At full health, Cleveland Browns RB Nick Chubb is one of the most talented backs in the league. Coming off a very serious knee injury and set to miss at least some of the 2024 season, should fantasy football managers be avoiding Chubb in Best Ball drafts?
Nick Chubb’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
I really, really hate injuries. When it comes to preparing for fantasy drafts, the one thing I despise the most is having to navigate elite players that we know are missing a chunk of the season. There’s no clear way to properly value a guy who is going to produce significantly above the expected fantasy points per game of players around him, but do so for a shorter period of time.
Chubb suffered a devastating knee injury in Week 2 of last season. He underwent surgery to repair his ACL shortly afterward, but he had to have a second surgery over a month later to fix his MCL and meniscus. It’s already a foregone conclusion that Chubb won’t be ready for Week 1. In all likelihood, he will open the season on the PUP list.
According to team doctors, Chubb will be able to return during the 2024 season, though. That poses a lot of difficult questions for fantasy managers. Those questions are even more difficult this far out, as we have no idea when Chubb might return, and to what level of performance.
At his best, we know what Chubb is. He’s arguably the best pure runner in the NFL. Chubb has averaged over 5.0 yards per carry every year of his career. In 2022, he ranked fourth in evaded-tackles-per-touch rate, seventh in percentage of carries to go for at least 15 yards, and 18th in yards created per touch.
Chubb has been a known quantity. You’re never getting an elite RB1. You’re also never getting a disaster. Chubb has averaged between 15.9 and 17.3 fantasy points per game every year of his career, with the exception of his rookie season (and obviously last year gets thrown out due to the injury).
The main reason Chubb lacks that elite upside is his minimal involvement in the passing game. Unfortunately, that’s not going to change at this point in his career.
That brings us to the most challenging part of this process. Chubb is 28 years old. He will turn 29 before the year ends. This isn’t Breece Hall or Saquon Barkley recovering from a torn ACL at age 22 or 23. Chubb has 1,238 career carries. There’s no guarantee he is able to return anywhere near the player he previously was.
Should You Draft Chubb in 2024 Best Ball Leagues?
Best Ball drafters are going to be operating with roughly the same information for at least the next four months. We probably won’t get any meaningful update on Chubb’s progress until the start of training camp in late July. And even then, it will likely be the usual “good progress” and “we’re taking it week by week” non-update updates.
If we knew Chubb would miss a specific number of games and return fully healthy, we could figure out the right spot to take him in fantasy drafts. But not only do we not know when Chubb will return, we don’t know what level of play we will get.
Right now, Chubb is being drafted just inside the top 24 running backs. To be blunt, that’s wholly absurd. Even if Chubb returns in Week 4 or 5, there’s no guarantee he’s worth it.
KEEP READING: Best Ball Fantasy RB Rankings 2024
Jerome Ford proved quite effective filling in for Chubb last season. Upon his return, Chubb is almost certainly not going to see his previous level of volume. It will take a couple of weeks for him to ramp up, if the Browns even want to go that route. This could just be a 60/40-type committee.
I just cannot fathom fantasy managers looking down at Chubb, Tony Pollard, James Conner, and Brian Robinson, and saying to themselves, “Give me the 28-year-old coming off a torn ACL, MCL, and meniscus who may miss anywhere from 2-12 weeks and then return to an unknown workload and unknown level of play.” The upside does not justify the risk in selecting Chubb in Best Ball drafts right now.
