Viewing RB's coming back from injury

[stpilots98]

Does anyone else look to buy RB's coming back from ACL tears or who have the "injury prone" tag? The price on JK Dobbins, Javonte Williams currently and the price on CMC and Saquon this past year was crazy. It seems like a lot of manager's suffer from recency bias and sell these players off for pennies on the dollar. Even going back and looking at threads on here about Saquon/CMC's value was insane. I heard somewhere and I can't remember where, probably a podcast, that JK's ADP in startups is in the back end of round 6 behind the likes of Dalvin Cook, Rachaad White. Wild stuff. Anyway, how do you view these type of players? Do you seek them out or avoid and try to trade your shares?

[natjjohn]

Good buy candidates during the immediate follow-up season when they are likely not producing at level pre-injury. Most likely Javonte and Breece won’t be looking so hot next year by mid-season making owners nervous.
Especially Javonte as will be on year three with little to show for it. Pounce time if a Javonte believer.

[Dynasty DeLorean]

I take into account players athleticism. In theory, you get injured and you lose some athleticism. Highly athletic players such as Saquon and Breece, they’re still going to be very athletic post injury. You take a guy like James Robinson, now it’s more of an issue because he was already right on that athleticism threshold. I realize the injuries are different, just saying…

[Anteaters]

It's a good idea in some situations with the right RBs. We can't just look at any example and think it applies to every RB.

We can't say, look at how Adrian Peterson recovered so quickly and looked great afterwards. We can't just say, look it took Saquon 18 months to get get back to normal, so every RB will look as good after 18 months. Because for every success story, there is a guy who never ran well enough to be a fantasy starter again.

If you really want to be good at picking up injured players and getting good value, you have to study and chart everything about every RB who suffered those injuries. Then identify similarities and see if certain similarities between player attributes and specific injuries result in a certain result. If you find identifiable data, you can make knowledgeable decisions.

OTOH, if I just pick guys at random, I'm going to have random results and random success rates. And if I'm not careful, my mind will play tricks on me and remember only the times when I was lucky and the result was good.

TL,DR: Don't make these sort of risky decisions without having proper knowledge and without having done the research to support your assumptions. Without having done the necessary research, it's just a guess. And it's worse than a regular guess, because of the inclusion of injury(ies)

[abloom]

I'll buy rbs right before regular season starts. Specifically I'll go after rbs with acl injuries after they have already missed 1+ seasons. ACL injuries for rbs are 2 year recoveries.

[honcho55]

I know a lot of forum users here are in dozens or hundreds of leagues, would be interested to hear from those guys if they can confirm what I see, being in a handful of leagues yearly.

This is a big indicator of how “good” your league is, imo. In my “easy” leagues, almost every year it seems like I scoop an injured RB for pennys, but in the more astute ones, it’s generally too hard to buy. The discount isn’t as deep.

[Mjvb5]

I definitely wouldn't say that the price adjustments were crazy by any means and I think accounting for the risk, loss of valuable years and added uncertainty make sense. Just going through the main names,

dobbins you effectively lost almost 2 years of his prime, and they likely need to add an rb in this year's draft because of it which then will immediately lead to him hitting fa.
Javonte had a similar injury to dobbins and will likely have a similar recovery time table as a result, his value also dropped to the difference in expectations(top 8 scoring rb) vs reality which was middling rb2 prior to injury and is a course correction due to both.
Akers you lost most of a year then had an extremely inefficient but high volume couple games, then nothing and almost cut them back to something? Maybe?
Bark same story of losing almost two years of prime which results in even with this year his value is just never going to be close to where it was before due to age
Cmc never really lost the value of the other guys tbh June of this year still had him as a top 5 rb.

The issue is while you can argue that these guys will return to form, the problem is you have to wait 1-2 years losing most or all of that time in there prime which means that they will likely never recoup the ability to ascend to elite value again if the injury happens any time after the rookie yea due to age, uncertainty, and likely added competition.

[mild]

The issue is while you can argue that these guys will return to form, the problem is you have to wait 1-2 years losing most or all of that time in there prime which means that they will likely never recoup the ability to ascend to elite value again if the injury happens any time after the rookie yea due to age, uncertainty, and likely added competition.

Would you say Barkley is a sell then, by this logic? He's regained a lot of his value right now, currently Rb4 on DLF at age 26.

Part of me just wants to keep riding him into the sunset as a contender... but I wonder if there is a sharp pivot to be made here to one of the younger guys "if you believe". Breece for Barkley, for instance...

[Mjvb5]

The issue is while you can argue that these guys will return to form, the problem is you have to wait 1-2 years losing most or all of that time in there prime which means that they will likely never recoup the ability to ascend to elite value again if the injury happens any time after the rookie yea due to age, uncertainty, and likely added competition.

Would you say Barkley is a sell then, by this logic? He's regained a lot of his value right now, currently Rb4 on DLF at age 26.

Part of me just wants to keep riding him into the sunset as a contender... but I wonder if there is a sharp pivot to be made here to one of the younger guys "if you believe". Breece for Barkley, for instance...

That would be my stance personally, the reality is this is the decision year, youre options are sell now or he will lose a large chunk of value every year. At rb4 I'm out fairly easily

Not even necessarily a pivot to say a hall, I can get not wanting that move as a contender but to say an ekeler, Henry, Chubb type+ a good bit

[stpilots98]

I'll buy rbs right before regular season starts. Specifically I'll go after rbs with acl injuries after they have already missed 1+ seasons. ACL injuries for rbs are 2 year recoveries.

Agree it usually takes until the 2nd year, but you're risk missing out on the cost advantage

[stpilots98]

I definitely wouldn't say that the price adjustments were crazy by any means and I think accounting for the risk, loss of valuable years and added uncertainty make sense. Just going through the main names,

dobbins you effectively lost almost 2 years of his prime, and they likely need to add an rb in this year's draft because of it which then will immediately lead to him hitting fa.

I didn't lose two years, the team carrying him did. You can still grab Dobbins incredibly cheap compared to his upside. I'll take that all day long for a guy who averaged 5.7/carry and stated he still wasn't 100% back.

Javonte had a similar injury to dobbins and will likely have a similar recovery time table as a result, his value also dropped to the difference in expectations(top 8 scoring rb) vs reality which was middling rb2 prior to injury and is a course correction due to both.
Akers you lost most of a year then had an extremely inefficient but high volume couple games, then nothing and almost cut them back to something? Maybe?

Agree on this one and is def more of a risk because we haven't seen the workload. I still love the talent, I love Payton coming here and depending on what the Broncos do in the off-season, I would still look to buy on owner panic.

Bark same story of losing almost two years of prime which results in even with this year his value is just never going to be close to where it was before due to age
Cmc never really lost the value of the other guys tbh June of this year still had him as a top 5 rb.

Again, same as Dobbins if you're buying you didn't take a hit on the lost years. Barkley and CMC were getting moved for pennies on the dollar last summer and even prior to the CMC trade to SF.

The issue is while you can argue that these guys will return to form, the problem is you have to wait 1-2 years losing most or all of that time in there prime which means that they will likely never recoup the ability to ascend to elite value again if the injury happens any time after the rookie yea due to age, uncertainty, and likely added competition.

To preface this, I haven't done a deep dive and this is a strict observations. But, do players who specifically suffer ACL injuries not come back and perform at high levels anymore? I'm sure there are some I'm not thinking of, but Godwin, Dobbins, Barkley, Dalvin Cook, AP, JJ Watt of the top of my head have come back and performed at a top level. It seems like it just isn't a big issue anymore. KiJana Carter, Cadillac Williams, Willis McGahee was a long time ago.

[mild]

To preface this, I haven't done a deep dive and this is a strict observations. But, do players who specifically suffer ACL injuries not come back and perform at high levels anymore? I'm sure there are some I'm not thinking of, but Godwin, Dobbins, Barkley, Dalvin Cook, AP, JJ Watt of the top of my head have come back and performed at a top level. It seems like it just isn't a big issue anymore. KiJana Carter, Cadillac Williams, Willis McGahee was a long time ago.

The basic answer is "it depends on what kind of tear it was". The Dobbins and Barkley ACL injuries also involved miniscus damage + additional ligaments, and it seems like that particular version of the injury sets the player up for a more lengthy recovery.

You say Barkley "came back just fine" but in reality he was a shell of himself in year 1 of the return last year. People were calling him washed, you can go back and check his thread from that time. And Dobbins flashed this season, but it was only at the end of the year, AFTER an additional cleanup surgery... ie. nearly 1.4 years after initial injury. By all accounts Dobbins version of it was the absolute worst - tearing his ACL, LCL, meniscus, AND Hamstring. (Wtf!)

JJ Watt, different position, throw that out. Ditto Godwin. No position requires short range burst, change of direction, and power quite like RB. Include AP by all means, just know that his return is the outlier of all outliers, and we've never seen anything like it - since, nor again.

Of the current young guys:
Breece - "ACL tear, meniscus damage"
Javonte - "ACL, LCL, posterolateral corner (PCL)" - "a more severe injury, comparable to Dobbins"

For a guy that was already not the fastest, if you're buying one of them... buy Breece.

[stpilots98]

To preface this, I haven't done a deep dive and this is a strict observations. But, do players who specifically suffer ACL injuries not come back and perform at high levels anymore? I'm sure there are some I'm not thinking of, but Godwin, Dobbins, Barkley, Dalvin Cook, AP, JJ Watt of the top of my head have come back and performed at a top level. It seems like it just isn't a big issue anymore. KiJana Carter, Cadillac Williams, Willis McGahee was a long time ago.

The basic answer is "it depends on what kind of tear it was". The Dobbins and Barkley ACL injuries also involved miniscus damage + additional ligaments, and it seems like that particular version of the injury sets the player up for a more lengthy recovery.

You say Barkley "came back just fine" but in reality he was a shell of himself in year 1 of the return last year. People were calling him washed, you can go back and check his thread from that time. And Dobbins flashed this season, but it was only at the end of the year, AFTER an additional cleanup surgery... ie. nearly 1.4 years after initial injury. By all accounts Dobbins version of it was the absolute worst - tearing his ACL, LCL, meniscus, AND Hamstring. (Wtf!)

JJ Watt, different position, throw that out. Ditto Godwin. No position requires short range burst, change of direction, and power quite like RB. Include AP by all means, just know that his return is the outlier of all outliers, and we've never seen anything like it - since, nor again.

Of the current young guys:
Breece - "ACL tear, meniscus damage"
Javonte - "ACL, LCL, posterolateral corner (PCL)" - "a more severe injury, comparable to Dobbins"

For a guy that was already not the fastest, if you're buying one of them... buy Breece.

I'm a huge Giants fan so I watch every one of their games. Barkley was starting to dominate right when his season was derailed by a fluke high ankle sprain stepping on a guys foot walking back to the huddle against Dallas. The week before that he single handedly won the game against the Saints. That is really what his issue was. The narrative that he was washed came from people who didn't follow closely what had happened.

[abloom]

I'll buy rbs right before regular season starts. Specifically I'll go after rbs with acl injuries after they have already missed 1+ seasons. ACL injuries for rbs are 2 year recoveries.

Agree it usually takes until the 2nd year, but you're risk missing out on the cost advantage

I think the discount is usually still there..it may not be rock bottom prices, but when it comes to rbs I'm happy to pay up a tiny bit above rock bottom to ensure a healthy back week 1.

[halfbaked88]

Breece seems to be an outlier in fantasy value. He hasn't lost ANY value post ACL tear. I suspected a similar value dip to other ACL tear RBs and slow climb back as the regular season gets closer, but for the dynasty community to not even flinch at an RB tearing an ACL I did not see that coming.

That probably has a lot to do with the overall RB landscape. Many of the big household names at RB getting old (D Henry, D Cook, A Jones, Kamara, Mixon, etc) and the big free agent/rookie class it's creating a lot of uncertainty and a player vacuum need that just yoinks new fresh blood RBs into the Elite Tier when they really haven't put in the work to really *solidify* their spots there. I honestly thought maybe Etienne would be valued higher than Breece this off-season just by being healthy and TLaw ascending. But then again Etienne has already had his tomato can dented by injury and lost on sticker price. Every RB has blemishes going into 23' so there was almost no where for Breece's value to fall.

He's probably deserving RB1 by default... but isn't that saying something? If an RB coming off ACL injury with limited sample size is the dynasty RB1 that just says to me the RB position in general must be down and down bad. It's too eager.

I remember Swift, Najee, Javonte being in the Top 4 RBs in dynasty decisively just a short while ago. As mild said, people were pounding the table saying Saquon is dead. Breece isn't "safe" by any means. A lot can change in a year.

The RB position is finicky. Easy come, easy go. I'd be very careful spending up on any young RB being inflated by youth and upside. I'd much rather move that value into a young WR+an aging vet RB rental, or move up for a QB.