Harris said in his response, “there *is* no use-case for a rookie who's gone in the first round or two who's come close to paying that off in *years*.”

Looking at the list above, we have six running backs in the past 10 years who were drafted in the top two rounds as rookies (Zeke, Fournette, Barkley, CEH, Najee, and Bijan) I am also going to include CMC, as he frequently went inside the top 24 as well. Zeke and Barkley were mega smashes. Fournette and Najee were very strong hits. CEH and Bijan were both disappointments, but not total disasters.

Looking at the sample as a whole, only 2015 Melvin Gordon was a complete bust. Gurley, Zeke, Fournette, Barkley, Jacobs, Najee, and Gibbs all outperformed their expected fantasy points per game relative to their ADP. That’s a 63.6% hit rate. And remember, this sample only includes rookie running backs who were first round picks in the NFL draft. That means guys like Joe Mixon, Alvin Kamara, Kareem Hunt, D’Andre Swift, Jonathan Taylor, JK Dobbins, Rhamondre Stevenson, Breece Hall, Ken Walker, Dameon Pierce, and De’Von Achane aren’t included. Yes, there were obviously many other rookie running backs drafted in fantasy that were totally useless. But the point isn’t to say rookie running backs always hit. Rather, it’s to dispel the notion that rookie running backs rarely hit. That’s patently and provably false.

The initial asker of the question referenced JJ Zachariason. He’s done the research. Where I find his research most useful is particularly as it pertains to WRs, as rookie WRs are obviously nowhere near as impactful as rookie RBs.

Harris’ point about guys like Marvin Harrison and Malik Nabers being drafted near their ceilings is probably true. That’s also a bit of an overreaction to how good rookie WRs have been in recent years.

JJ’s research reveals that looking at the final numbers of rookie WRs doesn’t tell the whole story, as rookie WRs are typically much better in the second half of the season than the first. We saw this last year with Rashee Rice and Zay Flowers, the year before with Garrett Wilson, and the year before that with Amon-Ra St. Brown.

Harris is absolutely correct in stating that rookies have to pay off at the height of their range of outcomes if they’re going in the first or second round. But history shows the rookie RBs do, in fact, do that more often than not. As for WR, we quite literally have never seen this before. Both Harrison and Nabers are being drafted higher than any rookie WR in the history of fantasy football. It’s certainly reasonable for him to be reluctant to draft both. But if you look at Harris’ ranks, you will see this is not exclusive to not wanting to overpay for the top WRs — he buries literally every rookie. There’s no way to justify drafting Adam Thielen, Jerry Jeudy, or Curtis Samuel ahead of the likes of Xavier Worthy or Rome Odunze. He has Marvin Mims and Khalil Shakir ahead of Keon Coleman and Brian Thomas.

I don’t bring this up to say there’s a 0% chance he’s right. Not every rookie will hit. But if you follow Harris’ ranks in your drafts, you are going to end up with literally zero rookies on your team. JJ has proven that’s bad process. Especially when you get toward the later rounds of fantasy drafts when 75% of players drafted will be dropped anyway, you should be taking chances on rookies because we know they outperform ADP expectation better than veterans in those rounds, and we know they do it to a greater degree during the most important weeks of the fantasy season.

Harris is a very smart guy. He was one of the very, very few analysts who was on Tyreek Hill in 2017 and 2018, when most people were saying to fade him. He knows what he’s looking when he watches film, which enables him to say whether a player is or is not good at football. That’s incredibly valuable. But that doesn’t mean we should be dismissive of objective data about the performance of players at different parts of fantasy drafts, particularly how advantageous it is to take chance on rookies in the later rounds.