Fantasy Football Week 17 Running Back Preview: Waiver adds, DFS plays, and more

As we head into championship week for Fantasy Football, it’s worth the time to do at least a little bit of reflecting on what we’ve seen in the past four months. At the running back position, we may have just seen the greatest Zero-RB season of all time. 

Sure, Christian McCaffrey is still a distant RB1 overall and has led many teams to the finals. But look at the rest of the top 10 on a per-game basis. 

Kyren Williams wasn’t even drafted in a majority of leagues and currently ranks as RB2 overall on a per-game basis. Alvin Kamara had an ADP in Round 6 due to a three-game suspension. He currently ranks as RB3 per game. Kamara was drafted four rounds earlier than RB4 per game, Raheem Mostert. Mostert’s teammate, De’Von Achane sits at RB7 per game despite being drafted in Round 11. Rachaad White, Breece Hall, and David Montgomery all sit inside the top 12 on a per-game basis and were drafted after Round 4. 

Of course, there is a flip side to all this value. Austin Ekeler, Bijan Robinson, Saquon Barkley, and Tony Pollard have all failed to live up to their first-round price tags. If you somehow made it to the finals with one of these backs, you likely have a difficult decision to make in the championship, unless, of course, you snagged one of the studs in the prior paragraph. Achane is the only one from that list who isn’t ranked as a start this week.

You can find more in my weekly projections over at SportsLine. Now let’s get to the rest of the Week 17 RB Preview:

Week 17 RB Preview

The following players are not being projected to play Week 17 at this time. Here’s what it means:

• 20.1 — Clyde Edwards-Helaire scored 20.1 PPR Fantasy points in his last game without Isiah Pacheco. And that was against a much better defense.
• 21.75 — Ezekiel Elliott is averaging 21.75 touches per game in his last four games. He is RB10 over that stretch.
• 3.75 — Last week was the first game all season that James Conner averaged fewer than four yards per carry. 
• 12 — De’Von Achane only has two games all season with more than 12 touches. The Dolphins won those two games by a combined 80 points.
• 10 — Derrick Henry produced 10 yards on 20 touches against the Texans in Week 15. He’ll face them again in Week 17.

My full set of Week 17 Fantasy Football projections for every position are now available on SportsLine. Find out which of my favorite plays are projected to score higher than consensus rankings and which don’t live up to their draft hype, at least in Week 17. Projected stats for all starting quarterbacks are available, so be sure to check out the full set of projections at SportsLine.