Among active seventh-round RB picks drafted prior to last year, only two are currently on an NFL roster: 2023's Lew Nichols (Steelers practice squad) and the Lions' Isiah Pacheco (2022 pick). These past 30 years, the 113 retired players drafted in the final round have averaged only 85 fantasy points, which is about 33% less than the 98 retired sixth rounders and about 35% less than the 264 retired undrafted free agents.
This is the way it usually goes for seventh rounders, who are the least likely to have a player finish among the top 10 RBs, the top 20, the top 30, the top 40, and so on. Their average scoring ranking is RB120. You get the idea.
Isiah Pacheco has been one of the few success stories, relatively speaking. He was the RB37 as a rookie and climbed all the way to RB15 in his second season. Entering his third season, I tried to articulate on this blog why he was overvalued at his RB10 ADP. Entering the league, his career-high touch (182) came in his sophomore year at Rutgers. As an NFL rookie in 2022, he hit 226 (including the playoffs. Then he amassed 342 touches in 2023.
The market believed he'd be better in 2024. But how could a formerly modestly utilized seventh-round pick do any better? He would need about 400 touches to compete against Derrick Henry (who was only one spot ahead that summer at RB9). It didn't make sense. I ranked Pacheco 45 spots below his overall-19 ADP.
But this was all based on hunches. I didn't yet have the data to back up this thinking. The reality is, Pacheco is an outlier. His RB37 rookie mark is the highest on record for a seventh rounder (going back 30 years). The average fantasy scoring rank for the 97 retired seventh rounders who had at least one rookie-year touch was 126. His Year 2 scoring rank of RB15 was matched only by Chris Carson.
The average number of regular-season touches for retired RBs drafted in the seventh round these past 30 years is . . . 30. The only one with more than 230 touches was Carson (323). Pacheco had 432. What doesn't show up in those numbers is that Carson had another 15 playoff touches during that brief stretch, while Pacheco had 136.
While I don't have the playoff touch counts catalogued for all of the retired RBs, the only other ones with 180+ regular-season touches were Myles Gaskin, Daryl Richardson, and Bryce Brown. None of them had a single touch in the postseason. It's safe to say that Pacheco's 568 total touches in his first two seasons was 2.5x more than any other seventh rounder drafted these past 30 years . . . except Carson.
That's how much of an outlier Pacheco was. That's why betting on him to sustain his early-career success was risky. We can observe players and think, "Wow, they're great." But I'd rather trust data showing that such greatness almost always fades faster than the fantasy market expects.
With Pacheco now on injured reserve, his RB49 ADP makes no sense. As subscribers know, he's been outside my top 60 for a while. Now I've got him at RB79, right behind Ty Johnson, and 98 spots below his overall-155 ADP. The fantasy market keeps clinging to his 2023 breakout campaign. But he's now dealt with moderate-to-significant injuries in four consecutive seasons. I suggest we're long past moving on.
That leaves 2023 UDFA Jacob Saylors as Jahmyr Gibbs' likely backup to start the season. Despite being only a year younger than Pacheco, Saylors has only two career NFL touches after operating as a bell cow in college. The Lions are his fifth NFL team. He's the all-time leading rusher for the United Football League's St. Louis Battlehawks. Not many players successfully transition from the UFL to the NFL.
That helps explain why Saylors' fantasy rank is somewhere outside the top 700 (he's officially "unranked"). Last week I added him to my rankings, and yesterday I pushed him inside the top 200. Gibbs and David Montgomery combined for 502 regular-season touches last year. While Saylors isn't likely to play a meaningful 1B role, it's inconceivable that Gibbs would be expected to handle 450+ touches. Saylors had 91 college receptions and realistically could must 6+ points per game in a limited role.
Just because someone is unranked, doesn't mean they shouldn't be drafted. If you snag Gibbs this next week, and if you have (let's say) five wideouts on your bench, consider dropping one for a former UDFA who could officially leapfrog Pacheco with a strong September.
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