Every single year in fantasy football, there are players that massively outperform expectations that then go on to be highly coveted going into drafts the following season.
Without fail, though, fantasy managers are left chasing the wrong players as that production was never going to hold year after year. How can we see these types of disappointing performances coming?
One of the biggest advantages of fantasy football drafts this year is to identify players that are bound to regress and to avoid them in your drafts if their ADP (Average Draft Position) is too steep.
Let’s discuss several players this season at the RB position that you might want to think twice about before hitting the draft button.
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Top Fantasy Football Regression Candidates at RB
What Is Regression?
Before we get into some players that could potentially be overvalued going into the 2023 fantasy football season, it’s important to define the terms for this exercise.
The benefit of building out projections each and every year going into fantasy football draft prep is that it allows you to determine what the most likely outcome is for any given player.
One of the best tools in that process is Average Touchdown Rate. This statistic looks at the total yards that a specific position gained the prior season and compares it to the total number of touchdowns that were scored.
For example, last season, the sum total of rushing yards for every RB in the NFL was 52,067. Additionally, the sum total of rushing touchdowns for every RB in the league was 353.
When we divide these numbers, we are able to determine that an RB — on average — scored a touchdown every 148 yards on the ground.
This Average Touchdown Rate helps provide a solid foundation for our projections process for the upcoming season, but it also helps us look back and see which players dramatically outproduced their expected touchdowns. This helps us avoid overdrafting players like James Conner when he scored 15 rushing TDs in 2021 but dropped down to just seven in 2022 on a very similar workload.
Jerick McKinnon, RB, Kansas City Chiefs
McKinnon didn’t do much during the first part of the season, but he came alive down the stretch and truly helped push some fantasy lineups over the top to a championship.
The veteran RB ended the 2022-2023 NFL season with 10 total touchdowns, but a jaw-dropping nine of them came in Weeks 13-17. McKinnon wasn’t involved much on the ground — due to Isiah Pacheco’s emergence — but he was a nightmare for opposing defenses to stop as a receiver out of the backfield.
Nine of McKinnon’s 10 total touchdowns came as a receiver this past season, which was easily the most in the entire league at the RB position. However, based on the average RB receiving yards to TD rate last season of 191.04, McKinnon should have finished with only three receiving scores.
This signifies major regression to the mean coming for McKinnon this season in Kansas City. While his ADP isn’t outrageous currently, fantasy managers have his dominant performance at the end of 2022 still fresh in their minds. It’s worth tempering our expectations just a bit for the veteran RB in 2023.
Aaron Jones, RB, Green Bay Packers
It’s important to note that Jones actually could see significant positive regression — yes, that’s a thing — in the rushing touchdown category. Based on his 1,121 rushing yards in 2022, the dynamic RB was expected to have eight rushing scores. He ended the season with just two.
However, while he disappointed in that category, he exceeded expectations as a receiver out of the backfield. Based on his 395 receiving yards last year, Jones should have only crossed into the end zone twice as a pass catcher, but he ended the year with an impressive five receiving TDs.
Jones remains an interesting player to project for 2023 with the offense moving forward with Jordan Love behind center, and this doesn’t exactly make it easier. He certainly should see some regression as a receiver this season, but he could make up for it on the ground if the offense remains somewhat stable.
Derrick Henry, RB, Tennessee Titans
Every single year, it seems like we claim that the wheels are about to fall off for King Henry. However, each year, he continues to defy the odds and seemingly add even more work to his plate.
In 2022, Henry saw an absurd 390 opportunities for the Tennessee Titans. He was their offense for the majority of the season, and it turned into an impressive 1,538 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns.
However, based on the Average Touchdown Rate, Henry should have only just hit the 10-touchdown threshold in 2022. This seems a bit nitpicky for a player that just saw 349 carries, but it’s important to note as we move into this next fantasy football season.
The dip in production is inevitably coming at some point. For a player that has seen 1,750 rush attempts already through his NFL career, that drop-off could happen at any point, and that’s important to discuss for a player that’s going in the first few rounds of fantasy football drafts.
If the dip in efficiency happens this season, combined with a bout of regression in the touchdown department, fantasy managers that draft Henry in 2023 could be very disappointed.
Austin Ekeler, RB, Los Angeles Chargers
For the second year in a row, fantasy managers should be skeptical of drafting Ekeler with a top-five overall pick in drafts due to inevitable regression. While Ekeler continued to buck the trend last season and score touchdowns at an absurd rate, he has to return to earth at some point, right?
Over the last two seasons, Ekeler has scored a ridiculous 25 rushing touchdowns, which has been a massive reason why he’s finished as the overall RB2 and RB1 for fantasy football in that time frame.
However, Ekeler has done this without putting up out-of-this-world rushing yardage totals. In 2021 and 2022, Ekeler failed to cross over the 1,000-yard threshold, which means that he is greatly exceeding the Average Touchdown Rate, and regression could be coming.
Based on his 915 rushing yards last year, Ekeler should have had around six rushing TDs. Yet, he ended the 2022-2023 NFL season with 13!
His heavy red-zone utilization (92 carries inside the 20-yard line the past two seasons) gives him an excellent chance of exceeding his expected touchdown rate in 2023, but projecting him to double it yet again is a major gamble for fantasy managers that are drafting him as the first player off the board in some formats.
Ekeler can afford to regress slightly this season and still be worth a top-five selection in fantasy drafts, but if he can’t exceed expectations as drastically as he has the prior two seasons, there may be some fantasy managers that regret using that top draft capital on him instead of one of the top-tier WRs.
Jamaal Williams, RB, New Orleans Saints
Perhaps the most obvious answer for regression heading into 2023 — not just at the RB position — is Jamaal Williams. After being Aaron Jones’ running mate for years in Green Bay, the veteran RB moved over to Detroit in free agency in 2021 but failed to make much of an impact in his first season with the Lions.
But in 2022, Williams exploded onto the scene and easily led the entire league in rushing touchdowns with a shocking 17! Based on the Average Touchdown Rate, though, Williams should have ended the season with just seven.
This alone signals that massive regression is in store for the veteran RB, but he also finds himself now a member of a different backfield that’s filled with other competition for touches.
Alvin Kamara should be the lead option in this backfield (pending his legal situation), and the Saints also selected a talented rookie out of TCU, Kendre Miller, in the third round of the 2023 NFL Draft.
There will be some fantasy managers that look at Williams’ rushing TD totals from last season and believe that he’s set to repeat that impressive mark again this year, but everyone should proceed with caution due to the inevitable regression.
