned pack behind the top 3 or 4 WR. Then grab a great QB like Garcia, Favre, or Brooks to finish off your championship squad.

Where my friend's argument gains merit is when you get toward the middle of round 2 and into round 3. Many owners begin to jump on the RB bandwagon and inflate the value of a Troy Hambrick or Trung Candidate. In these spots grab the sure fire top WR and QB that begin to show great value and fill up the rest of the backfield next. The problem is that some owner in your league is going to blow an early pick on Vick or Moss because of the hype surrounding the name and they are not going to fall far enough to provide the value you need to pass on a stud RB. Don't let that guy be you!

*Note: All leagues will vary slightly due to scoring and roster requirements. I highly recommend Football guys VBD App which allows you to input your own scoring system and requirements for rosters and see exactly where a player needs to fall to show your team the value you need!