Dynasty Mythbusters: Eddie Lacy
With week three behind us, it’s hard to believe that almost a fourth of the fantasy football regular season has already come and gone. At this point some trends are already developing, both positive and negative. Some of them are expected, while others are quite surprising. Of course, the tricky part is figuring out if those trends will continue – that is where I come in. For those of you unfamiliar with the Dynasty Mythbusters series, the goal of the article is to analyze certain trends, potential breakouts or just downright bad play in an attempt to predict what we can expect in the future.
Am I always right? Definitely not. But I did suggest that you sell, sell, sell on Trent Richardson very early in the season last year (before it was a trendy thing to say) and to ignore the week one “breakouts” of Jerome Simpson and Leonard Hankerson just to name a few.
The fantasy community as a whole tends to have a very strong tendency to overreact to small sample sizes – this is especially true when it comes to early season production. After all, it is only natural after months and months of buildup, thinking your team is great, to get disappointed when your stud disappoints. Don’t go trading them for pennies on the dollar. They will be back. It works in the opposite direction as well. We all like the feeling of grabbing that virtual unknown and watching them turn into the next Jimmy Graham. The problem is the vast majority of the time they don’t pan out and trading your first round pick or an every week starter away for him would be a major mistake.
Through this series, I’ll do my best to focus on guys who are likely to be talked up as potential waiver additions or who are end of the bench guys on most rosters who you might be able to snag with a reasonable trade offer. After all, it is a little late for me to be telling you to go after Bernard Pierce or Lorenzo Taliaferro since Ray Rice is gone.
This week I’m going to take a little departure from the norm and instead dive into the disappointing side of things with a look at Green Bay running back Eddie Lacy.
Eddie Lacy, RB GB
Season totals: 36 carries for 113 yards and 0 touchdowns. Six receptions for 38 yards
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Before we move forward with Lacy, let’s back things up a little bit. Heading into the draft, Lacy was one of the lightning rods. It was only natural to compare Lacy to the other recently Alabama running backs like Trent Richardson and Mark Ingram. At the time, Ingram was thought of as a bust and Richardson was being hailed by some as the best running back since Adrian Peterson (I’m not kidding. I remember seeing that comment several times from multiple people). The general perception of Lacy was that he wasn’t as fast and agile as Ingram and wasn’t as powerful as Richardson, but he might have the best vision of the group and was more than good enough in the other departments to be a productive back on the right team. If you actually watch what they did in college, it is very tough to say which of the three was the best, especially given the massive advantage they had running behind Alabama’s nearly NFL level offensive line.
Fast forward a little bit to the potentially chronic toe injury and his drafting by the Green Bay Packers. All of the talk heading into the draft was about an operation Lacy may or may not have had and what some doctors might or might not have said about it. It was all very confusing, but he ended up going to the Packers in the second round as the fourth running back off the board. People were extremely excited for about 24 hours until the Packers also spent their fourth round pick on Johnathan Franklin. The fear of a committee on a pass first team combined with potential injury drove down Lacy’s stock in fantasy leagues quite a bit, which made his rookie season a very nice surprise.
Looking back at Lacy’s rookie year, he piled up 1,178 yards on 284 attempts (4.15 yards per carry) and 11 touchdowns over 15 games. He also had 35 receptions for another 257 yards. Overall, he ended up winning rookie of the year, carrying the Packers’ offense for a large chunk of the season while their all-pro quarterback was out with an injury. While it wasn’t quite Eric Dickerson’s rookie season, it did top Richardson’s rookie campaign. When you toss in Franklin’s sudden and unfortunate retirement and the Packers talking up getting Lacy more involved in the passing game, you can see why the expectations for Lacy went through the roof. In fact, just prior to the season he was in most people’s top five dynasty running back rankings and was being drafted in the late first round or very early second round of most startups.
Since that time, Lacy hasn’t even come close to living up to expectations. In fact, he would be in the running for the most disappointing season through the first three weeks. His average stat line per game for the season has been 12 carries for 37.7 yards, two catches for 12.7 yards and no scores. You can toss in a lost fumble for good measure as well. If you’re playing in a standard PPR league, that’s seven points a week if you don’t lose points for a fumble.
Is this another Trent Richardson or Doug Martin situation where a good rookie season is followed by disappointment or will Lacy be able to turn it around?
The Good: The best news for Lacy might be the schedule he has had over the first three weeks of the season. He went up against Seattle, the New York Jets and Detroit. Going back to last year, that’s the seventh, third, and sixth best run defenses in the league in terms of yards per game. This season they are fifth, first and second respectively – that’s going to be tough sledding for anyone as they are all allowing about two yards per carry this season.
Continuing in the “it isn’t his fault” category, let’s examine the offensive line. Heading into the season, there was an awful lot of optimism about the Packers’ offensive line. As someone who lives right on the Wisconsin border, I can say for a fact people were fired up about it from the Head Coach right down to the everyday fan. In fact, Mike McCarthy went as far as to say it might be the best offensive line he’s ever coached in Green Bay. Then the injuries struck. The Packers lost their starting center prior to the season beginning and were forced to replace him with a rookie. They also had their starting right tackle and their top backup linemen go down, forcing their third string tackle into a starting role for a limited period. Can that be entirely to blame? Probably not since it is still probably a better line than the one he ran behind last year, but it is something to consider.
You can also toss in the struggles of the offense as a whole as a potential reason to think it isn’t Lacy’s fault. The 1-2 Packers should maybe be 0-3 after getting behind the Jets really early and by a significant amount in their week two game. The Packers have made a habit of giving opponents a head start this season and needing to play from behind. This has pushed the game plan away from the running game and resulted in the limited usage for Lacy. If the Packers can ever build a lead like they are supposed to do, Lacy will be much more involved.
The Bad: When your first few weeks are going this poorly, there are a lot of bad things. Let’s start by looking at the production of the other running backs on the team like James Starks. Starks didn’t get a touch during week two, but between week one and week three, he has had 15 carries. For reference, that’s a 60/40 split in Lacy’s favor. The concerning part is Starks has averaged 5.0 yards per carry while Lacy is only at 3.1 yards per tote. It isn’t like Starks has one long run, either. He’s just getting positive yardage with the majority of his touches, which is something Lacy isn’t doing. How is Starks able to do that behind the same line and against the same defenses if Lacy can’t? Yes, I know it is a very small sample size, but it is still a cause for concern with the “it isn’t his fault” arguments.
Something I came across by accident was Lacy’s production with and without Aaron Rodgers. Most people would expect having an all-pro quarterback would help the running game, but that wasn’t the case last year. Rodgers and Lacy started and finished seven games together last season while Lacy started and finished eight games without Rodgers. Look at the results. All numbers are on a per game basis:
| Carries | Rushing yards | Touchdowns | Receptions | Yards per carry | |
| With Rodgers | 22 | 83.67 | 0.667 | 2.333 | 3.80 |
| Without | 18.875 | 83.25 | 0.875 | 2.625 | 4.41 |
It seems counter-intuitive, but Lacy was actually slightly worse with Rodgers on the field in pretty much every way.
Another strike against Lacy that needs to be considered is durability. He had the toe issues and surgery in college as well as some ankle issues. The much larger concern than anything with his foot is the concussion history. Lacy suffered his first documented concussion week two of the 2013 season and has already had a second one during week one of the 2014 season. For a physical, punishing runner like Lacy who likes to initiate contact, you need to be worried about a pair of concussions in his first 17 pro games. With the max for most NFL players seeming to be around four concussions (give or take one), he might not last as long as we would expect for a 24-year old running back.
The other big concern for Lacy comes down to touchdowns. With Aaron Rodgers throwing in the red zone or running it in himself (he has 18 rushing touchdowns over 5.5 seasons as a starter), how much is left for the running backs? Then when you add in perennial vulture John Kuhn (who already has one score on the year) and the potential of James Starks getting in from time-to-time, there might not be a whole lot left for Lacy at the goal line.
The Ugly Truth: If you’re a Lacy owner and you’re not a little concerned about what has happened over the first few weeks, you need to be. It is a much more complex issue than “he’s played three of the top run defenses in the league.” Yes, he has played three of the best run defenses in the league, but he’s also been out played by his backup who was playing against the same defenses and his usage has been a lot less than hoped. In fact, Lacy has only had 61% of the carries for the Packers and that is after you remove the carries recorded by Rodgers.
Do I think Lacy’s production and usage will improve against weaker defenses? Yes, I do. However, it isn’t like Green Bay plays a bunch of cupcakes from here out. Minnesota’s run defense is much better than last year and the Packers play solid rush defenses like Buffalo, Philly, New England and Detroit once more. They also have games against high powered offenses like the Saints, Falcons, Bears and others where they could be behind early if the first three weeks are any indication. So, I think things will get better, but the schedule isn’t going to magically fix everything.
It is important to realize Lacy did underperform or completely vanish from some games in 2013 as well. He was at or under 3.25 yards per carry in half of his games in 2013 – that’s definitely volume rusher category. If he isn’t getting 20+ touches a game, there is a chance he’s going to disappoint fantasy owners, especially if he isn’t getting the goal line work and the Packers are playing from behind. Even with all of that in 2013, he still finished as a top ten running back in PPR leagues. He was just extremely inconsistent, killing owners one week with five points before getting 25 the next.
Overall, I think what we might be seeing is Lacy played at the top of his game in 2013 and was a little over hyped as a result. While his 2014 season is a definite underperformance thus far, I think the true Eddie Lacy is somewhere in the middle of his 2013 season and his 2014 season. He might not be quite as good as he was through much of 2013, but he definitely isn’t as bad as he has been for 2014. I think he is a very inconsistent high end RB2 or low end RB1. I expect him to get back to around 100 total yards with 2-3 catches and about a 50/50 shot at a touchdown per game with the occasional blow up as well as the occasional egg like we’ve seen the first few weeks.
Long term, I’m also concerned about his health. The concussions are already piling up and with his style I doubt they are the last ones. For that reason, when it comes to trade or draft value, I’m not viewing him as a 24-year old running back. I’m looking at him as being a few years older than he really is. I’ll be very surprised if he’s still playing in the NFL in four years.
Final Verdict: It will get better than it has been, but I don’t think he is as good as he played in 2013. I think he’s more of a back end RB1 or top end RB2 than a late round one startup pick. If you can still get top value for him (perhaps this week after playing the Bears), I would consider moving him.
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- Final 2021 Pre-Draft Rookie Mock: Round Three - April 28, 2021
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- Final 2021 Pre-Draft Rookie Mock: Round One - April 25, 2021
