Previous
(Photo by Dennis Schneidler/Icon Sportswire)
One of my favorite things to do is to travel during the NFL and Fantasy Football season (in fact, I may even write a Fantasy Football Player’s Guide to International Travel someday). In 2016 my wife and I were blessed to take a month off and travel Europe, and though we were far from our U.S. home soil, our shared passion for following the NFL and Fantasy Football in real-time came along for the vacation.
In late September on a Sunday, we arrived in London for about 5 days and we stayed in a hotel just behind Green Park, and only a block away from the Rose & Crown on Old Park Lane. Wanting to get the traditional English Pub experience, we walked to that Rose & Crown and ordered our fish & chips with plenty of Fentimans soda. And guess what we saw on TV:
The NFL. Oh, it was glorious. And guess who was playing? The 49ers at the Seahawks. Typically, this is the kind of game I don’t have a ton of interest in unless I or my opponent in Fantasy that week had a player in the matchup, but I actually had a player going in this game: Christine Michael.
And that’s where that story ends, and where, over the next 3 weeks, my review of 3 NFL running backs who were RB1* flashes in the pan begins.
I had been a Christine Michael truther since he was drafted in 2013 and I was ridiculed for it. As a life-long Fightin’ Texas Aggie fan, I had followed Christine Michael since he was a high school prospect out of Beaumont, Texas, while at Texas A&M, and finally when he was originally drafted in the second round by the Seattle Seahawks.
There was no question about his size, talent, and freakish physical abilities. As a freshman at Texas A&M he won Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year. At the NFL combined he showed out, leading all running backs in the 3-cone drill and the vertical jump. You could argue he was a little on the heavy side, but at 5’10” 220 with a low center of gravity he was a brute of a running back who wasn’t afraid of contact, was deceptively fast, and had the ability to make quick cuts and get north-and-south quick. There was plenty to be excited about, I thought. And while I didn’t draft him in 2013 or 2014 (as you may remember, there was some guy named Beastmode in Seattle at the time, I wasn’t playing in a keeper league, AND I wasn’t quite as savvy as I like to think I am now).
But I did in 2015, touting his RB1* upside. I was mocked.
And again in 2016, in the 12th round, I drafted him. I was mocked again as I touted his RB1* upside.
And then Marshawn Lynched retired, and was no longer in Seattle in 2016. And Christine Michael was getting legit PT, leading the Seahawks in rushing the first two games of the season before that late September match-up with the putrid San Francisco 49ers defense.
I started Christine Michael that week and he did not disappoint. I was sitting in the Rose & Crown on Old Park Lane in London watching Christine Michael start, and take a 41-yard run to the house in the first minute of the game. Then, shortly before the end of the 1st quarter, he punched in another touchdown.
I was aglow with vindication. After 2 years of being a Christine Michael truther long before it was (briefly) cool to be a Christine Michael truther, he had finally realized the RB1* ability I knew he was capable of. Add to that the fact that this was a keeper league my mind was racing with thoughts of first-round talent being kept at back-end-of-the-draft prices.
I rushed to our league’s Slack channel and said, “WELCOME TO THE CHRISTINE MICHAEL ERA, FOLKS!”. All those same league members who ridiculed me for two years now had to eat their words. I was proven to be the mad scientist/genius, and they were all just simply not on my level. A 12th-round draft pick for me that season, I now had a sure-fire RB1* for the rest of this season and next as a keeper that’d only cost me a 10th-round pick.
And then the rest of the season happened.
As you can see, Christine Michael wasn’t a bad 12th-round pick to begin the season. An RB4 in the 12th round with as much upside as Christine Michael had is exactly what I hope to get every season in the later rounds, especially in a keeper league. But where things really get interesting are weeks 3, 4, and 6 (Week 5 was a bye). This is where the Christine Michael hype was at a fever pitch, and where my thinking about this was all wrong.
My first mistake was that I fell in love too quick with the value RB1*. And what I mean by this is that I was completely infatuated with my own supposed greatness for draft him and seeing him pan out how I knew he could, and in thinking of him as a sure-fire long-term piece of my championship rosters for years to come. The beauty of the Value RB1*–an RB1* drafted in the 5th round or later, but especially those in the double-digit rounds, is that you’re playing with “house money”, to speak. The ROI cost you next to nothing. Yet, in this scenario, I was set to ride-or-die with Christine Michael predominately our of a mix of arrogance and a fear of selling way too early.
And rolling off of that point, my second mistake was that I didn’t even consider the notion of trading him. He was drafted at such a value and had such incredible potential for my future rosters as a keeper that I perceived his value to be way more than it actually was (oh, if only I had read this article of mine prior to that season…). Who knows what I could have gotten for him, and of course, hindsight is 20-20, but looking back nearly anything would have been better than keeping him.
And finally, my third mistake was that I simply got too cocky. Fantasy Football has a knack for humbling a man, and I was definitely humbled here. After thumping my chest and rubbing everybody’s face in my genius pick, I watched it all fade away just as quickly as it had come. I thought I knew it all, and that a few week’s success was complete validation of a player’s long-term potential. Not at all, which is all the more reason why, especially when you’re getting RB1* weeks out of a late-round guy, unless you have strong reason to believe they’re here to stay, you have to get over your own genius in drafting and get a better, more stable player in return. Remember, RB1*s are rare and relatively fleeting, with most Fantasy Football running backs who have an RB1* season never doing it more than twice, if that. And if it’s better to sell a year early than a year late, I should have looked to make a move on a strong wide receiver or elite tight end.
But I didn’t. I was getting high off of my own supply and that never ends well.
| Week | HPPR Total | RB1M Designation |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 8.1 | RB4 |
| 2 | 8.1 | RB4 |
| 3 | 24.1 | RB1E |
| 4 | 17.5 | RB1 |
| 6 | 21.8 | RB1E |
| 7 | 7 | RB4 |
| 8 | 10.7 | RB3 |
| 9 | 6.1 | RB4 |
| 10 | 3.1 | Non-Con |
| 11 | 0 | Non-Con |
| 12 | 0.4 | Non-Con |
| 13 | 1.9 | Non-Con |
| 14 | 3.6 | Non-Con |
| 15 | 10.5 | RB3 |
| 16 | 1 | Non-Con |
| 17 | 2.1 | Non-Con |
In short, in was a “between the ears” problem (hint: my new two flashes in a pan, Jeremy Hill and Alex Collins, faced the same problem). ESPN ran an article in 2016 about Michael’s problems. A tell-tale sign of a player who doesn’t have it together between the ears, and thus cannot be trusted long-term on your Fantasy Football roster as an RB1*, is when someone of Michael’s talent and ability simply never sticks anywhere. When the Seahawks released him after Week 9 in 2016, that was the second time that had released the guy. He had been signed and released by the Cowboys and Redskins as well before that. Guys that rely purely on their talent and don’t share a real concern for learning blocking schemes, footwork fundamentals, etc. are guys that simply won’t see the field often enough to remain viable and trustworthy. You can have all of the talent in the world but if you’re missing blocks or dropping passes purely out of a lack of focus or care for the game plan, you’re not going to be valuable for very long.
So the next time you get a value RB1* late in your draft, remember this article. As tempting as it is to ride the wave of your own genius, perhaps the truly genius move is to flip that running back for a more stable, known commodity that came at a higher draft price tag that season.
