The fantasy football season is drawing closer with each week, and while wives around the world are curbing their enthusiasm, fantasy football junkies could not be happier.  Everyone is building their cheat sheets and drawing up their lists of sleepers, so this is the perfect time to start to looking at player rankings.  Below are my top ten fantasy football running backs for the 2012 season:

1. LeSean McCoy, PHI – “Shady” McCoy left opposing defenders in the dark all year long.  He finished the season with a phenomenal 20 total touchdowns  (17 rushing and 3 receiving), the most by any other running back.  McCoy is deceptively quick between the tackles and can burn anyone in the open field.  McCoy has only missed two professional games in his career, and his durability, combined with his raw skills, makes him the number one guy on my list.

2. Arian Foster, HOU – Foster is by far the best down hill runner in the NFL.  He has scored a dominating 26 rushing touchdowns and 4 receiving touchdowns in his last 29 games.  He may not be the hands down first overall pick this summer, but Aaron Rodgers be dammed, Foster can easily be the number two overall selection.  Grab Foster second overall and take solace in the fact that you have one of the only workhorses left in the game.

3. Ray Rice, BAL – Rice is a do it all fantasy back.  He can run between the tackles, run outside the tackles, and catch the ball.   Rice is the ideal option in Point Per Reception (P.P.R.) leagues, because no back in the league has hands like the former Rutgers star.  In Rice’s last three seasons as the team’s starter, he has amazingly averaged just less than 2,000 yards from scrimmage (1,307 rushing and 654 receiving). Rice has an offense that is completely tailored around him, only increasing his fantasy value. He is the perfect running back to build a fantasy team around and is even falling out of the top-five in some drafts.  Do not let this dual-threat star pass you by, draft him with confidence in any draft format.

4. Maurice Jones-Drew, JAC – Jones-Drew remains the one bright spot in an otherwise cloudy Jacksonville offense.  He led the entire NFL with a jaw-dropping 1,606 rushing yards and was all the Jags’ had to lean on down the stretch last year.  Regardless, his timid 8 touchdowns tied him for 12^th in the NFL and can easily be attributed to the offense inability to put points on the scoreboard in 2011.  However, the Jaguars’ offense has worked hard this off-season and will be better in 2012, so MJD will get many more scoring opportunities down the stretch.  Fantasy owners should expect Jones-Drew to finish with around 1,500 rushing yards and between 8-11 touchdowns on the ground.

5. Chris Johnson, TEN – Johnson started embarrassingly slow last year, by recording only one 100-yard rushing game in his first eight contests.  However, he turned it around by averaging a respectable 85 yards per game over the rest of the year. “CJ2K” will have a bounce back season in 2012 and will finish back among the top in the league at his position.  He may not replicate the 2,006-yard performance he put up in the 2009 season, but he should easily eclipse 1,300 rushing yards.

6. Matt Forte, CHI – Forte is finally back in pads and ready to lead millions of fantasy teams.  He is a yardage beast for fantasy owners and has racked up 1,300 yards from scrimmage in each of his four NFL seasons.  He may lose some goal-line carries to the newly acquired Michael Bush, but expect Forte to still produce like a top-ten fantasy back.  Forte should still reach 1,300 all-purpose yards in 2012 and score between 8-10 touchdowns, regardless of the new competition in the backfield.

7. Darren McFadden, OAK – McFadden was having a monstrous season before going down with a Lisfranc fracture to his right foot in week 7.  “Run DMC” racked up 614 rushing yards and 154 receiving yards in essentially six and a half games.  He has been labeled as injury prone, but his injuries (ankle, toe, and foot) have mostly just been unlucky.  It is at least promising that it was not a knee injury, because those injuries tend to linger longer into a young, backs career.  McFadden can still be an elite option, but he has to be healthy to do it.  McFadden is falling to the mid-second round and his potential makes him a steal at that point; just make sure to add some extra depth to your running back stable in-case his injury problems return.

8. Michael Turner, ATL – Turner is being severely undervalued in drafts this summer.  He has scored an outstanding 50 touchdowns in his last 59 games and is one of the only backs in the NFL that both occupies the starting tailback position and gets all the goal-line carries. As far as his injury label, Turner has only missed four games in the four years he has been in Atlanta, and that came in a four-week stretch during his 2009 season.  The 30-year old also has fresh legs, as he started his NFL career as LaDainian Tomlinson’s backup in San Diego.   All Turner does it score touchdowns and punish defenses, a perfect fantasy football combination.  Turner is featured in a very high-scoring offense, so expect him to have another 1,200 yards and 10 touchdowns in 2012.

9. Ryan Mathews, SD – Mathew is drawing a tremendous amount of pre-season hype, as somehow the two-year pro with under 400 carries is becoming considered a top-five fantasy pick this summer.  He is a little too risky to be drafted that early and would be better off being picked in the mid-second round.  Mathews is still an extremely elusive runner and is great at getting to the outside, but fantasy drafts are about getting value out of your picks, just as much as it is about getting stars.  Mathews is still a number one back, just make sure not to reach to far for the unproven back.

10. Adrian Peterson, MIN – Peterson’s latest trip to the Physically Unable to Perform (P.U.P.) list has all but killed his first round fantasy value.  Even though he can come off the list at anytime between now and week 6, fantasy owners have been extremely leery about taking the four-time Pro Bowler.  However, Peterson is a fantasy monster in the waiting and the fact that he is completely falling out of the first and second round, could make him a fantasy steal at the end of the year.  Do not draft Peterson in the first round by any means, but do not hesitate to grab him in the middle of the second round.

Make sure to check back next week for my wide receiver rankings.

-Adam McGill

Will Arian Foster take the Rushing Title in 2012? Source: US-Presswire

While there will inevitably be someone who comes out of nowhere to put up some big numbers like Arian Foster has done, who really has a shot at taking home the title and being the “best running back” in 2012.  For purposes of discussion, the best running back will be defined as the most yards on the ground in a season (the same qualification for running backs to win the rushing title).

So, who will it be?  A rebounding Adrian Peterson?  A no longer disgruntled Chris Johnson?  How about Ben Tate rather than Foster?  Here are the top ten from last year:

1. Maurice Jones-Drew: 1,606 yards
2. Ray Rice: 1,364 yards
3. Michael Turner: 1,340 yards
4. LeSean McCoy: 1,309 yards
5. Arian Foster: 1,224 yards
6. Frank Gore: 1,211 yards
7. Marshawn Lynch: 1,204 yards
8. Willis McGahee: 1,199 yards
9. Steven Jackson: 1,145 yards
10. Ryan Matthews, 1,091 yards

Of the top ten from last year, five were in the top ten from 2010: Maurice Jones-Drew (5th), Ray Rice (10th), Michael Turner (3rd – talk about consistent!), Arian Foster (1st), and Steven Jackson (8th).  The players who didn’t repeat?  Adrian Peterson (6th), Jamaal Charles (2nd), Chris Johnson (4th), Rashard Mendenhall (7th), and Ahmad Bradshaw (9th).

Of the five who have repeated the past two years (some longer than that), I think it is safe to say that Ray Rice, Maurice Jones-Drew, Arian Foster, and Michael Turner will be back in the top ten for 2012.  As much as I like Steven Jackson (and I like him a lot!) I don’t see him replicating his success in 2012 with a revamped offense, new head coach, and some serious wear and tear on his body (the guy averaged 20 attempts per game the past three seasons and has had injury issues).

Look for San Fran's Frank Gore to be Limited by Defenses as they make the Niners pass to beat them. Source: Jason O. Watson-US PRESSWIRE

With the assumption that four of our top ten spots will be filled, who can we expect to join them?  From last year’s top ten, I find that the most probable returns for 2012 will be Ryan Matthews and LeSean McCoy.  McCoy has proven he will be a versatile threat on every down and he is featured in a lot of plays under Andy Reid.  Matthews will be forced into taking more handoffs with the departure of wide receiver Vincent Jackson to Tampa Bay and will carry a much bigger burden of the offense.  Matthews stepped it up last year by 21 yards per game and an increase of only two more attempts per game.  The guy is finally filling LaDainian Tomlinson’s shoes.

Right now, our list is sitting with six players on it.  All of whom have been in the top ten this past year.  Who gets the final four slots?  Who will round out the top ten in the competition for the rushing title?  For that, I turn my attention to the yards per attempt statistics for last year.  Of the running backs who are already in our six defined spots, none of them are in the top ten for yards per attempt (though the statistics do include quarterbacks Cam Newton and Tim Tebow).  Of the top ten in yards per attempt, two teams (Buffalo and Carolina) have two running backs in average yards per attempt.  C.J. Spiller and Fred Jackson represent Buffalo, and DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart represent Carolina – as does Cam Newton.

I expect that the loads on both sides will continue to be split amongst multiple players, though if Williams is injured again – as his history suggests he may be – I fully expect that Stewart could slip into the top ten to round out the bottom.  And with Cam Newton focusing more on passing rather than running, look for Stewart’s attempts per game to increase. Unfortunately for Fred Jackson and C.J. Spiller, I don’t expect either of them to outdistance the other in 2012.  Especially with Spiller expected to have a very good year.  Both players will be successful, of this I have no doubt, but neither will be able to set such a pace that the team abandons its two-headed monster of a backfield.

Right now, this is how our top ten looks (with no rankings applied)

• Maurice Jones-Drew
• Ray Rice
• Arian Foster
• Michael Turner
• LeSean McCoy
• Ryan Matthews
• Jonathan Stewart

Nothing like a knee injury to make you want to succeed next year. Source: Geoff Burke-US PRESSWIRE

I think it is about time we took a look at Adrian Peterson.  Adrian Peterson injured himself in the 12th game of the season last year and is still working on coming back full force.  But in 12 games, he put up 970 yards.  That’s 80.8 yards per game (good enough for 8th on the list of yards per game).  Will AP be back in time for the start of the season?  Maybe.  But he’ll be back at some point.  And when he returns, he’ll be hungry.  If the guy doesn’t put up at least 1,000 yards in 2012 I’ll be shocked.  Just over 1,000 yards should be enough to put him in the top ten anyway.

See the next page to see who rounds out our top ten and who will take the rushing title!

$26 dollars for two 100s level seats?  I couldn’t believe it.  I thought I had found the best deal in sports. But I was wrong.

The best deal in sports is had by NFL teams, not their fans.  It’s had by teams like the Jaguars, who’ve gotten an average of 1800 yards/year for the last three years by MJD and will have him under contract next year for 4.5 million not-so-big ones.  It’s had by teams like the Ravens and the Bears, who have been churning out offense and wins because of the legs of Ray Rice and Matt Forte, and now that those two are looking for new contracts, the Ravens and Bears are hiding behind the franchise tag.  Even teams like the Titans that have supposedly “grossly overpaid” their running backs are getting a decent return off their investment.

Ozzie Newsome explaining his deal-sharking ways to John Harbaugh. Source: Mitch Stringer-US PRESSWIRE

Let me run some numbers by you.  Do you know what the most expensive commodity in the world is?  It’s an NFL yard.  Two years ago, during the uncapped year, the Redskins spent $178.2 million for 5,374 yards of offense.  The Tampa Bay Bucs, the best value team in the NFL that year, spent $80.8 million for 5,362 yards of offense.  Now, I know the expenditure numbers refers to the money spent on all players, not just offensive players that see the field, and I also know that yards aren’t the ultimate measuring stick of an NFL team (for statistical purposes, probably points; in real life, probably wins/championships).  But all players contribute directly or indirectly to the amount of yards a team can accumulate, and even if you want to argue with me about specifics, the premise that NFL teams spend an inordinate amount of money on NFL yards still holds – the Bucs spent over $15,000/yd… and the Redskins? Over $30,000/yd.

For the average NFL team, about 1/3 of their yards come from the running game (117 yards) and 2/3 of them come from the passing game (230 yards).  Now, there are many players that have a role in the number of yards an offense gains.  The linemen, of course, have a huge influence on both running and passing yards.  The blocking tight end has a big influence on both, and blocking receivers have an influence on running yards while blocking running backs have an influence on passing yards.  For the most part, the other players that have an effect on passing yards and running yards balance out.  The main differences are at the skill positions – the QBs, the WRs, and the RBs.  Now, given that a team usually passes for about twice as much as they rush, a passing yard should be worth about twice as much, monetarily.  However, there are twice as many skill players directly involved in gaining a passing yard (the QB and the WR), while there’s only one skill player directly involved in gaining a rushing yard (QB hand offs are not a skill).  Thus, since the passing yards should be divided amongst two players, for the average NFL team, QBs, RBs, and WRs contribute about equally to the amount of yards their offense gains.

By this reasoning, shouldn’t NFL QBs, RBs, and WRs be paid about equally?  If not the average QB/RB/WR, how about the top QBs/RBs/WRs?  Does anyone think they are paid equally?  In case you do, I’ll save you the embarrassment of speaking up and saying so.  They don’t.

Let’s take a look see at the case of Peyton Manning.  Manning, coming off of a career year in 2010, signed an extension that made him the NFL’s highest paid player – an extension that paid him $23 million in 2011.  Manning’s trailing three year passing yards/season average was 4,401 before that extension.  The Colts chose to pay Manning about $5,200 per yard gained.  Now, let’s look at our boy MJD.  His trailing three year total yards/season average is 1,795.  Using his $4.5 million salary for the season, the Jaguars are paying him about $2,500 per yard gained.

* Note, I am using the salaries for the upcoming season as the comparison because those are the only salaries that are more or less guaranteed.  As we’ve seen with plenty of the “big”, back-loaded deals players have signed recently, it would be foolish to consider those last few years as income the player is guaranteed to get.

Peyton Manning: not a good deal. Source: Brian Spurlock-US PRESSWIRE

But you know what, MJD isn’t a perfect comparison obviously, since he thinks his contract is no longer fair.  Let’s take Arian Foster, as an example.  After this past season, Arian Foster inked an extension that would pay him a guaranteed $9 million next season.  Arian Foster’s trailing two year total yards/season average is 2,242 yards/season.  Thus, this extension that Foster signed this year is paying him about $4,000 per yard gained, which is an absolute steal in terms of production and potential for growth, considering the amount the Colts agreed to pay Manning.  Let’s look at another big money back.  After holding out last year, Titans RB Chris Johnson agreed to an extension that would pay him $8 million in 2011.  Using his three year trailing total yards/season average of 1869 yards/season, Johnson fought tooth and nail for an extension that paid him $4,292 per yard, almost $1000/yard cheaper than Manning.  Even after holding out, being overweight in camp, and having a season that was inarguably underwhelming, Johnson made $5,460 per yard, only slightly more than Peyton did – and it was his worst season ever.

Some people might argue that QBs are usually the faces of their franchise and therefore must be paid “a little” more.  But that argument doesn’t really hold true here.   Comparing RB pay to WR pay is even more preposterous.  Take the situation of Larry Fitzgerald, a receiver almost everyone would say is worth his contract.  He signed an extension before 2011 that would pay him $11 million the following season.  Taking into account his trailing three year yards/season average of 1220 yards/season, the Cardinals agreed to pay him over $9,000 per yard!

Of all the running backs in the NFL, only Adrian Peterson has a contract that matches Peyton Manning in terms of dollars/production ($6,000/yd).  And therein lies the problem, according to NFL GMs.  They would say something like, “We’re not in the business of paying for past production.  We’re in the business of paying for future production, like in any business.”  But that’s an argument you only hear with regards to older players and running backs.  Did the Colts have a problem paying for past production when they inked Manning to a huge deal at 34 years old?  There’s no way they honestly thought he was going to get better than he already was.  At best, they were hoping that his production wouldn’t decline too much for the next few years.  Let’s compare this to Arian Foster or Chris Johnson.  At 25 years each and having only played two and three years in the league respectively when they signed their extensions, they certainly had the potential to get better.  But they didn’t get paid anywhere close to the way Manning did.

What doesn't this guy do? Source: Andrew Weber US Presswire

The league overhauled its rookie wage scale recently, signifying that NFL teams were sick of overpaying for potential.  But, they also don’t want to pay for past production.  If there were a way for all players to get paid equitably, then they could have it both ways, but at this point it’s not equitable at all – RBs are getting downright screwed.

The problem with the system is two-fold.  The first, and the elephant in the blog, is the short shelf life for running backs.  It truly is about 5 years at an elite level, tops.  The second problem is the introduction of the rookie wage scale and removal of early big money contracts.  Running backs are easily the most NFL-ready of the three major offensive skills positions coming out of college.  Thus, RBs are screwed twice during their careers – first, because they come into the league producing while being paid the same as a rookie QB or WR that rides the bench, and second, because they have a short shelf life, so by the time their rookie contract is over, teams get very worried or pretend to get very worried about giving the RB a decent contract.

When it comes down to the facts, the NFL reimbursement system needs an overhaul in the favor of RBs.  How should this be done?  I don’t know, but I have some ideas.  How about a more performance-based rookie wage scale for all players, not just running backs?  How about shorter rookie contracts for running backs?

I know people say you can find a running back anywhere in the draft, but at the end of the day, haven’t the top NFL RBs been the top NFL RBs for the last few years?  Regardless of where they’ve been picked, Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson, and Maurice Jones-Drew have all been elite by NFL standards since they’ve become full-time starters.  In the last two years, Foster and McCoy have joined them.  Of these five, four of them have gotten paid.   How about a front-loaded 4-year extension to pay the fifth one?

(115% of the $9 million left on his contract, plus two $7.7 million franchise tags ought to do it, don’t you think?  This would come out to a 4 year extension worth $28 million, front-loaded to make the next two year at $8.5 million/yr and the last two at $5.5 million/yr + performance-based incentives.  Send me your thoughts in the comments or via email!)

– Zain