Fantasy Football 2021 rest of season RB rankings: Derrick Henry ascends to No. 1 and full tiered rankings
It's time to stop predicting any sort of dropoff from the star Titans running back.
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The war of attrition that is the Fantasy football season waged on in Week 6, as the RB position became even thinner after injuries to Nick Chubb, Kareem Hunt and Antonio Gibson. On top of that, Week 6 brought news that Christian McCaffrey and Chris Carson's injuries are more serious than originally anticipated.
Week 6's injuries opened up short-term starting opportunities for several running backs. We saw Khalil Herbert play nearly every snap for Chicago with both David Montgomery and Damien Williams sidelined, Alex Collins rumbled for 100 yards on the ground, and Darrel Williams found the end zone twice in his first start. Catch up on how the volume was dispersed among all of the injury-riddled backfields in the Week 6 RB Usage Report.
One of the biggest rankings climbers in Week 6 was Los Angeles RB Darrell Henderson. Henderson was a bit banged-up for L.A.'s Week 5 game and split carries with Sony Michel, but he returned to a near every-down role in Week 6. He joins Antonio Gibson, Chuba Hubbard, and Karrem Hunt as the running backs who saw their rest of season rank change the most from Week 6 to Week 7.
After evaluating the data and sharing What We Learned in Week 6, I'm ready to lay out my rest-of-season rankings at the running back position heading into Week 7. Here's where I'm ranking each RB going forward, given the data we have through three weeks.
1. Derrick Henry (+4)
2. Christian McCaffrey (-1)
3. Dalvin Cook (-1)
4. Austin Ekeler
5. Aaron Jones (-2)
6. Alvin Kamara
7. Ezekiel Elliott
8. D'Andre Swift
9. Najee Harris
Notable changes:
Derrick Henry continues to break projection systems week after week and year after year. With Tennessee's offense looking more competent recently, and with Christian McCaffrey added to the IT, I felt it was time to officially move Henry to the 1.01 spot. Henry doesn't care about our Excel sheets, all he cares about is scoring touchdowns. He's the most valuable player in Fantasy at the moment.
We've now seen Green Bay get A.J. Dillon more involved in three straight games. Green Bay isn't going to coast to victory every week, and when they don't, I'd expect Dillon to be less involved. Still, until we see Aaron Jones return to the type of stellar route involvement and RB rushing shares we saw in the first month of the season, it would be irresponsible for me to continue ranking him as the RB3 overall.
D'Andre Swift and Najee Harris both stay at No. 8 and 9, respectively, but join Tier 2 for the first time, as we saw continued encouraging signs from the two youngsters in Week 6. Swift's underlying usage rates were terrific -- check out his full Week 6 Usage Report here. Harris saw his route involvement and target per route run rate rise slightly in Pittsburgh's first game without JuJu Smith-Schuster, and I'd expect him to continue being more prioritized now that Ben Roethlisberger is without his primary check-down option.
Which RBs are on the rise after six weeks? And which running back has dropped 12 spots due to injury? ... Join SportsLine here to see Jacob Gibbs' rest of season Fantasy Football Rankings, all from one of the nation's most accurate experts as graded by FantasyPros!
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