What’s Left in the Tank for Beast Mode?

Zachary Wilkens Posted On April 4, 2018

When I update my DLF rankings, I always look around to find noticeable outliers who might turn into good players to write about. This time around, I immediately noticed that I had Marshawn Lynch in my top 100 and there was a massive chasm between my ranking and the next highest ranking of Lynch by Kyle Holden at 156th overall.

It’s not hard to understand why Lynch is so poorly looked at. We as a dynasty community hate old players. Tom Brady and Larry Fitzgerald were elite finishers at their positions last year and can’t crack most rankers’ top 100. Most of all though, the dynasty community hates old running backs. Marshawn Lynch managed an RB20 finish and had more points per game than Tevin Coleman, Giovani Bernard, Isaiah Crowell, Jerick McKinnon and also the lone even more ancient RB, Frank Gore, for what that is worth.

As tends to be the case with many of the players I find appealing, Marshawn was a tale of two halves in 2017. Marshawn had a decent Raiders debut with a 4.2 yards per carry and 90 yards in week one. He scored a touchdown the following week but never topped 63 yards from scrimmage in weeks two through seven. Notably, on Thursday Night Football in week seven, Marshawn had just two touches. Then in an on-field dispute that didn’t even involve him, Lynch ran onto the field and touched an official.

This led to an instant ejection and ultimately resulted in his suspension for the following week as well. This was rock bottom for Marshawn believers. In weeks one through six, Marshawn was RB34 in total points scored with just a 3.7 YPC. After missing almost an entire two games, he was essentially off the dynasty radar completely.

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Taking a look at Marshawn’s ADP, he announced his return at the beginning of April 2017. If I recall correctly, this happened while DLF mocks were ongoing. Thus I’ll start with May ADP where Marshawn sat at RB38. In September as the season was about to start and everyone knew for sure that Marshawn really was back, his value peaked. He was comfortably inside the top 100 at RB28. His ejection and suspension came in October.

In November mocks, the giant drop in value is shown as Lynch sat at RB66, just outside the top 200 overall. That’s a pretty shocking drop but it was totally justifiable given the production at the time and the incident. The issue I take is with the fact that Marshawn’s value never recovered. In March ADP he sat at 192 which was RB60 off the board. For a savvy owner, this is potentially an absurd value because Marshawn quietly turned his season around in a big way and even at 32 years old could be a potential championship piece for a contending owner.

screen shot 2018 04 04 at 15.54.17

Marshawn Lynch’s ADP chart via his DLF player page.

Before diving into the actual turnaround, I want to take a look at why that may have happened. I think we take for granted just how hard it must be to take a year off and then return. It’s tough to recover from a season-ending injury but those players at least have the mindset of returning from day one and put in the high level of work required to do so. To go from the mindset of a retired player to one back into the incredibly demanding grind can’t be easy. I believe it took time for Marshawn to adapt.

One should also consider this four-week stretch for Marshawn: 1. Two carries and an ejection. 2. Sat out due to suspension. 3. Returned for week nine with two touchdowns. 4. The Raiders bye week. That is a four-week stretch where Lynch essentially played just one game. That had to have been a benefit to his body and it really seemed like this was the point where he fully adjusted back to the NFL.

The numbers certainly back it up. Marshawn was the RB12 over his final eight games after the suspension. It wasn’t just volume based either. He had a very nice 4.6 YPC over those final eight. That was even with a 26 carry, 2.6 YPC performance against Denver. He had five games of 90 or more yards in the second half after just one such game in the first half of the season. He was truly a different player and the dynasty community did not take notice at all. Taking those second half stats, here’s what they would look like over a full 16 game pace – 302 touches, 32 receptions, 1,476 yards from scrimmage and ten touchdowns. That is pretty eye-popping. I don’t care how many years the guy has left, that is a top 100 dynasty player to me.

One point of worry for some is the signing of Doug Martin. I could not be less concerned about Doug Martin. Sure Martin has had a couple stud seasons, but more recently he has been one of the worst running backs that have seen regular action on the field. That is no exaggeration. Pro Football Focus graded Martin 53rd out of 58 qualified RBs last year. Between 2016-17, 39 RBs had at least 200 carries. Doug Martin ranked last in YPC by an absurd 0.66!!! 0.66 was the gap between the 19th and 38th ranked RBs – to give you an idea of how far below the rest of his peers Doug Martin was. I suspect Gruden will give Doug Martin a handful of touches early on but it will fail and we’ll go back to the status quo of Marshawn Lynch with Jalen Richard as the complementary back.

Since I mentioned PFF, I should mention they are big supporters of Marshawn Lynch. He’s been a tackle-breaking machine in the NFL, and I absolutely love this stat by them.

Pending a physical, Marshawn Lynch will join the Raiders.

Between 2013-2016, he broke more tackles than any RB… and he didn't play in '16 pic.twitter.com/ZO3DowgiD8

— PFF (@PFF) April 26, 2017

I’m also a big fan of these stats tweeted out by PFF which all but confirm Marshawn was still the player he always was.

What does it mean for the Raiders in bringing back Michael Crabtree and Marshawn Lynch? ⬇️https://t.co/DHK7s1DJFJ pic.twitter.com/vRs1NQFaaP

— PFF (@PFF) March 4, 2018

PFF has one last bit of goodness to dish out on Marshawn, and perhaps the one above all that guarantees Lynch will stay on the field a majority of the time. Among qualified RBs, he ranked third in pass blocking grade. A running back who can protect his quarterback will be on the field if he has any actual talent, it’s as simple as that.

I wanted to touch on the coaching change a bit. Jon Gruden is the man in charge and he brought in Greg Olson as the offensive coordinator. To put it nicely, Olson has a very underwhelming resume as OC. The most positive thing about him is that he was QB coach for the Rams last year when Jared Goff broke out. Before that, he was the OC for awful Jaguars teams and saw Blake Bortles regress in year three. He was the OC for Derek Carr’s rookie season which was fine but not great. His teams in recent years have regularly ranked near the bottom of the league in rushing attempts. Can I really blame him when he had a washed up Darren McFadden plus an inexperienced unproven (at the time, just a sixth-round pick) Latavius Murray? T.J. Yeldon?

I believe that given the right personnel, Olson and Gruden will run the ball a lot and Marshawn is the guy for that. Go back far enough and you’ll find that Olson was OC for two of Steven Jackson’s prime years and sure enough Jackson was a total workhorse. Jackson finished second in touches and first in yards from scrimmage with Olson in 2006. It’s in the distant past, but at least it’s there.

Back to the point that made me write this article. I have Marshawn Lynch in my top 100. Is he really worth that? I will acknowledge up front I don’t expect him to continue playing after 2018 when his contract expires and the Raiders leave his home of Oakland. The more I play dynasty, the less I worry about the long-term because there is just so much we can’t foresee. Injuries, off-field concerns, surprise early retirements (such as Lynch!) and the general ebb and flow of offenses and player production. I’m pretty confident in Marshawn as a top 20 back in 2018 with top 12 potential.

Two of the more notable runners I have below Lynch are Lamar Miller and Isaiah Crowell. Miller is a capable back who likely has a few solid years left but I’m a bit down on him and in particular, I think D’Onta Foreman (pending full return from Achilles injury) is superior and could easily take that job away at some point in 2018. For Crowell, I hate the landing spot and I saw a player who struggled with consistency behind Cleveland’s underrated line. Behind the Jets line? Yikes. Give me a single year of Lynch’s production all day.

I have Marshawn ahead of WRs like Corey Coleman and Martavis Bryant. That may be dynasty blasphemy to some. Both are fairly young players who had big promise but have failed to demonstrate they really have top-tier production potential and are now WR3s on their teams. Once again, give me one year of a much higher floor and ceiling as well. Those are just a few examples and my justification for what is such an absurd outlier in rankings.

Obviously, Marshawn has no place on a rebuilding team. Even acquiring him to sell at a profit later is always a risky maneuver that I wouldn’t really advise. For a championship contender? Even if you already have two or three elite RBs in place, Marshawn is so cheap that he’s worth adding as injury insurance. I may have him ranked very aggressively but based on the rankings and ADP no one has to pay close to that price. Even a middle of the pack team hoping to make magic happen should be buying.

Some examples of recent trades in the DLF Trade Finder include: 1. Kenyan Drake for Marshawn and a late first. 2. Tyler Lockett for Marshawn Lynch. 3. 3.01. 3.01 and 5.07 for Marshawn, Jordy and 5.11. I would be very happy with any of these prices. People hate old RBs and the ADP data shows once an old player is left for dead, his value won’t come back. Go take advantage of that!

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