Is Todd Gurley still worth a first-round pick in 2019?

Is Todd Gurley still worth a first-round pick in 2019?

Lastly, as an extra measure, Los Angeles was able to match Detroit’s offer on running back Malcolm Brown too. This move created even more skepticism among anyone still feeling conflicted on whether to take Gurley as their number one RB for their fantasy team this year.

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While we all are aware of Todd Gurley’s uncanny ability to run and catch the ball consistently, it is his durability that is causing some great concern among the fantasy football community.

At this point in time, Gurley appears to be too risky to be relied upon as an RB1 for the 2019 season. Not all hope is lost though if you are still interested in his incredible upside.

Gurley is currently going somewhere towards the beginning of the second round in many draft formats. So a good plan would be to draft your RB1 in the first round albeit someone like Saquon Barkley, Ezekiel Elliott (if he doesn’t holdout), Alvin Kamara, Christian McCaffrey, Le’Veon Bell or David Johnson.

After you take care of your first-round pick, selecting Gurley in the second round is a little more manageable but you still need to be extremely careful and prepare well in the later rounds.

If you do manage to summon the courage to draft Gurley in the second round, you need to get his handcuff (Darrell Henderson) or another running back solid enough to carry a sizable workload.

Henderson would immediately become an RB1 if Gurley goes down with an injury so getting him in the seventh or eighth round is not such a bad idea.

But what if Gurley doesn’t miss any time in 2019, but his touches are limited compared to what they were in years past? Good question. The answer is you make sure to load up on other running backs in the later rounds.

If you do go RB heavy in the first two rounds, then getting your WR’s should be the next priority. Do not worry though because there will still be some good RB’s to select in the fifth round and beyond. For example, you can still get someone like Sony Michel, Tevin Coleman, Miles Sanders, Tarik Cohen and James White in the fifth round and lower.

If you feel inclined to take another top-end RB before the fifth round, you can do so too with confidence since the wide receiver pool is much deeper. Guys like Phillip Lindsay, Chris Carson, and Josh Jacobs are going somewhere in the third and fourth rounds of many drafts.

The last option I can give is to avoid him altogether just to not have to deal with the headaches that might crop up.

All of these options are doable, but how you go about them is the trick. Whatever you plan to do with Gurley in your drafts I don’t know, but what I do know is that Gurley is no longer a sure-fire safe first-round pick.

He definitely still has the talent and ability to put up those numbers, but his health is what’s holding him back. Proceed with caution. The risks are high, but the reward will be even greater if he defies all doubters as he did two years ago. The choice is yours to make.

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