What I like to do every now and then is show how consistent or inconsistent players really are. As we all know, fantasy football is primarily a head to head matchup game and thus if your team isn't producing consistently high point totals, you are not going to win. Thus, digging deeper behind the scenes to uncover which players may not have the highest point totals at the end of the year but do post a good baseline of points every week can really help you out. 

Today we focus on the running backs. We all know that the RB position can be your best friend or worst enemy. No position suffers the kind of devastating injuries and complete hollowing out of production than RB’s. But, as we’ve learned from the coaching systems breakdown, the right system will produce steady fantasy points regardless of who the player is that is carrying the ball. Thus, you can lock in that production by insuring yourself with handcuffs and late round RB’s who consistently touch the football.

That is the focus of this breakdown today. By knowing the systems, the tendencies of the head coach, offensive coordinator and ability of the offensive line we can properly gauge what a running back is capable of in a game or an entire season. The hard part though is knowing how often they are going to touch the football. Sure, we know that certain offenses will run the ball more and throw the ball more to the RB’s but many times that is heavily dependent on the flow of that particular ballgame. Touches are one of the most difficult thing to assess for RB’s. Yeah, I know that many of you out there will disagree with that but the sooner you realize that you are not nearly as good at predicting game flow as you think you are, the better you will allow yourself to become at fantasy football.

With that I present to you a recap of just how many touches each of the top 40 RB’s had last season. I’ve also broken them down into how many games they had within each tier of touches. What we are looking for here is consistency. We want to put a higher value on RB’s that saw a regular dose of touches while accumulating a good amount of fantasy points. We want to also identify those players who saw huge upswings in their touches which probably led to a massive amount of points coming in those games. Those players will give you false hope in believing you have a guy that scores 16 points per game when really he averaged just six with a couple huge days mixed in. 

#NAMETEAMGAMES0-56-1011-1516-2020+TOTAL
1Adrian PetersonVikings16002112357
2Devonta FreemanFalcons15102210337
3Doug MartinBucs1600529321
4Latavius MurrayRaiders1600286308
5Frank GoreColts1601285294
6Darren McFaddenCowboys1604444279
7Chris IvoryJaguars1502346277
8Matt ForteJets1300445262
9Jonathan StewartPanthers1301219258
10Todd GurleyRams1303127250
11Lamar MillerTexans1603535241
12DeAngelo WilliamsSteelers1001126240
13DeMarco MurrayTitans1513434238
14Jeremy HillBengals1604372238
15LeSean McCoyBills1200255235
16Rashad JenningsGiants1612832224
17Melvin GordonChargers1402462217
18Mark IngramSaints1201263215
19Eddie LacyPackers1522614207
20Giovani BernardBengals1613741203
21Chris JohnsonCardinals1101343202
22Justin ForsettRavens1010243182
23Danny WoodheadChargers1616630178
#NAMETEAMGAMES0-56-1011-1516-2020+Total
24C.J. AndersonBroncos1524540177
25LeGarrette BlountPatriots1222242171
26Jeremy LangfordBears1010432170
27Ameer AbdullahLions1616720168
28Duke JohnsonBrowns1626710165
29Matt JonesRedskins1304621163
30David JohnsonCardinals1674203161
31Charles SimsBucs16010510158
32Thomas RawlsSeahawks802024156
33Darren SprolesEagles1639310138
34Le'Veon BellSteelers600105137
35Ryan MathewsEagles1335401128
36Carlos Hyde49ers701123126
37Shane VereenGiants1658300120
38Jamaal CharlesChiefs50012292
39Arian FosterDolphins40010385
40Dion LewisPatriots70241085