Houston Texans RB Dameon Pierce entered last season with a ton of hype following an impressive rookie campaign. Yet, he wound up being one of the worst picks you could’ve made. With Joe Mixon in town as the clear RB1, is there any reason for fantasy football managers to draft Pierce this year?
Dameon Pierce’s 2024 Fantasy Forecast
The Pierce late-summer ADP spike is a prime example of why we need to be careful about overvaluing what we see in the preseason. Teams use preseason games for different things, and the Texans very clearly were using it to get their players a certain number of reps and then get them out of the game.
When, in doing that, Pierce played an entire drive (including third downs), fantasy managers went into a frenzy about how this two-down grinder would suddenly be a three-down back with receiving upside. This bumped Pierce’s ADP up several spots. What followed was an unmitigated disaster for fantasy managers.
Well, I shouldn’t say unmitigated. As someone who drafted Pierce in a league, I can say that picking up Devin Singletary in the middle of the season mitigated the loss. But in terms of Pierce alone, it wasn’t good.
Pierce did not open the season in anything resembling a three-down role. In fact, he played fewer than 50% of the snaps in each of the first two games, and at no point during the season did he even reach a 60% snap share in a single game.
To be fair, snap shares aren’t overly important as long as the volume is there. But it wasn’t…at least not at first.
In Weeks 4 and 5, Pierce really got a chance to shine. He had 20+ carries in both games. Unfortunately, he was wholly ineffective, which was the story of his season.
Pierce did not average more than 3.45 yards per carry in a single game last year. As he continued to struggle, the Texans couldn’t justify continuing to feed him volume, which led to more work for Singletary.
When Pierce got hurt in Week 8 and was forced to miss three games, that was all she wrote for his lead-back role. He returned as a seldom-used backup, and by the end of the season, he was relegated to third string.
Pierce didn’t play a single snap outside of garbage time in the Texans’ final four games. He averaged 2.9 ypc, and his 3.3 yards per touch and 2.69 yards created per touch were both outside the top 50. A mere 2.1% of Pierce’s carries went for 15+ yards, 49th in the NFL.
As for that increased receiving role fantasy managers were hoping for? No such thing. Pierce saw a 3.9% target share.
This season, Pierce poses absolutely no threat to Mixon’s workload. His only value is as Mixon’s handcuff. The problem with handcuffs, in general, is we’re not particularly good at predicting who it will be and what percentage of the starter’s work he would take if the starter went down.
If there is a silver lining for Pierce, it’s that the Texans didn’t add anyone of consequence to their backfield aside from Mixon. Dare Ogunbowale stands to serve as the third-down RB (at least to the extent it isn’t Mixon). But if Mixon were to miss time, it wouldn’t be Ogunbowale in a lead-back role. It would probably be Pierce with Ogunbowale as the clear passing-down back.
With that said, is “probably” good enough to warrant drafting Pierce, who played himself out of a job last season when he was Houston’s first choice as the lead RB? Not for me.
Pierce has an RB65 ADP, which puts him right on the border of being drafted in most fantasy leagues, but I have no interest.
Pierce is my RB73. The value in a handcuff is the upside he provides as the potential lead back in the starting role. However, we’ve seen what lead-back Pierce looks like, and it’s not pretty.
If Mixon goes down, I fully expect the Texans to elevate or sign someone else. At best, Pierce will be part of a timeshare. At worst, he won’t even get a chance at the job. There are better darts to throw.
Kyle Soppe’s Fantasy Insights on Dameon Pierce
Houston Texans RB Dameon Pierce’s inefficiencies resulted in Devin Singletary taking the lead in Houston last season and making the second-year back an afterthought by the end of October. Over the final month of the regular season (five games), the former Gator had 19 touches and zero rushes, gaining more than five yards.
Singletary is out, and Joe Mixon is in at the top of this depth chart. At very little cost, is now the time to buy some Pierce fantasy football stock?
My concern with Pierce is less about Mixon and more about the Texans already giving up on him. By the end of last season, he was being used on special teams, often a nail in the coffin of fantasy assets.
Furthermore, Pierce and I finished last postseason with the same number of yards gained. That wouldn’t be a major concern if the Texans had failed to qualify for the playoffs, but they played a pair of games and totaled 55 points.
Fantasy managers should be ahead of the NFL team in giving up on a player. Pierce may have already sailed, which is why I’m shooting my darts elsewhere. Instead, give me handcuff running backs in better situations: Elijah Mitchell, Clyde Edwards-Helaire, and Keaton Mitchell types.
The idea of getting cheap exposure to an elite offense is sound, but you can do better in terms of a profile — this is a pass-centric offense that brought in a reliable veteran RB to help them win now. Outside of an injury, Pierce doesn’t have much of a path to meaningful work.