Fantasy Football Draft Prep: Ben Gretch's 2020 running back rankings tiers

Running back is the most important position to get right in Fantasy drafts. It's no secret elite backs can help you dominate a league, but it's also the position where opportunity is most important to player value. And, because of how quickly opportunity can disappear (see David Johnson in 2019) and also high injury rates (I guess also see David Johnson in 2019, but many others), it's the most fragile of all Fantasy positions.

There are multiple approaches you can take, then. The most common one has been that because running back is so valuable and because you can't count on them all to be perfect hits, you need to build in some resiliency by drafting several of them early. That's an admirable goal, but it also increases your bust risk exponentially — it's a bit counterintuitive, but starting a draft with three or four early running backs probably locks you into some underperformance in high draft slots and I would argue pushes you more toward a middle-of-the-pack outcome rather than what I believe most are going forward, which is the high ceiling of a true RB hit.

Meanwhile, later-round running backs can gain so much value so quickly, that they are often the most valuable players in all of Fantasy when they hit. There weren't as many massive smash hits in 2019, but James Conner in 2018 and Alvin Kamara in 2017 shouldn't be far from people's minds.

The second approach to the position is to be lighter in the early rounds, maybe taking just one running back early or perhaps two by the end of, say, Round 6 or Round 7. This is typically always my strategy, and it affords you the ability to load up at the other positions and build a really dynamic roster that can improve throughout the season if you do find some productive later-round backs.

Even if you don't, in a PPR format you can get by with a few points here and there each week at your RB2 spot. That gets to another point — it's important to understand late-round running back profiles. I almost never draft directly off my ranks, especially at the running back position, because whether I'll look at a player like Tarik Cohen or Nyheim Hines is highly dependent on my roster build to that point. I explain more about that here.

Below are my 2020 PPR running back rankings as of today, split into tiers, which I always use when drafting. I won't typically take many backs in Tier 5, 6, or 7 unless I get them well below my rankings. One of the advantages of that is I frequently wind up loading up on Tier 8 backs, and there's something to be said about a Fantasy team with six backs and four or five of them having monster upside, especially on those teams that create the most RB value, historically. Most look at that and are uncomfortable about their Week 1 starting lineup — I would suggest you should look at that and recognize you have a leg up on finding this year's Conner or Kamara because of the sheer volume of players in that mold you've rostered.

These rankings won't be updated between now and the beginning of the season, but you can always find Jamey Eisenberg's, Dave Richard's, and Heath Cummings' rankings for both PPR and non-PPR formats on the Draft Prep guide, along with mock drafts, team outlooks, sleepers, breakouts, busts, and so much more, plus listen to Part One of our RB Preview on the Fantasy Football Today podcast here: