When to Sell Your Dynasty Running Backs

Noah Ballweg Posted On March 1, 2020

You’ve often heard it said in sports that teams need only to win a certain amount of games to clinch a playoff spot. The magic number. The number of wins, and losses that a team can experience before the number reaches zero and the team, of course, clinches the playoffs.

The same can be said of your dynasty assets. While certainly wins and losses cannot determine the magic number for you to see pieces of your team, there is one measurement that is quite accurate. Time.

Time can be measured in a handful of ways. The time you have waited in a draft room as the team ahead of you auto-drafts for the sixth round in a row. The time winding down on the clock as the game-winning field goal is kicked. And in our case, time is measured in years of age for current and past NFL running backs. Knowing the correct amount of measured “time” allows you to truly know when to sell for the correct price.

My magic number is almost every dynasty league is 26. I’m sure you’ve heard it said that around 26 years of age an NFL running back begins to lose his step, making it concerning for his future output and future contracts. Despite this being common knowledge, a few years back I looked at my rosters to find that nearly half of my dynasty rosters consisted of running backs over the age of 26. The result? Well, I can tell you my 2016 overall dynasty record was nothing to be proud of.

I started doing some research over that off-season and realized that my fan-boy nature over running backs I loved via the NFL Draft had ended up coming back to bite me when I missed their sell window. So here is me telling you. Begging of you. Don’t wait – move your assets while you can and change your approach to buying and selling.

In 2019 alone, only six percent of running backs in the top 15 were 26 years or older. The one name? Mark Ingram who resurged in 2019 thanks to a perfect scheme with a quarterback who draws the run defense to himself half the time.

Surely, 2018 must have been different. Think again. Only 16% of the top 25 running backs were 26 years or older.

In doing some research via the Yearly Data App on our DLF’s Tools page, I totaled every single running back season dating back to 2011 and found that only 20% of the entire top 25 seasonal performances over the last nine years were by running backs over the age of 25. Digging deeper, I recognized a trend that must be obvious to all dynasty players, and that is: players are not playing as long in the NFL, especially running backs. Jamaal Charles, Sean Alexander, and LaDainian Tomlinson had some incredible fantasy performances over the age of 26, but NFL backs are simply not playing dominantly for those long periods anymore.

Of course, there will be a handful of age defiant running backs that find a great situation and keep grinding out consistent fantasy numbers, but the goal is not to find one-hit wonders. The goal is to attain value, grow it and then sell it at its peak for the highest value possible. Case in point: David Johnson.

At his peak in August of 2017, you could have traded Johnson for an entire dynasty roster and someone would have taken the trade. With an ADP of 2.83, Johnson would turn 26 in 2017 and go on to play just one game before suffering a season-ending injury. He would end up being the RB31 in 2018 and is in danger of being cut in 2019.

Below you can see a few running backs who are approaching 26, or who have surpassed it and the trend for their current value:

Image from the Z-Score app at FF Statistics.

So what have I done to change this trend on my rosters? Well, it is simple really. Each off-season, I look over my rosters combined with DLF’s ADP data which shows each player’s age and current value. If a player is turning 26 over the off-season, I will not hesitate to trade them for face value on the spot, while I give a little more leeway for players who turn 26 during a season.

DLF’s Trade Analyzer makes this very easy for me now, as I can enter my aging running backs, and see what type of rookie value I can potentially get in return. An example:

Melvin Gordon could have a really big 2020 campaign. At least that is what all of my fellow league-mates believe. I know he is 26 years old, going on 27 and despite sitting half of 2019, I still don’t think he has many efficient years left in him.

According to the Trade Analyzer, I offer Gordon for say the 1.04 or 1.05 and I am happy for four to five more years of investment and growth rather than holding on to hope for one or two more.

This entire idea has changed the way I trade, changed the way I approach rookie drafts, and honestly folks, it is one of the biggest success stories of my fantasy career over the last several seasons. I have seen a dramatic turn in my results and the stockpile of rookie picks gives me a lot of draft capital to work with.

I generally would sway towards the zero-running back strategy in my early years and simply target the best available wide receiver. Now, I generally will use as many early picks on young running backs as I can, knowing that I can find receivers at the age of 27 to 28 who will be just as efficient as the 21-year-olds.

Stay trade-happy out there my friends, and I hope this strategy proves to be as useful to some of you as it has been for me.