Booms and Busts: Week 16 provides old school path to fantasy title games with RBs leading the way

Are you advancing to the finals of your fantasy football league? If so, there’s a good chance you did it the old fashioned way — through the backfield.

When the early slated of games closed on Sunday, the top of the running back leaderboard was littered with signature performances. Jonathan Taylor made up for last week’s regrettable gaffe, romping for 218 yards and three touchdowns for 39.8 fantasy points against the Titans. Chuba Hubbard (30.5 fantasy points) was right behind Taylor on the scoresheet, with 152 rushing yards and two scores, including the walk-off touchdown to defeat Arizona in overtime. Saquon Barkley (27 points), James Conner (24.6 points before getting hurt), Jahmyr Gibbs (23.4 points) and Bijan Robinson (23.3 points), those stars in the highlights all day.

The hit rate at the top of the Week 16 running back board has been absurdly high. When that early window completed, nine of the top 11 running backs in play had exceeded their projected fantasy score (we’ll squeeze in James Cook, who topped his projection before the half of his late game). Only Chase Brown (12.4 points) and Joe Mixon (7.6 points) came in under expectation.

Mind you, there’s always room for some quibbling. Derrick Henry (19.9 points) hasn’t scored a touchdown in a month. Conner suffered that knee injury, wrecking what could have been a monstrous game. Gibbs managers love the 27 touches and 154 total yards, but maybe they’re a little greedy — they’d like more than one touchdown. The Lions were kind enough to steer a touchdown to all four of their plausible skill-position starters.

Even some of the sleeper and quasi-sleeper plays came home. Gus Edwards punched in two scores on Thursday, Jerome Ford (21.6 points) made splash plays at Cincinnati, Tyjae Spears had a couple of touchdowns. Tyrone Tracy Jr. didn’t do much as a runner, but pass-catching work and one touchdown grab made for effective deodorant. He beat his projection, too.

We talk about this often in fantasy circles, running back workloads are fairly projectable week-over-week. The wide receivers and tight ends have to play the variance game. Most NFL teams have either a bell cow or a head-of-committee runner, and defined backs for the goal-line and third-down work. We pretty much know where the ball is going. Meanwhile, it’s never that surprising when a No. 2 or No. 3 receiver outperforms a team’s No. 1 in a given week. These are the rules of variance and we try to make peace with them.

Gibbs, Robinson and Barkley all took on extra responsibility in Week 16. Gibbs was working without David Montgomery (out indefinitely) and Barkley’s importance immediately shot up when Jalen Hurts suffered a concussion on the 11th snap of the game. The Falcons didn’t want to overload Michael Penix in his first start, allowing Robinson to get 22 carries for the third straight week. Gibbs easily set a new season high for touches, and the 29 Barkley carries were a new high, too.

It helps that a lot of these backs are on teams still fighting for playoff spots and positioning — we don’t have to guess on team motivation. Conversely, it’s now a concern for Conner managers that Arizona is eliminated from playoff contention — perhaps the Cardinals could rest Conner for a future game that doesn’t matter to them. Most of the other players we mentioned are free from these concerns.

QB roundup

Versatility was the watchword with the quarterback heroes in Week 16. Top scorer Jayden Daniels was amazing with five touchdown passes en route to 36.42 points in an inspired comeback win over Philadelphia, but he also ran for 81 yards. Bryce Young, of all people, put up 27.12 points, in part because of 68 scrambling yards and a touchdown. The second-best fantasy game of Patrick Mahomes’ season was sparked by 33 rushing yards and a touchdown on Saturday. It’s a shame Mahomes missed a couple of wide-open receivers for likely touchdowns; it could have been a pinball score.

And then there’s the Lions, who are set up to make fantasy managers happy. Jared Goff did whatever he wanted in the 34-17 win at Chicago (336 passing yards, three touchdowns), but there’s a leak at the bottom of the bucket — Caleb Williams threw for 334 yards and two scores against the injury-ravaged Detroit defense. It wasn’t a surprise to see Keenan Allen gash the Lions again (9-141-1); he went from a start-sit seam call to the WR2 for Week 16 in a matter of hours.

Finding the little wins at TE

No one on the tight end page is going to break the Week 16 slate. Chig Okonkwo clicked with new starter Mason Rudolph, using a 9-81-1 line (and a 2-point conversion) as a path to a top 5 TE finish. Still, he merely scored 14.6 points. I doubt many fantasy managers had faith in Dalton Schultz (5-45-1) or Isaiah Likely (3-29-1, which snuck him to TE8). Maybe Jake Ferguson or Tucker Kraft will flash in a later game. Travis Kelce is just another guy these days.

Streaming success

At least the defensive streaming model came through with two obvious plays. The Falcons scored two defensive touchdowns against Drew Lock and the overmatched Giants offense, racing to the top of the D/ST board. The Bengals didn’t get the touchdown luck but they collected five sacks and three turnovers against Dorian Thompson-Robinson and the sluggish Cleveland offense. DTR’s mediocre play wrecked the bottom line for Jerry Jeudy; after a dynamic five-week run, Jeudy crashed with a 2-20-0 dud on three targets. Hopefully you had a reasonable pivot and were able to proactively bench Jeudy.

The Colts and Dolphins don’t have great defenses, but given that they visit the Giants and Browns, respectfully, perhaps they’ll be in the streamer conversation for Week 17.

Note: I’ll continue to add Week 16 analysis as Sunday unfolds.