The Clyde Edwards-Helaire rocket ship has gone screaming into the first round. He’s primed to have a league-winning impact as a rookie, even at those lofty prices, but should you also be drafting his doppelgangers at the end of your fantasy football drafts?
Once Damien Williams opted out of the 2020 season, the last impediment disappeared to a monster rookie campaign from Edwards-Helaire. Drafters responded.
He blasted by last year’s RB2 (Aaron Jones) and RB4 (Austin Ekeler), and just overtook the RB5 (Derrick Henry). These values might seem insane for a rookie, but the last two times a rookie runner was drafted in Round 1, we got Ezekiel Elliott’s 327-point season and Saquon Barkley’s 386-point season. As a result, the numbers for first-round rookies destroy those of their veteran counterparts.
Other than the two mega-stars, rookie RBs don’t outperform until we get into the late-middle rounds. We’ve benefited in a big way from this dynamic over the last two seasons, but today’s investigation looks at Edwards-Helaire and his intriguing knockoffs.
Can CEH match the numbers from Elliott and Barkley? Almost certainly not. After all, we wouldn’t expect Elliott or Barkley to match those numbers in any given year.
Edwards-Helaire is most often comped to Brian Westbrook, a back who went over 300 points twice and did so back-to-back in his fifth and sixth NFL seasons. LeSean McCoy is another similar Andy Reid back who went over 300 points in Year 3 and Year 5. More is expected of Edwards-Helaire and more quickly. But he also doesn’t need to score 300-plus points to return value. Last year’s RB7 scored 261 points, and the sixth RB drafted should return an average of 242 points.
After you’ve drafted him No. 7 overall, make sure you add these two similar players in the late rounds.
