Washington Commanders RB Austin Ekeler enters 2024 with low expectations as a result of his underwhelming 2023 campaign. Was last season a blip on the radar, or should the one-time fantasy football superstar truly be an afterthought in drafts?
Should You Select Austin Ekeler at His Current ADP?
ADP: 86th Overall (RB30)
A large part of your willingness to draft Ekeler will depend on your evaluation of Brian Robinson Jr. To my eye, he took the steps that I needed to see last season to make him my favorite in this backfield, and that’s not how the current market is handicapping this situation.
Despite not having a 30-yard carry on his NFL résumé, Robinson improved his ypc both before and after contact in his second season. His hard-nosed running style resulted in a spike in scoring rate, and when combined with a considerable spike in passing-game usage, his arrow is pointing up.
- 2022: 1.0 targets per game, one touchdown every 71.3 touches
- 2023: 2.4 catches per game, one touchdown every 23.8 touches
Ekeler isn’t expensive right now. His ADP is hovering around RB30 and 100th overall. I don’t think you struggle in 2024 because you took a chance on a former fantasy deity, but he’s not the running back I prefer in that range (give me Raheem Mostert or Tony Pollard) or on this roster.
Tread lightly; there’s a chance that when it comes time to draft, Ekeler’s name pushes his ADP up higher than a reasonable projection suggests is responsible.
Ekeler’s Fantasy Profile for the 2024 NFL Season
If you ever need a reminder of how quickly things can change at the running back position, find yourself someone who invested an early-round pick on Ekeler last season. After a two-season stretch that saw Ekeler miss a total of one game and scored 38 times, the veteran missed three games in 2023 and managed just six scores while averaging a career-low 3.5 yards per carry.
“They want a guy they can hand the ball off to 300 times a year,” Ekeler said. “I haven’t had that capacity to do that. That’s not my game.”
We can discuss what this means for the leader of the Los Angeles Chargers backfield at a later date, but it’s clear that Ekeler is not expecting a high-usage role with the Commanders.
For the version of him we saw before 2023, that wouldn’t be a major concern. Up to that point, Ekeler was good for 4.5 yards per carry, with a high catch rate and a nose that was proven to sniff out the goal line.
AUSTIN EKELER PUTS THE CHARGERS UP FIRST!pic.twitter.com/uaIZcSNv7M
— DraftKings (@DraftKings) October 30, 2023
But if this “running with a piano back” version of Ekeler is here to stay, a lack of volume could make him borderline unusable.
With Justin Herbert in Los Angeles, we knew how the Chargers’ offense would function and had an idea of how Ekeler would be deployed. That’s not a benefit we have in Washington, where a rookie in Jayden Daniels is set to take over under center.
Could Ekeler bounce back? Could this offense overachieve and put him in a scoring position more than we are projecting? It’s possible, but that needs to be viewed as a bonus and not an expectation ahead of 2024.