Fantasy Football Stat of the Day: RBs who could pop in 2021

(Leading up to the 2021 NFL season, FTN’s Tyler Loechner will dive into the fantasy football numbers to bring you his Fantasy Stat of the Day, five days a week.)

Scoring TDs is so fundamentally important for fantasy success, that almost nothing can be as frustrating as watching your player fail to score time and again. This is especially true for RBs, who either get pulled near the red zone or get stuffed at the goal line more than we’d like to admit.

In Monday’s Stat of the Day article, we reviewed the most TD-dependent RBs in the league. This helped surface some players that could be in for a greater-than-expected fantasy setback if their TD rate falls.

Today, we’ll look at which RBs were least dependent on TDs for their fantasy success in 2020. In theory, this should help us find some RBs that could be in for a big year in 2021 if they are able to hit pay dirt more often.

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Clyde Edwards-Helaire is the 2021 post-hype sleeper, and Austin Ekeler is the player you want to own in every league

First, we looked at the top 30 RBs in terms of total fantasy scoring last season. Then we looked at which ones scored the lowest percentage of their points from TDs alone. The above chart shows the 12 RBs least dependent on TDs for fantasy production last season.

At the top of the list, we see J.D. McKissic, who scored only three TDs last season but was a legitimate fantasy asset in PPR leagues.

But the real names you should be paying attention to are just behind McKissic: Austin Ekeler (only three TDs last year in nine games) and Clyde Edwards-Helaire (four TDs).

I love this line from FTN’s Brad Evans in his Boom, Busts, Breakouts and Bets article on the Chiefs: 

“With Anthony Lynn and his RBBC mindset out of the mix, new offensive coordinator Mike Lombardi has raised arousal levels in the fantasy community by comparing Ekeler to Alvin Kamara. If deployed in a similar fashion, which makes entirely too much sense, the plucky rusher should lead NFL RBs in total receptions, possibly approaching 100 catches.”

If Ekeler’s TD rate improves next year, he has top-three upside at the position. 

Edwards-Helaire, meanwhile, is a great post-hype sleeper entering 2021. He was the lauded rookie of 2020 — and for good reason. A first-round pick playing for the high-powered Chiefs offense was bound to score plenty of fantasy points simply by existing. Except … that didn’t happen. In the end, CEH was a fantasy letdown (compared to expectations).

But Edwards-Helaire’s talent and situation are the same in 2021, except now he has a year of experience in the NFL under his belt and nowhere to go but up in the TD department. 

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