Arizona Cardinals RB James Conner has been a reliable fantasy football option for the better part of the past half-decade. Seemingly perennially undervalued, should fantasy managers once again draft Conner as a bargain in Best Ball?
James Conner’s 2024 Fantasy Outlook
I don’t know if there’s a player who has been more unfairly maligned over the past five years than James Conner. In the interest of full disclosure, I was part of the problem.
With the exception of one year (2020), all Conner has ever done since getting a chance to be a lead running back is produce. It’s wild to think that his first opportunity when replacing Le’Veon Bell was a whopping six years ago.
Conner will never again reach the heights of the 21.2 fantasy points per game he averaged in 2018. But including that season, Conner’s overall RB25 finish in 2020 was the only year in which he finished lower than RB16. He’s averaged at least 14.6 fantasy points per game in five of the past six years.
A big criticism of Conner is he can’t stay on the field, and this is probably the only critique of him that’s fair. Conner has played in more than 13 games just once in his career. Ironically, that came in his least efficient season in 2021. Further adding to the irony is he averaged 17.2 points per game that year, the second-most of his career, largely due to the fact that he scored 18 touchdowns.
Last season, Conner was often dismissed as a quintessential “dead zone” running back. He was 28 years old with a known ceiling on what was projected to be one of the worst offenses in football. Without significant touchdown upside, how was Conner going to be anything more than a volume-based RB2, at best? The thing is, for half the season, that assessment was largely correct.
Conner started out the year hot with 12.0, 16.6, and 19.6 fantasy points. But over his next five games, he failed to score more than 8.3 fantasy points. Those five games also spanned a total of nine weeks, as Conner missed time with an injury.
At that point, fantasy managers had written off Conner, and all he did afterward was go on to be a league winner.
From Weeks 13-18, Conner averaged 23.8 fantasy points per game — those are elite RB1 numbers. For further context, Conner averaged 18.2 points per game in his eight contests with Kyler Murray under center. That’s compared to just 11.9 points per game with Josh Dobbs and Clayton Tune.
Perhaps most important for assessing Conner’s value going forward is whether his 15.5 points per game was due to raw volume or because he was actually good. His 71.3% opportunity share was ninth in the league, which certainly helped.
But Conner had the most efficient season of his post-Pittsburgh Steelers career.
He averaged 5.1 yards per touch (16th in the league). He was ripping off long runs, with 6.3% of his carries going for 15+ yards (seventh). His evade tackles per touch rate was inside the top 10, and he even created 3.64 yards per touch (16th).
Sometimes, you need to admit when you were wrong about a player.
In the past, I had dismissed Conner as a replacement-level talent, but he’s proven to be a quality NFL running back and has shown no indication he won’t be one in 2024.
Should You Draft Conner in 2024 Best Ball Leagues?
No one is ever going to be excited to draft Conner. As fantasy managers, we love young, explosive players, and Conner is neither young nor explosive. But sometimes, as fantasy managers, we forget the most important stat of them all: fantasy points.
Conner just gets it done. He was able to finish as the overall RB13 while playing half of the season with backup quarterbacks. He is now going to get a full season of Murray.
Head coach Jonathan Gannon has already shown he’s willing to use Conner as a three-down back. Although the veteran RB is now 29 years old, he doesn’t have nearly as many touches as your typical back of his age.
KEEP READING: Best Ball Rankings 2024
When you draft Conner, you do so accepting that he’s going to miss three to five games. But this man has proven to have RB1 upside. Yet, he’s somehow going outside the top 24 backs. I’m in.
