Fantasy Football Preview 2013: Top Sleeper Running Backs

1. Lamar Miller – Miami Dolphins

Speed Score aficionados were stunned when last year’s top Combine performer plummeted into the fourth round. Fear not, fellow analysts. NFL teams are still tossing bones and reading entrails when projecting runners to the league.

William Goldman, luminary screenwriter of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All the President’s Men – but more importantly, of course, The Princess Bride – has said that if you waste time with a scene of car driving up a winding road to a country house nestled in amidst the trees, well, there better be a monster of some sort waiting. (You know what I love about AMC? The pacing!)

Lamar Miller fits in the fantasy football version of this particular false analogy. If a former fourth round pick with a mere 250 yards to his name is being drafted in the third round of fantasy drafts, you better think he’s the monster.

He might be.  Miller owns a better size/speed profile than either Doug Martin or Trent Richardson. He pairs that explosiveness with elite advanced numbers from his final season as a Hurricane. Unlike most of our other breakout candidates, no competition exists for the starting job as Daniel Thomas and Mike Gillislee barely qualify as replacement level. Slipping back through the archives, we discover current Dolphins coordinator Mike Sherman has engineered mythical seasons from his backs before. Ahman Green is the answer to “which name does not belong” when you go back and look at historical runners with 2,000-yard, 20-touchdown seasons.

Miller may be a swing for the fences pick, but if he is, imagine Yoenis Cespedes as your personal pinch hitter.