Fantasy Football Preview 2013: Top Sleeper Running Backs

Shawn Siegele owns three Main Event titles in the National Fantasy Football Championship. Creator of the contrarian sports website Money in the Banana Stand, he acts as Lead Redraft Writer for PFF Fantasy and contributes to RotoViz.

Nobody plays standard formats anymore. I mean, people probably do. There are a lot of people in the world and most of them evidently watch CBS and play in 10-team standard leagues. Just because it’s impossible to personally locate any of these people doesn’t mean they don’t exist, regardless of what George Berkley says.

But everybody who’s serious about playing fantasy football plays PPR, and there’s only one strategy for the in-crowd. Sure, I’ve been recommending a RB-RB start as the only justifiable way to begin a fantasy draft this year. And I do still sanction that strategy if you’re the kind of person who believes in value-based drafting and shows up at parties wearing the wrong fashions unironically. (Don’t worry, there are at least 10 types of non-obscure irony, almost all of which are directly contradictory, so it’s impossible to show up wearing anything and have it not be ironic. You’re covered.)

If, however, you fall into the group that has the Big Lebowski memorized and has at least skimmed On the Road – even though you’d privately include it on your list of the 10 Worst Books Things Ever – then you have to draft upside-down. After a Calvin Johnson-Julio Jones start, it’s going to be pretty important to nail your running back sleepers.