"It's always been in the best interests of Fantasy owners to draft as many running backs as possible. Now it's a necessity.
The position continues to be minimized and compartmentalized. As it stands now, only nine teams appear to be ready to lean on one back for most of their rushing work. Most others will use two in some capacity that will limit both statistically but help the team win, which is all they care about. That's too bad because it means these tandem situations will still wreak havoc on Fantasy owners: Last year there were only 32 instances where running backs on the same team in the same game each had double-digit Fantasy points. Only one team, the Saints, accomplished the feat more than three times.
Tandems are one issue, injuries are another. Three Fantasy running backs with first-round pedigrees tore their ACLs (two of them late in the year, jeopardizing their chances to start 2012 on time). A handful of other relevant backs were sidelined too.
And with tandems and injuries becoming factors, playing time and stats obviously become impacted. Only two running backs topped 300 carries in 2011, a dozen had 250-plus carries and 19 had 200-plus carries. That's it. And of the 34 running backs that had at least 100 Fantasy points in standard formats, a dozen played 16 games. Fifteen played in 14 or 15 games (which we as Fantasy owners can settle for). Seven, or roughly one fifth of the rushers we're talking about, played in 13 or fewer. Remember, these are the backs that actually did something! We're not talking about guys we lost for much of the year like Jamaal Charles and Jahvid Best.
What's more, passing numbers are up. The league set a season-high for passing yards with 117,601 and a second-best mark in touchdowns thrown with 745. Rushing attempts were up from the previous year by 51 carries, making the 13,971 attempts that running backs had in 2011 the second fewest since 2004. The 400 rushing touchdowns scored is a nice number, but it's flawed. Quarterbacks totaled 67 rushing touchdowns and receivers and tight ends ran for eight. So 325 touchdowns, or roughly 10 per team, were scored by running backs. "
