MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 5/15)
Josh Gross
The last of the biggest names at running back hanging around in free agency appears to have landed a job, with reports coming Monday morning that veteran RB Leonard Fournette has agreed to a deal with the Buffalo Bills. The deal is pending a physical, per Tom Pelissero.
The 28-year-old Fournette joins Buffalo after spending the first six years of his career in Florida, three with Jacksonville and three with Tampa. He has two career 1,000-yard rushing seasons (2017 and 2019) and put up a career-best 523 receiving yards in 2022. Fournette has been a PPR RB1 in four of his six seasons, finishing as the RB9 in 2017, RB7 in 2019, RB6 in 2021 and RB12 in 2022.
Fournette Lands with Bills, Fantasy Impact
The Bills backfield has been led by second-year man James Cook so far this year. He has 486 yards on 102 carries (4.8 yards per attempt) and a touchdown, plus 18 receptions for 192 yards and a score through the air. He’s RB16 through Week 8 (pending Monday night’s results). But the Bills have clearly been reluctant to commit to Cook as a full-time back, giving plenty of work to Damien Harris and Latavius Murray. And with Harris landing on injured reserve after a Week 6 neck injury, the team went looking for another option and found it in Fournette, who had been to meeting and workouts for the team multiple times since being released by the Buccaneers in May.
Fournette immediately becomes the biggest-name back in Buffalo since the LeSean McCoy heyday, but big names don’t always mean biggest production — this is still going to be James Cook’s backfield first. The problem is that Fournette (and Murray, and whatever rushing production Josh Allen soaks up) will cut into Cook’s workload. Fournette, who is an inch taller than Cook and almost 40 pounds heavier, is the favorite to get short-yardage and goal-line work out of the backfield, and he, Murray and Allen are all likely to get the call in those situations ahead of Cook.
For fantasy, this means that Cook is likely to continue to have a high floor, getting the majority (even if slightly) of the carries and most of the backfield receiving work. But touchdowns are going to be even harder to come by for a back who only has 2 on 120 touches this year and who has only three attempts inside the 5 and one inside the 1 through eight weeks, per the FTN Red Zone Tool.
In other words, Cook’s ceiling was already fairly capped as a mid- to high-end RB2, and now that ceiling lowers a bit to low-end RB2 range. His floor keeps him relevant, but the chances of a full-bore James Cook breakout in 2023 dimmed a little Monday.
For Fournette, he and Murray (and Harris, if/when he’s back from IR) will battle for goal-line and change-of-pace work. That makes games with, say, 30 yards and a score perfectly likely for either of them, but big-time breakout opportunities hard to come by outside of a Cook injury. For bye week or emergency situations, that’s perfectly fine. But unless Cook gets hurt or we hear that the team will lean on Fournette more than you’d expect for a 28-year-old who is still a free agent in Week 8, he’s not a fantasy starter or a must-roster right now.
