Pope’s Pick 6: Running Backs to Avoid in Fantasy in 2022

Welcome to Pope’s Pick 6. Twice a week I’ll be bringing you a quick look at my fantasy football thoughts in quick-hit form. Today: Running backs to avoid in fantasy in 2022.

Running back is one of the hardest positions to predict in fantasy football between injury and aging and a change in general RB philosophy that has led to an increase in committee backfields. This has opened doors for more fantasy-relevant players but arguably fewer high-end options.

With all of this in mind, it makes it even more crucial to do your pre-draft homework, to help you find those potential busts and breakouts. That’s where this can come in handy — these are six running backs I’m fading in fantasy football in 2022. 

Derrick Henry, Tennessee Titans 

Last season, Derrick Henry played in eight games before injuring his foot. In those games, he produced 937 yards and 10 touchdowns on the ground. That came on 4.3 yards per carry, a full yard below his 2020 average. Even with that reduction in efficiency, Henry was on pace to set career highs in several numbers before this injury, due largely in part to the fact that he was on pace to carry the ball over 400 times last season. He also was on pace to see career numbers in the passing game, in line for over 40 targets for the season before his injury.

These all sound like great things, of course. But we have to realize he is going into the season as a 28-year-old running back coming off a Jones fracture. This injury is very hard for running backs in particular to bounce back from. Between age and injury, it’s very possible we see a far less effective Henry in 2022 than the superstar of the last few seasons. And that’s even before considering the state of this offense, with the Titans trading away A.J. Brown this offseason and losing multiple offensive linemen while doing little to replace them. It’s very plausible this entire offense has a down year, which would bring everyone’s fantasy upside down. Henry is still going off the board as the RB4 on most fantasy sites, and at this point in his career the downside outweighs the upside at that price.

Cam Akers, Los Angeles Rams 

As a rookie in 2020, Cam Akers started slow but gained steam down the stretch, producing four weeks of double-digit PPR points in his last five games. He was the PPR RB18 in that stretch, averaging 14 points per game. It led to plenty of optimism for 2021, but that optimism was cut short after an offseason Achilles tear. He recovered impressively quickly and made it back onto the field for the team’s Week 18 game and the postseason, but he was ineffective, putting up 172 yards on 67 carries (2.6 yards per carry) during the team’s Super Bowl run. He had slightly more success as a receiver, hauling in 8 of 10 targets for 76 yards, but he was hardly a difference-maker in his return.

Obviously, it matters a good deal that he was just six months removed from an injury that often costs players a year or more. But Achilles tears are often career-killers, and the list of backs who have made it back from one to produce at an elite level is very short. Add in a lesser Rams offensive line after Andrew Whitworth’s retirement, and Akers is an easy avoid for 2022.

Josh Jacobs, Las Vegas Raiders 

Josh Jacobs has been one of the most consistent players at the running back position in his three-year career, finishing inside the top 24 every year. Over the past two seasons, he has finished inside the top 12 in PPR, with RB8 and RB12 finishes. However, last season he set a career-low in rushing yards (872) and attempts (217), although he did put up career-highs in receptions (54) and receiving yards (348). Heading into 2022 he has a new coaching staff led by Josh McDaniels, who has tended to lean toward a committee backfield in the past. The Raiders also decided to decline Jacobs’s fifth-year option for 2023, and the team gets Kenyan Drake back from injury, drafted Zamir White and signed Brandon Bolden and Ameer Abdullah. That all says that this may be more of a committee in 2022, especially since Bolden (and FB Jakob Johnson) followed McDaniels to Vegas from New England. Jacobs would certainly be the lead of any committee, but still, a committee means his overall role would be less, and that’s hard to trust in fantasy. 

James Conner, Arizona Cardinals 

Despite coming off an outstanding season in which he finished RB5 with 257.7 PPR points, James Conner is still a player you should steer away from. He has a lengthy injury history — his 15 games played in 2021 were a career high, and he’s missed multiple games every year of his career while being active but banged up in more. Conner’s big season in 2021 came mostly on the back of incredible touchdown luck, because he was inefficient, putting up a career-low 3.7 yards per carry. His 18 touchdowns (15 rushing, 3 receiving) accounted for 41.9% of his fantasy points.

You never want to count on ridiculous touchdown production, and with the Cardinals drafting Keaontay Ingram and drafting Darrel Williams this offseason, there will be more mouths to feed in that backfield. Between the more touch competition, the likely reduced touchdown efficiency and the injury concerns. I’m looking elsewhere to address my running back needs in 2022. 

Miles Sanders, Philadelphia Eagles 

Miles Sanders and the entire Eagles offense came into 2021 with high hopes with Jalen Hurts at the helm. The Sanders side of things never really came to fruition, though, as the third-year back was outproduced for fantasy by rookie Kenneth Gainwell, in large part to Sanders missing five games and never scoring a touchdown all season. Sanders wasn’t efficient on a per-game basis either, producing a career-low 9.8 PPR points per game. For the season, he only reached double-digit PPR points four times and averaged only 13.5 touches a game.

So Sanders is a running back who has missed nine games the last two years, who has only had three career games with 20-plus carries, and who was outproduced by his rookie backfieldmate last year. And then there’s Hurts, one of the league’s top running quarterbacks, taking ground touches as well. It all adds up to a bad outlook for Sanders in 2022. Even if new arrival A.J. Brown helps buoy the overall offense, it seems too risky to trust Miles Sanders to be much more than an RB3/RB4 in 2022. 

Dameon Pierce, Houston Texans 

Last season at the University of Florida, Dameon Pierce produced 574 yards and 13 touchdowns on 100 carries, his second straight year topping 500 yards on the ground. He forced 39 missed tackles in 2021 and produced 365 yards after contact (63% of his total ground yardage). He also had 20 runs of 10-plus yards, nine of 15-plus, showing some nice breakaway speed. That all factored into the Texans drafting him in the fourth round of this year’s draft (107 overall), and in Houston he joins a team that is in desperate need of a quarterback.

All that said, Pierce isn’t likely to be the answer. There has already been word out of Houston that the team is more likely to lean on free agent signee Marlon Mack than the rookie Pierce. And sure, teams are always likely to say they are going with the veteran until the rookie forces their hand, but Pierce hasn’t forced many hands in his football career, unable to beat out La’Mical Perine, Jordan Scarlett and others in his Florida days. And of course, even if he does win the job, he’ll likely see a very low ceiling, because the Houston offense is likely to be one of the worst in the league yet again in 2022.