You’ve got the No. 1 pick of the draft. You’ve decided you want to take a running back. Now, who are you going to select? It’s pretty wide open at the top of draft boards this year.
We can look at the entries of 192 people in the Fantasy Index Open, but it doesn’t create much clarity. In that competition, there’s essentially no difference between the top 3 – Adrian Peterson, Eddie Lacy and Jamaal Charles. LeVeon Bell isn’t far back, and some would probably rank him higher in a traditional draft (in the Open, you must take zeros for those first two weeks, when Bell is sitting out).
In the poll, Peterson finished in the No. 1 spot overall and was first on 71 of the 192 ballots (37 percent). Charles and Lacy finished with 40 and 34 first-place votes. Lacy finished higher overall, because fewer were willing to move him down on their boards.
Bell collected 22 first-place votes, while C.J. Anderson got 10. Not much interest (for the No. 1 spot) in Marshawn Lynch (6 votes), DeMarco Murray (4), Jeremy Hill (2), LeSean McCoy (1) or Matt Forte (1).
Ameer Abdullah showed up on only 30 of the 192 entries. These votes, recall, were due before those first preseason games. Had everyone had access to that 47-yard run against the Jets, Abdullah probably would have shown up on 90-plus percent of entries. Two other rookies, T.J. Yeldon and Todd Gurley, finished right behind Abdullah in the voting. They appeared on 33 and 25 entries.
The top rookie in the voting was Melvin Gordon, who finished up at 11th. After a lackluster preseason debut, he might finish 5-10 spots lower if we allowed folks to change their votes.
In this contest, participants were asked to rank their top 20 at each position. Picks will be scored in January using a complex scoring matrix. Basically, the higher you rank a player, the more he counts towards your score.
The winner of this competition takes home a deluxe trophy from Affordable Trophies. In addition, the winner and the runner-up win berths into the Experts Poll in next year’s magazine.
Anyway, here are the running backs, with percentage of possible points. If a player ranked first on every ballot, he would be graded at 100 percent. If he ranked 10th on every ballot, he would show at 50 percent. If he was 20th on every ballot, that would be 5 percent.
| FANTASY INDEX OPEN (running backs) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Tm | Player | Pct |
| MIN | Adrian Peterson | 91.1% |
| GB | Eddie Lacy | 89.6% |
| KC | Jamaal Charles | 89.0% |
| PIT | LeVeon Bell | 81.3% |
| SEA | Marshawn Lynch | 77.5% |
| DEN | C.J. Anderson | 74.2% |
| PHI | DeMarco Murray | 66.0% |
| CIN | Jeremy Hill | 62.7% |
| BUF | LeSean McCoy | 58.3% |
| CHI | Matt Forte | 54.1% |
| SD | Melvin Gordon | 40.2% |
| MIA | Lamar Miller | 35.0% |
| BAL | Justin Forsett | 34.1% |
| NO | Mark Ingram | 29.7% |
| WAS | Alfred Morris | 28.4% |
| DAL | Joseph Randle | 23.6% |
| IND | Frank Gore | 21.2% |
| OAK | Latavius Murray | 16.6% |
| CAR | Jonathan Stewart | 11.0% |
| SF | Carlos Hyde | 10.7% |
| ARI | Andre Ellington | 7.1% |
| NO | C.J. Spiller | 6.0% |
| TB | Doug Martin | 5.9% |
| DET | Joique Bell | 5.3% |
| NYJ | Chris Ivory | 4.6% |
| HOU | Arian Foster | 4.6% |
| NE | LeGarrette Blount | 4.5% |
| DET | Ameer Abdullah | 3.9% |
| JAC | T.J. Yeldon | 2.9% |
| STL | Todd Gurley | 2.5% |
| ATL | Devonta Freeman | 1.8% |
| CIN | Giovani Bernard | 0.9% |
| CLE | Isaiah Crowell | 0.9% |
| HOU | Alfred Blue | 0.9% |
| NYG | Shane Vereen | 0.7% |
| STL | Tre Mason | 0.5% |
| NYG | Rashad Jennings | 0.4% |
| ATL | Tevin Coleman | 0.3% |
| NYG | Andre Williams | 0.3% |
| SF | Reggie Bush | 0.3% |
| TEN | Bishop Sankey | 0.3% |
| NYJ | Stevan Ridley | 0.3% |
| KC | Knile Davis | 0.3% |
| NE | James White | 0.2% |
| CLE | Duke Johnson | 0.1% |
| DAL | Darren McFadden | 0.1% |
| NE | Jonas Gray | 0.1% |
| TB | Charles Sims | 0.1% |
—Ian Allan